PRELUDE, July/August 2003



FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR:

"You've Come a Long Way, Baby"

For those of us who long for the day when Christians may "all be one" as Jesus prayed, the progress we are making toward visible unity often seems painfully slow. It is good, I think, to periodically take stock of how far the Almighty already has brought us. Two very different occasions reminded me recently just how much progress we have made.

The first event was the prayer vigil before the ordination of the Most Rev. Paul Walsh as an auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Here's what struck me:

The second event, a few days later, was the Long Island Leadership Breakfast with Dr. Jack Hayford, a prominent Pentecostal pastor who led the 10,000 member Church on the Way in California. While there was at least one Baptist clergyman in the audience and one Presbyterian, the audience was made up almost entirely of pastors and lay leaders of Pentecostal and charismatic congregations. Some of the things he had to say were almost deceptively simple, such as "Patience is needed to make broken people whole," while other comments directly challenged our egos: "The North American church, with all its resources, is probably the shallowest part of the Body of Christ." Here's what struck me about Hayford's talk:

Perhaps this is how God will someday weave us all together into some glorious new fabric: by borrowing the best each has to offer and by learning together to deepen our common life.

Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax,
Tom



A WORD OF THANKS

Development Department - Sara C. Weiss, Director

Special thanks to:

We also thank the following for their recent gifts of $500 or more:

As always, we are grateful to others who gave less but whose gifts are equally important in helping us to serve Long Island's needy individuals and families. And we thank the numerous individuals who also gave but ask that we do not publish their names.

And a word from our Executive Director:

One individual gift we received this month was particularly encouraging. A longtime friend of the LICC asked "Where do you need money the most? What needs are the hardest to raise money for?" I ticked off three perennial needs: bus fare to help people get to the doctor and new jobs, prescription assistance, and funding for our chaplains. "And which of these is the hardest?" he asked. Chaplaincy, I replied. The amount of money we receive from the County to provide clergy in the Nassau County jail and juvenile detention center is far less than it costs us to employ trained, experienced chaplains on a minimal basis. "Unfortunately," I added, "these clergy are working with the truly forgotten members of our society."

You can imagine my pleasure-and my gratitude-when we received a check the next week for $1000 for chaplaincy. This, along with a gift of $1000 sent earlier this year by 1st Presbyterian Church in Baldwin, brings us almost half way toward filling the gap between what we pay our chaplains and what the County eventually reimburses. Would you like to help us keep staff in place to minister to those in trouble?



STAND WITH THE POOR AND VULNERABLE

-JUNE 30 AND JULY 14

The Fight for Families Coalition, to which the LICC belongs, is rallying Nassau County residents to prevent the elimination of social services in the midst of Nassau County's budget crisis. The stillbirth of the Nassau Sewer and Storm Water Authority has raised the risk that all "discretionary services" will be eliminated. What are "discretionary services"? Every youth program and every substance abuse program--and most child care, mental health and social service programs. Please come to the Nassau Legislature on June 30 and/or July 14 to let them know that our poorest and most vulnerable neighbors must not be endangered to make up for years of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the well off and powerful. Can you come to the legislative hearings on Monday, June 30, at 2:00 pm and/or July 14, at 6PM? These are held at the Nassau County Executive Building (West Street at Old Country Road. I know that this is short notice (isn't it always this way in politics?), but please let me know if you can be there to stand up and be counted. For more information, contact Erica Edwards-O'Neal at the Fight For Families Coalition--Fax: 516-292-5355 Email: eedwardsoneal@hwcli.com



WORTH QUOTING

"The major reason that pastors get discouraged today is ...the false definition of ministry that you and I face: the paradigm of the mega church has become the measuring stick by which pastoral ministry is validated. ...When your goal is not growing a big church but growing big people, great things can happen."
--Jack Hayford, Lond Island Leadership Breakfast 5/31/03


"We are the loving adversaries of every regime."
--Thich Nhat Hahn


"The church has a responsibility to point the world as it is to the world as it should be. . . . Despite the ongoing rejection of its moral vision, the church must continue to see the world through the eyes of faith. If the church is seduced by the world as it is into abandoning its vision of the world as it should be, then it has abandoned its calling, its mission, and its Lord."
--Dennis Jacobson, the Gamaliel National Clergy Caucus


New PBS videos in the LICC Lending Library:



TV WORTH WATCHING ON WLIW/21:



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