Alumnotes
LEAVE COMMENTS FOR THIS POST AT BOTTOM OF PAGE
August 08, 2010
Visiting Old South Church
This blog post was produced during our 2010 Leaders in Ministry Conference in Boston, MA
When I took the escalator down to baggage claim in Logan Airport, I didn’t know if people would give me the same strange looks they do at home when I share my equal love of religion and politics.
Very soon we all had dinner together and I met people like Jeremy, who shares my same interests—who has even pursued research just like my own. I met people like Chris, who shares my passion for Baptist life.
But I also met people with differences, all of whom share something with me—like Katherine, who grew up in the same hometown, and seeks to spread her love of art into communities of faith. People like Andy, who shares my name, and who was called to the Bay Area of California to serve in a teen treatment center.
The next day ten of us went down to the historic Old South Church in Copley Square where we met a minister named Nancy. She told us how she spent hours lobbying the Massachusetts Legislature on Beacon Hill to support the rights of the un-housed. Nancy walked us outside and around the corner of her church and showed us a crack that ran from the highest point of the building all the way down to the bottom. She told us how the Boston transit authority was seeking to build a new subway station and dug too deeply, causing a massive chasm in the side of the historic building. But she spoke not of anger, she spoke of how Old South was working hand in hand with the City of Boston to repair that crack—to bring the walls together once more.
I knew then that each of us, in our own way, must do the same—we must bridge the looming chasm between church and world.
Let us now go forward to Copley Square, raising our expectations, and fixing the cracks for good. Let us bring forth faith as we guide the public square into a conversation, into a creative encounter, into a common story of love.
Blog comments powered by Disqus
