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Coming Together for a Day of Service
—Amber Herzer, Chair of OSP’s Social Justice and Service Committee
This year, Old St. Paul’s established a relationship with Civic Works and sponsored the Ricky Meyer’s Day of Service. Civic Works is a local non-profit that’s been working in Baltimore for twenty years, with a focus on strengthening Baltimore’s communities through education, skills development, and community service.
Our partnership with Civic Works enabled thirty OSP congregation members and over five hundred other Baltimore citizens to spend a day volunteering together across the city. The congregation’s financial gift was used to purchase trees, flower bulbs, tools, trash bags, paint, garden gloves, and refreshments to sustain volunteers.
Together, the five hundred volunteers planted over 120 trees and 6,700 bulbs at the REACH! Partnership School, YMCA, eight city parks, a senior housing center, and more. Volunteers assembled one thousand energy-saver kits with Civic Works’ Baltimore Energy Challenge, made one hundred school supply kits for students in need, and crafted one hundred seed-bombs to help spread native flowers. Volunteers performed vital repairs at four homes belonging to low-income seniors, beautified six vacant lot green spaces along with a historic cemetery, built a rain garden in a city park, and made improvements to our Real Food Farm and Little Gunpowder Farm. The team at Civic Works beautifully stated,
“The rich and diverse community of volunteers who participate every year are a testament to the perseverance and boundless love present in our city.”
Fellow volunteer and Civic Works board member Robert Zdenek expanded on just this point, saying
“it was thrilling to observe and participate with more than thirty fellow OSP congregants to contribute to the Ricky Meyer Day of Service, our signature volunteer event at Civic Works. Community engagement and revitalization takes so many forms, from planting bulbs and trees to cleaning up parks and streets. The net effect is two-fold: a safer, more engaged community, and the individual and collective smiles of over five hundred volunteers.”
Throughout the day, congregation members were able to work with and learn from each other, engaging in meaningful conversations, sharing laughs, and creating new friendships. The pouring rain wasn’t even a deterrent! Amber Herzer, the OSP Social Justice and Service Chair noted,
“This was the first time the church participated in this city-wide volunteer day. It was a joy to participate and know that our church’s financial contribution facilitated the success of this important community activity.”
We look forward to hosting another Day of Service event in the Spring of 2017.
If you have any questions or would be interested in joining us for our next service event please contact Amber at AmberLHerzer@gmail.com.
Learning About BUILD, Listening to Our Community
After the riots shook Baltimore, we at Old St. Paul’s, like many faith groups around the city, decided to reassess our methods of outreach and community engagement in order to better serve our neighbor Baltimoreans. Since this past June, various members of Old St. Paul’s have been serving on different discernment committees dedicated to doing just this. Today, we’ll focus on the discernment committee dedicated to researching the church’s possible partnership with the local nonprofit organization BUILD, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development.
As discernment committee leader Amber Herzer explains, “BUILD organizes congregations, listens to the needs of the community, and then works with the political and civic leadership to address those needs.” BUILD is thus, at its heart, a relationship-based outreach model rather than project-based. It uses “a true servant-leader model,” and is dedicated to “empowering, listening to, and supporting community leaders.”
When was the last time that you felt truly listened to? Amber asks. When was the last time you felt someone paying you sincere attention, someone seeking to understand your perspective and experience? —Think back to those rare times, and remember how empowering that can feel. How it can help restore a person’s sense of worth, power, and wholeness.
“Sometimes it can take more courage to stop and listen, than to charge forward,” Amber explains. “It’s the courage of humility. We at Old St. Paul’s do not have a solution for the city of Baltimore. We do have a collection of people well-versed in volunteering and social justice, however. Social workers, teachers, lawyers, city government employees, artists, activists—people who understand that our first reaction shouldn’t be Let’s Go Do Something, but Let’s Listen First.”
Eileen Brittain, also a discernment committee member, recalls the book of Jeremiah when she thinks of BUILD:
“But seek the welfare of the city…, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
—Jeremiah 29:7
According to Eileen, “Their strategy to put pressure on those who make the decisions and control the funding can cause situations to be changed. BUILD asks support of faith communities to appear at various meetings to show solidarity and be an ally to those who do not have a voice in the halls of power.”
Tom Andrews, another of the committee’s members, is particularly “excited about the possibility of Old St. Paul’s joining BUILD” for the way it seeks to bring “together people of various faith traditions, to get to know each other, to work together on the needs of the city, and to work with political leaders to address these needs.”
Committee member Bob Zdenek seconds this sentiment, saying, “BUILD’s significance is that it brings together diverse congregations, both clergy and lay leaders from throughout Baltimore City…. Baltimore is one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. …and that speaks to the importance of organizations like BUILD that can cut across racial, income, class, and geographic barriers.”
“BUILD is the long term,” Amber says, “because it is focused on changing the system and building relationships with people in other parts of the city.”
And while this may mean that BUILD engages the political system, it is important to note that BUILD itself is not political. “This element may feel uncomfortable to some,” Amber concedes, “but BUILD is not about picking sides. It’s about changing the current system. If the change we’re creating isn’t uncomfortable, then we’re not digging deep enough.”
Of course, there are still questions and challenges that the discernment committee are considering. “I don’t see a lot of new leadership development with IAF affiliates [which includes BUILD] other than clergy,” Bob explains. “There is usually a small group of lay leaders, but how do you build the leadership beyond a few people? …I think this is vital for Old St. Paul’s in particular, since we appear to be new to social justice and change initiatives beyond a few small services.”
For more information on BUILD, please join us for The Forum on November 1st:
Faith Based Organizing in Baltimore City
9:30-10:20 a.m. at The Grand, next door to the church
The Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate BUILD (Baltimoreons United in Leadership Development) is a 35+ year organization committed to organizing communities around their own self-interests. BUILD is comprised of 35 congregations and 15 city schools. The Rev. Glenna Huber, priest in the Diocese of Maryland is clergy co-chair of BUILD.
