Weekly Clergy Letter from Mother Anne Turner

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

Do you remember the first time you came to Grace Church?

 

For some of you, that day was very recent; for others, it has been decades.  A very few of you cannot remember your first time because you were a baby carried in someone else’s arms.

 

Most of our experiences (apart from the babies’) share a lot in common.  We weren’t completely sure what to expect, whatever our friends or the website might have told us.  Perhaps even the livestream left unknowns.  We maybe had a hard time figuring out which door to come in.  We wanted to use the bathroom but felt awkward asking for directions.  Everyone else seemed to have a hand to shake at the peace.

 

In one way or another, we were vulnerable.

 

I ask you to call these memories to mind because Grace Church needs your empathy right now.  Each week, we have newcomers join us.  They don’t know which door to use.  They don’t know whose hand to shake.  They need yours.

 

We are a big enough congregation that everyone doesn’t know everyone else.  A lot of people tell me that they are afraid to ask if someone is new, lest the supposed newcomer awkwardly turn out to be one of those Grace-babes-in-arms.  I encourage you to push past anxiety and try your greeting a different way: “We haven’t met yet.”  Share your name.  Ask for theirs.  Get to know them, new or old.

 

And if you have indeed met someone new to Grace?  You have been entrusted, for just a little bit, with someone in their moment of vulnerability.  I encourage you to be attuned to their needs and their hopes, to listen for the deep story of what brought them to this place on this day.  Ask questions.  Don’t worry about having all the answers.

 

We clergy do our best to welcome visitors.  (We often scan the last few rows, which is where newcomers like to hang out.) But we are limited.  Each of us knows what it’s like to stand at the back door of the church and try to have three different conversations simultaneously while someone grows tired of waiting and slips away.

 

This is where the body of Christ comes in.  This is where you come in.  Make the first move.  Greet the stranger.  Offer the open heart.

 

Remember how you got here, and help someone else find the way home, too.

 

Yours in Christ,

Anne+