Dear Friends in Christ,

I recently learned that between 2003 and 2022, Americans increased the time they spent at home by an average of one hour and 39 minutes. To be clear, this is not an extra almost-two-hours of free time. It’s time spent on the same activities—work, exercise, cooking, watching movies—but simply spent doing them in the house. At lot of the time, doing them in the house alone.

Collateral damage of this trend? We spend a whole lot less time with people who are different from us, who challenge us, who surprise us, who draw us outside of ourselves.

My fellow Americans, we need church.

Sociologists have long talked about “third places.” Home is the first place; work (when that used to be some place other than home) is the second. Third places are public gathering sites, routine enough to engender a sense of belonging. A third place is where we identify faces, where we recognize someone enough to know they got a haircut. It is a place where we can strike up a conversation, if we choose, with someone who challenges or surprises us.

Churches have long been a third place in our culture. Church communities teach us how to be community writ large. We learn how to engage people older than us or younger than us. We develop the habit of being polite, maybe even kind, to people who raise our hackles. We learn how to make enough small talk that we can open the door for big talk.

We need this kind of place for ourselves at Grace Church. And we need to continue to make and model this kind of place in our country.

During last year’s visioning work, one of the most beautiful ideas was that Grace Church could be “the antidote to loneliness.” I believe that’s a vision we can make real. When we show up for one another—when we come to the same room, week after week, leaving the safety of our homes behind—we drive loneliness out. And we say something about the universal and persistent love of God as we do it.

The most important thing you can do at Grace is to come to worship. It’s not leading something or even joining something, great as leading and joining are. It’s simply showing up with and for one another.

Come. And come together.

Yours in Christ,
Anne+