—Katherine Mead-Brewer
Holy Hospitality!
My grandparents were true Depression Era citizens, and both Mom-mom and Pop-pop told me many stories about how hard it was to find what you needed during that time. Pop-pop was out of work, and Mom-mom worked as a bobbin winder at The Linen Thread; she stood for ten to twelve hours a day in front of a machine and she was glad to have the work. My mother was only eight years old when she and her brother started walking the railroad tracks for coal dropped from the open-topped cars to supplement the wood Pop-pop chopped from his own five acre farm.
My mother is now eighty-three years old, and she still talks about how she and her brother and her parents worked the five acres with the help of their neighbors, and how Mom-mom and Pop-pop were famous for their canned fruits and vegetables, and how, at the end of the Harvest, there was always a huge outdoor celebration that featured a sit-down barbeque for over a hundred people.
Pop-pop stood at the front of the line of homemade picnic tables and always made the same speech, year after year. He thanked God for the beauty and bounty of the land, he thanked Herbert Hoover (and then Roosevelt) for the freedom of the USA, he thanked his neighbors for their help on his farm, and he thanked his family for putting up with him. At which point Mom-mom would chime in, “Amen!” and the food would be passed.
Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s generosity to all was well-established by the time my sister, brother, and I arrived. Every Sunday she would stop on the way out of church to ask the pastor about the local families:
“How is Miss Ann doing?”
“Did Mrs. McGraul have her baby?”
“Did Big Jim find work yet?”
As her workweek progressed, she remembered those talks with the pastor on the marble steps of the church and, after dinner each night, she would gather canned foods from her pantry, add a loaf of her homemade bread, a fresh-baked chicken, and a bag of her (justifiably) famous sugar cookies, and then we would take a walk. My sister, brother, and I would sit on Miss Ann’s porch and talk with her about our little adventures while Mom-mom went into the kitchen to put away the food she had brought.
Miss Ann, Mrs. McGraul, Big Jim, and all of Mom-mom’s other neighbors were always so grateful for her kindness, and would thank her over and over. She always responded, “God gave me a great gift with this life, and I want to return the favor.”
Mom-mom and Pop-pop are long gone now, but their hospitality and generosity live in my memory every time I set a tray of doughnuts out for the congregation on Sunday.For me, the talking and the laughing and the hugs that circulate around the hospitality tables at the back of Old St. Paul’s after the service (punctuated by a lot of Thank you so much, Lynn!) is a secular echo of the Eucharist that we all share.
The Holy Hospitality of the Eucharist is accepted quietly and spiritually – the doughnuts, coffee, fruit, and homemade treats are shared as a banquet of friendship and community among the congregation, and now is the time for talk!
Conversation flourishes among the congregation as the children play in the aisles: future plans to get together are made, confidences are shared, and current issues are discussed. Old St. Paul’s is God’s House and this is a happy time.
As I always say, “Things go better with food!” I know Mom-mom and Pop-pop would agree.
–Lynn Calvarese
Youth Sunday comes to Old St. Paul’s
Since 2006, Old St. Paul’s has prided itself on having a thriving youth group for teens, but it wasn’t until this previous Sunday that it celebrated its first official Youth Sunday. Youth Sundays can vary widely from church to church, including everything from special announcements regarding youth group activities and achievements to youth-led sermons.
At Old St. Paul’s, Youth Sunday came in the wake of our Youth Confirmation Retreat, led by Youth Minister, Jessica Sexton and vestry member, Georgina Anton. Through the advent of our Youth Sunday, Jessica sought to inspire our youth to consider how they might use their spiritual gifts in service to the church, encouraging them to take on new roles and responsibilities both in and out of the worship service.
This means that, with the exception of the choir, our youth group took on allnon-ordained roles in the Youth Sunday worship service: acolytes, chalicists, hosts/ushers, readers, and Prayers for the People. For though our church recognizes no specific rules regarding age for these positions, these roles tend to most often go to adult members of the congregation (save for the role of acolyte). Each position in the worship service inevitably holds greater and greater meaning the more involved, mature, and educated a person becomes on each element and how they all fit together on Sunday morning.
This Sunday, our sanctuary was refreshed by a host of new voices, reminding us that wisdom can come from any thoughtful, reasoning person—no matter their age, background, or any other difference that’d seek to divide us.
In the morning’s Forum, The Rev. Mary Luck Stanley led us in a discussion on Social Teachings and the Church, touching on everything from the Church’s role in taking moral stands on matters of social justice to issues of the Church’s continued relevancy in today’s world. And while our discussion was spirited, diverse, and thoughtful, I found myself grinning about parts of it during the worship service. What’s the Church’s continued relevancy today? —A strange question in a community where youth members—many of them not yet confirmed in the Church; many of them still on the fence about whether or not being confirmed is even what they want—would come together to help lead us in a worship service, would acknowledge us as a community worth investing in, worth working for, worth seeking wisdom from and imparting wisdom to.
Our relevancy, the Church’s relevancy, as Mary went on to explain, isn’t founded in what moral or social issues it stakes itself to, but in its members, young and old, and in helping guide and support those members on their way to discerning the capital-T Truth together.
Thank you to all our youth members: Jack Stanley, Hannah Stanley, Sophie Allen, Andrew Bickford, David Giordano, Kenny Gaisor, Nathan LaClair, Elizabeth Greisman, and Erin Barringer, who served this past Sunday! And a very special thank you to Jessica Sexton and Georgina Anton—without you, none of this would’ve been possible.
—Katherine Mead-Brewer
Living Our Faith: St. Paul's Episcopal Church 