Family Promise Volunteer Opportunity

Dear Grace,

Welcome back from the Labor Day Holiday. The summer is officially over. And it is time to get those well rested hands back to work serving our Lord.

Our next opportunity to show our congregational love for others is the Family Promise hosting starting on Sunday (next week).

The Family Promise guests will be at Lebanon Baptist Camp. We supported them at that location back in May. And there is some good news to share. One of the families that we first saw back at that May hosting found an apartment! Many of us bonded closely with the mother, who was a nurse at the women’s prison, her daughter who was attending RVCC, and the mother’s sister. That family moved to an apartment this past weekend and will not be in the Family Promise shelter network now. We will miss our friendly conversations with them, but let the church say “Amen!”

Bill Taylor

Here is the link to volunteer for the hosting slots. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090448aea623a1fe3-family4

Interfaith Racism Book Reading & Discussion Group

The Flemington Presbyterian Church and the Flemington Jewish Community Center have come together to offer a book discussion about racism in America. Here are the details:

The book we’ll be discussing is So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. We’ll be meeting Wednesday mornings 10-11:30 alternating between the FJCC and FPC. First meeting is at the Parish House of FPC on September 11th. Contact either Cindy Hall at FPC or Deborah Kesselhaut at the FJCC (908) 782-6410 to reserve a book for $12, payment due at the first class. It’ll run for 10 weeks but will not be meeting on October 9th as that is Yom Kippur.

Racism remains a difficult topic to discuss. The goal is to provide an opportunity for people to meet and have open, honest conversations about the difficult topics of racism, White privilege, White Supremacy, etc. (My first observation would be if you think White privilege and White supremacy in America is difficult to discuss, you should try facing it every day and worrying about the cumulative effect on your child. But let me not digress.) I have confirmed that this book discussion is open to us. And you don’t have to wait until the first meeting to buy the book. You can get it on your own in advance and start reading if you like (Consider purchasing through Amazon Smile to support Grace UCC).

Some of you might remember the 4 or 5 week discussion conducted by Pastor Dan on Jim Wallis’s book America’s Original Sin. That discussion of American Racism had the advantage that none of us were strangers to each other. We all knew each other well and were very comfortable in a familiar space. This discussion will have the counter advantage of giving us the opportunity to hear how others, who we don’t necessarily know well, think about this topic.

- Bill Taylor

RSVP