Dear church family,
I am writing to you in order to share a few thoughts I am having as we begin summer. I know I will be talking with many of you in the days ahead and ongoing. This is not meant to take the place of any of that, but to try and provide some framework and reference points for what I am thinking about as a pastor at Trinity Grace.
I have taken some time to fast and pray for our church. This is such an interesting moment. I am about to go away on a trip that is certainly welcome after these past months of quarantine. I know it is a trip I need to make for my family (my mother is getting married in July) and for my own soul. I also know our church is in wonderful hands, but I do feel a twinge of sorrow to be leaving NYC right as things begin to ease open. This seems like such an important moment in the leadership of our church as we both begin to emerge from this quarantine and continue to respond, repent, and grow in this moment of recognizing again the racial inequalities and injustice of our country and communities.
I am going to just move quickly through a few important subjects on my heart and we can come back to all or any of these in conversations, communication, and plans in the days and months ahead. Thanks in advance for taking the time to consider and pray over these matters as those who love our church.
Drift
The COVID-19 pandemic and NYC quarantine has shaken up so many things in our lives. It feels like we are almost out of language for describing how unexpected, strange, and painful this first half of 2020 has been. Many people in our church and wider community have gotten sick, some have faced death, and even more have had their lives and careers totally turned upside down. Many of us are facing tons of uncertainty about our jobs, income, schooling, housing, and more. Each week I hear of someone else who has had to move or endure a serious life change in response to COVID-19.
We have not been able to meet as a church family in person for several months now and it looks like that will continue in some fashion for a while longer. We may be able to meet in smaller groups this summer for those who are comfortable with that. More on that later.
One result of these many changes is that it is difficult to perceive our body, to see and know who we are as a church family. It is hard to know who to care for and how to care for them. We can all love and care for those right in front of us (or in our Zoom calls) but many of the natural connections we would have had by meeting together have been absent.
There are multiple ways we all may feel this absence and trying to fully describe the dynamic is challenging, but some of it I will categorize under the word drift. We could easily drift from a sense of connection to one another. We could drift from a sense of belonging to the church family. We could drift from a sense of shared vision and mission. Honestly, this might happen at any time, and we always have to be somewhat aware of drift as a possibility, but this moment seems especially susceptible to drifting.
My hope and prayer is that we will push back against this force. I hope that we will (to extend the metaphor) fight the current of drift and work to live close to God, close to each other, and close to a shared sense of vision and mission, even in the summer, even when we have so many reasons why it might be easier not to. One reason for this is that we may not like where we end up if we simply let ourselves or our church drift. We are rarely drift into Christlike maturity. We rarely drift into sacrificial love. We rarely drift into systemic change. We rarely drift into a shared life of mission and love.
Racial Reconciliation and Justice
Along with the pandemic, 2020 has brought right to the surface the painful wounds, deep inequality, and racism that our country has wrestled with from the beginning. The murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others has brought us to a place of rightful outrage and insistence on change. Our streets are filled with the calls and prayers for change. In the church as well, this is a time for deep reflection, listening, learning, repentance, change, and sustained action in the name of Jesus and love.
We are committed to this process as a church for the long haul. One of our more immediate steps as been to assemble a working group to discuss, discern, and pray through these matters and then to make recommendations to our church for how to move forward in a sustained manner.
This team includes Amber Strickland, Jane Lee, Jason Choi, Jackie Griffin, Jason and Heather Locy, David Louw, and Patrick Boatwright. They will be advising our staff and elders on ways we can move forward as a church taking up our gospel mandate as ambassadors of reconciliation in a new way. Please pray for this process.
Debate and consideration went into assembling this team. We could have invited more people, perhaps even you would have been a great addition, but part of our heart was to have as diverse an initial group as possible while also keeping the size manageable for conversation and action.
We expect this group will grow to include deacons and other leaders so that the hard work of materializing this conversation can happen. No one group of people can do the work on our behalf and we will all have a role to play going forward. One of the first recommendations we are implementing is arranging Anti-Racism and Racial Reconciliation Training for our staff and elder teams. We anticipate sharing updates and next steps in the weeks ahead.
Presence | Formation | Love
I feel as convinced as ever that God gave us a great gift of clarity as our church turned ten last year. We are to be a church of Presence, Formation, and Love. On one level, this has been part of our vision to join God in the renewal of all things since TGC was founded, but I truly believe these are necessary access points for how we will live out our vision as a church in the years to come.
We intend to be with God, to grow to become like Jesus, and to live lives of active love. We need this. Our world needs this.
My hope is that each person who calls TGC their home will make a priority of Presence, Formation, and Love in their own life. We produced a new resource that will help you identify some simple practices for living in this vision personally and communally this summer. Let’s not simply drift!
Summer Meeting Plans
We plan to continue to offer an online broadcast of our shared worship on Sundays through the summer. We do not expect Middle School 51 to be open to a gathering of our size for still quite some time. We also think there is wisdom in continuing to make our primary connecting point for our groups Zoom or some other digital meeting space. This will allow those traveling, or temporality out of the city because of COVID-19, or those with greater health risk factors or concerns to still participate. As always you can find group information on our site.
We are grateful for the ways shared service has been bringing us together and look forward to more opportunities to reconnect in the park and around Brooklyn as the city continues to reopen.
As the summer progresses, we will be looking for alternative places where, God willing, our church could meet for some larger gatherings in the months ahead. We are unsure when MS 51 will be available to us again for Sundays. We will of course continue in all of this to have our activities informed by the guidelines of city government and public health officials, but we are looking forward to the day we can be in the same room again!
Student Ministry
We are very sad to see Patrick Boatwright’s tenure as our Pastor for Students and Families come to an end. We honor all the many contributions he has made to our church over his years on our staff team. Our student ministry will carry his legacy for years to come.
We have begun the difficult job of finding someone to fill the role that Patrick is leaving. We have put out a wide search within our church network and beyond and we have posted the job description on our site. Feel free to share it with anyone you think might be interested or might know a potential candidate.
While that search takes place, it is important that our student ministry still receives the love, attention, care, and vision that it needs. To that end, we have asked Cody Lester, a longtime member of our Student Ministry team, to help provide some consistent care and leadership for both our youth leaders and our students while we continue to conduct the search over the summer.
Empowerment and Partners
Times of great change are often when new leaders emerge. We have a strong group of current leaders at our church, but I want to say with all my heart there is room for you.
Our city and our world are changing so much right now and there are so many opportunities for us to be the church, to Iive out what it means to be an outpost of the Kingdom of God. We have what we need in Christ and in one another to be a full ecosystem of God’s love as we are led by the Holy Spirit.
When I think of the work being done by Roots Cafe, Safe Families, and Trellis over the past many weeks my heart leaps for joy! They are on the front lines of Jesus’ work in our borough. We are honored to help them and share in the work, but we need you as well.
My hope and prayer is that many new leaders, creative voices, and those with passion for God and our city will arise in the coming days to help take our church forward and further into loving our neighbors. Please consider how God is calling you into this!
Thanks
Thanks so much for taking the time to read through this letter. As always, please reach out to us if you are in need of support during this time.
Peace,
Caleb Clardy
Founding Pastor
Trinity Grace Church
