Call to Worship:
In Need of Healing by Maureen Killoran
Reflections: On Pastoral Care
Good morning. I’m Sally Millice. The Pastoral Care team is all about service to members of our community who need help. This may involve bringing a meal, providing a ride to a medical appointment or making a call to one of our elderly or shut in congregants.
We all need help once in a while. This committee is currently made up of me, Pat Small and Debbie Sylvester. There is a team of over 20 care volunteers who provide the services. If you want to be part of this ministry, let us know. We’ll put you on a list of those to be contacted when needs arise. If someone needs a ride, we’ll contact you with the details and you can let us know if you can volunteer. When meals are needed, you’ll see a link in the order of service or online news and you can sign up on the meal train website.
Let’s hear from one of our congregants who received meals this past year…
During the past year, our congregation provided 40 or so meals and gift cards to those in need through the Meal Train program.
DEBBIE: Taking care of our elderly and shut ins is part of our Pastoral Care ministry. Each holiday, a group of crafters prepares gift bags for these folks. Nancy Peluso coordinates this effort. One of the crafters is Penny Bigmore, who will explain how it works…
When we deliver these bags, they are a source of joy and surprise. The act of someone remembering them brings joy. Sometimes the person making the delivery does not know the receiver and may feel awkward. But there’s the opportunity to expand our circle and feel the connection.
PAT: In this New Year, we are beginning a new mission and vision for our congregation as we move forward. Now is a great time to expand our circle of friends and activities, to try something new. First Church offer many opportunities to keep learning and growing.
Research in Positive Psychology reveals that 80% of all people interviewed say that helping someone gives them joy. And studies in community effectiveness show that the happiest, most connected communities are those where members care for one another. Providing help to each other is a win-win. It benefits both and the giver and the receiver.
On the other hand, asking for help is very difficult for a lot of people, especially those of us who take pride in their own independence. Yet I have learned that however humbling it is to ask for help when needed, becoming vulnerable in that way shows me that people are, indeed good and are quite cheerful about helping out. In asking for help, we are giving someone else the opportunity to find joy in giving.
We are looking for more people to engage with us in this shared ministry. We want to make more calls to our elders, send card and make more visits. If you have interest in volunteering, please stop by our table at coffee hour. Give us your contact information or call one of us.
If you have provided a meal or a ride or participated in any care activity this past year please raise your hand.
Thank you for doing your part. We are deeply grateful.
See us at coffee hour if you want to be added to the volunteer list. May we continue this important ministry. Thank you.
Reflection: What does it take to make a community?
by Tiffany Magnolia
Faith — Trust -- Vulnerability
There is a now famous Mr. Rogers quotation that shows up when we are facing unimaginable tragedy: “Look for the helpers. There’s always someone willing to help.” And I think that when we think of community, when we think of what the Pastoral Care team or the Religious Education Committee, or maybe even the Church itself does, we focus on the helpers; we see ourselves as the “helpers” that Mr. Rogers told us to look for, to focus on. But what I want to offer in my reflection this morning is the flip side of the helpers, and it is this other part of community that is just as essential, and one which we don’t often discuss: the vulnerable. Because there are no helpers without folks who need help, which means these two are inextricably linked.
You see, faith and community have something very fundamental in common: they require the vulnerability of not “knowing.” When folks find themselves on the “helping” side of the community equation, yes, they don’t know how their help will be received, but they know their own capacity to bake a lasagna or to drive to Danvers. They know their capacity, and there is a kind of power in being able to “deliver” for someone else, in short, there is little vulnerability in doing these actions. For the person asking for the help, though, there is only vulnerability. Will I get the help I need? Am I asking for too much? Will the help be there when I need it? What will happen if I don’t get it? For the vulnerable, there is no certainty. For the vulnerable, there is only faith.
I have a good friend who is quite high up in a branch of government in DC. She is as close as it gets to DC royalty, having grown up with an ambassador as a father and a famous senator as a step father. She has moved in the kinds of political circles that most of us could never imagine. And, she hides the fact that she is deeply involved in the Episcopalian church in DC. You see, if her colleagues found out that she teaches Sunday school, that she never misses a service, they would ridicule her as a person of faith. She guards that vulnerability because she recognizes that those of us with faith, with strong faith, are not always in the mainstream. We are “quaint” to folks who are confident in their Atheism or Agnosticism. Something about the vulnerability of “faith” doesn’t sit well with others, so in claiming it, we are performing an act of resistance.
And this is the confluence of community and faith that I want to leave all of you with today. There is an inherent vulnerability in how we define our faith community. We are living at a time where religion is used as a blunt instrument. To declare ourselves part of a religious tradition is in many ways to draw a line in the sand that connects how we help with a recognition of faith at its core. It is vulnerable because it exposes how we move through the world in ways not often understood or valued by those outside our community. In turn, though, it cements us as a community, it reveals how we are interdependent–just like the care I mentioned at the opening, there are no helpers without the vulnerable. There is no faith community without seeing in one another the foundation of this place, this service, this history, this connection we all share as one of mutual dependency, as one of vulnerability. Let us value it for all its complexity, its mystery, and let us nurture it whatever side of the equation we find ourselves in at any moment. Blessed are the helpers and the vulnerable, for they shall find community with one another.
© Tiffany Magnolia, 2026