Commit to What You Believe in, And Help Make It So
December 17, 2024
Dear First Universalist Community,
In this holiday season I am more grateful than ever for this church and for each of you. Together, we lift up the power of love and hope in the world. We believe in each other and the new ways we can create together. We do not turn away from the world’s troubles; instead we create the spaces to hold them together and imagine something better.
This is what I need your help to do now, in a very specific and concrete form. Could you make your pledge to support the annual operating budget of the church for the 2025-26 church year that begins in July of 2025 now, before inauguration day on January 20th?
Why so early, and why now? Well, the answer is simple. We don’t want our church leaders spending the upcoming months fundraising for our own institutional operating costs or worrying about possible reductions in programming and staffing when there is so much at stake. When there are lives at stake.
We want our church leaders and our church community to be able to be present to the needs of those within and beyond our walls.
As the year turns and we move into 2025, we know that so much is about to change. We can’t know exactly what will happen next, but we do know that the shifts in the political landscape that have been taking place over the last several years are intensifying. We know that people with marginalized identities including immigrants, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, Indigenous people and disabled people are living with increasing fear and decreasing protections that would guarantee their basic human rights.
We know that we will need the presence and care we can offer each other, and we know that we must be prepared to offer sanctuary and safety to those at risk within and beyond our walls.
Over the last month our Sanctuary and Resistance Team has been re-forming, grounded in the same spirit of yes that animated our Minister Emeritus, The Reverend John Cummins, when he answered the call from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Selma in 1965. We are saying yes to what King called the “fierce urgency of now.” We are saying yes to the priorities that communities at risk are naming: yes to providing sanctuary to immigrants at risk of deportation, yes to becoming a welcoming village to our trans and gender-expansive siblings making the move to Minnesota seeking safety, health care and community, yes to being a congregation that provides information and support in accessing reproductive health care for all.
We are saying yes to new ways of supporting each other within our congregation as we strengthen our practices of caring for each other.
We are getting ready: grounding ourselves spiritually through our learning and growth in intercultural competency, spiritual practice, and deepening relationships with each other and across faith communities—and we are already saying yes and meaning it. In the new year, our sanctuary apartment at church will again be full. You’ll see additional resources and supplies added to the boxes in the bathrooms to ensure that everyone who enters our building has access to reproductive health care, as well as new opportunities to volunteer in emerging partnerships. You’ll be invited to join us as we build out resources for housing, systems navigation, caring accompaniment, and support for daily needs for those seeking sanctuary—from immigrants to trans and gender-expansive folks to those traveling for reproductive health care—so that everyone has what they need to thrive.
You’ve often heard me say that among us, we have what we need. Rev. John Cummins used to say that our church had all the money it needed, the problem was that it was still in peoples’ pockets. He also said that if you wanted to know what any of us believed just look at our check books.
As we enter this new year, I invite you to help us wrap up our fundraising efforts for the 2025-26 church year early. Make your pledge by January 20, 2025. Commit to what you believe in and help make it so—Beloved Community within and beyond our walls:
- Community free of poverty, racism, and violence.
- Community grounded in a love so powerful that it transforms us individually and collectively.
- Community that is ever-expanding in its protection and care of those named the least among us by the powers that seek to separate and divide us.
This is who we are, and this is what we will be in the years ahead. This is the work of the church. Will you join me in making it possible?
In gratitude,
Rev. Jen
Let’s Build The Church The World Needs
Trying to make a pledge for the current church year?
First Universalist Church is grateful for your generosity. If you would like to make a pledge for the current church year, which ends on June 30, 2025, please e-mail our bookkeeper, Jie (jie [at] firstuniv.org). You can set up automatic giving to start right away—any time!