Beginning a new year at Eliot Church
Friends in Christ,
I write this letter on the eve of the Presidential inauguration, sitting at a desk in my sister’s home because my brother-in-law, a journalist in the Air National Guard, has been deployed to Washington, D.C., to document and protect an inauguration that is threatened by unprecedented violence. I also write as the US death toll from the Coronavirus nears 400,000. That’s not just a number; those are human beings, including family and friends of our own congregation. By the time you read this letter, the inauguration will be behind us, but bitter political partisanship and Coronavirus deaths will likely continue to rise. Here at the start of 2021, the year past hardly seems behind us and the future remains fraught with uncertainty and anxiety.
Even though there is much in the year past that we might prefer to forget, looking back allows us to see where God’s provision and grace has been working all along. As a congregation, we adapted quickly and well to an online format for worship and fellowship. While I long to come together in our sanctuary, I have also come to enjoy glimpses of your homes and pets as we gather on Zoom. You can see one another’s faces instead of the backs of heads! Our Sunday testimony time remains rich, and we have seen more groups gathering for fellowship and Bible study. (A new men’s group began this year and the Cambodians increased their Bible study meetings.) And this year’s Christmas pageant might be the best in recent memory!
We have also seen God’s guidance as we have talked together about white supremacy and racial justice. We have held one another’s pain and allowed ourselves to be challenged for growth. God provided for Eliot’s financial needs through your continued generosity, the gifts of strangers, and a grant through federal aid programs.
Perhaps the most abundant provision in 2020 has also been one of the greatest challenges: a significantly expanded ministry to Eliot’s neighbors who are unhoused. A decade ago, Eliot affirmed its commitment to our location in downtown Lowell even as the neighborhood around the church faced economic decline. In the last two years, we have seen more and more neighbors come to Eliot when they had no other place to warm their hands or rest their feet. When the whole city closed its doors because of the Coronavirus, Eliot was in the right location, had the right leadership, and received the right financial support to open our doors and serve the neighbors that were not welcome anywhere else. To me, this has felt like the work of the Holy Spirit.
This new ministry has not come without struggle and anxiety, however. There is much that is challenging about ministering to our neighbors who are unhoused. The presence of newcomers disrupts our ideas about what kind of church we are. Can families with children and adults with substance use or mental illness gather in the same space at the same time? Is it safe? Is it possible to open our doors and our lawn to these neighbors and still be a center of beauty and tranquility on our street? What do evangelism, discipleship, and fellowship mean when some of our guests seem unwilling or unready to engage in Christian community? Are we taking on more than we can handle or trying to solve problems that are too large for us?
These are the kinds of issues that were raised in a series of listening sessions last fall. They are issues that the Session continues to engage and address even as we commit to expanding this ministry in 2021. This is a big ministry, one that requires partnership across the city and the power of the Holy Spirit. We are in constant conversation with other organizations and we have received significant financial support for 2021 through a City grant. With that funding we will hire a social work professional to assist our guests and guide our policies and practices. Concerns about safety deserve to be addressed seriously and with compassion. When we return to the building, parents will find the nursery relocated to the Sunday School wing and a new “Hospitality Team” providing for welcome, guidance, and safety on Sunday mornings. Integrating new members into our community will require flexibility, patience, and generosity of spirit. As the “insiders,” it will be incumbent upon you, as members of the congregation, to welcome, encourage, and teach newcomers with the love of Christ.
This is not altogether new work for Eliot. As a multicultural congregation, we have worked to bridge differences before. In the past, as now, the transition was marked by anxiety and even conflict. But for 40 years, Eliot has remained faithful to its ethic of extending a wide welcome, and I trust that in 2021, we can answer Jesus’s call to open our doors even further while holding fast to the sense of Christian community that we share.
At the close of 2020, we may long for life to get back to normal. However, let us not dismiss too quickly the new things that God has been doing in the past year, both in our personal lives and in our life together as a church. Whatever 2021 holds, I hope that we will continue to worship with joy, to grow in fellowship, to do the hard work of racial justice, to share generously, and to offer the expansive welcome that has made Eliot the community we are today.
In hope,
Pastor Heather