October 13, 2021 Weekly Update

This week our Lay Leader Nancy Flint offers her reflections on our second Core Value for this coming Sunday:

The Leadership Team and Administrative Council discerned our second core value: to be a community of social justice advocates. It is the natural next step we have taken as a community committed to cherish and affirm all people. We have become more and more aware of our neighbors both near and far and notice situations in which some suffer both emotionally and physically, while others are harmed by systems. Awareness is the beginning of understanding so that we might learn how to be advocates of justice. As Desmond Tutu states: “We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

In the past year, we as a community have gone upstream with our book studies on compassion and racism. We have sought a deeper understanding of what our friends in East Angola have experienced as they seek God’s wholeness after a long civil war. We commit to a covenant relationship with East Angola pastors, Ken Koome, and the agriculture projects at Quessua.

I am grateful that the Columbia Falls United Methodist Church holds dear the core value of justice so that all may flourish and know of their belovedness. With this as a core value I am confident that we will continue to seek justice for all God’s creation while we help to alleviate the suffering in our world.

Blessings,

Nancy Flint