ONE Sabbath Pilot Takes Off

Nov 29th, 2007 2:35 PM EST
By Aaron.Banks

The weekend of November 23 - 25 was the first ever ONE Sabbath weekend, in the pilot of year of what we hope will become a major expression of the impact of people and communities of faith in the fight against extreme poverty and global disease.

ONE members across the country downloaded materials from our faith resource page ONE.org/faith and organized services and group activities in their houses of worship. A few of their stories are below.

-Aaron Banks

I led my church’s middle/high school group in the ONE Sabbath activities. We started actually 2 weeks ago talking about the issues, what ONE is, made a “bulletin board” and then yesterday they addressed the congregation explaining what they have learned and what can be done. It was a very powerful couple of weeks…I loved being able to introduce ONE to the kids and the congregation.

-Jennifer Carlson, Christian Ed Coordinator, Dedham Congregational Church- UCC, Dedham, ME

I’m just giving a shout out that my parish, Christ Church United Methodist in Fair Haven, NJ, had a powerful ONE Sabbath worship event! We are a very small church of about 30 in attendance, but our ONE Sabbath event was an uplifting, challenging and compelling worship service. Many were humbled…I live in a very affluent area, yet the importance of this message was heard as a small ripple…I hope to continue my support for this important mission!

-Peace, Rev. Eusun Kim

Since you asked, I thought I would write and describe what our church did for the ONE Sabbath. We have a newly formed “Social Justice Ministry” committee at our church, and we decided we wanted to do something for the ONE Sabbath…

We had a large poster-board with general information about the ONE Campaign, about ONE Sabbath, and some of the supporting/ partner organizations. We had a double sided handout for people who wanted information about the whole thing. We had another posterboard to promote the bracelets and we sold them (for $1 each, of course) and some people gave more, and a few people took one without realizing they should be contributing anything.

We also had a table with 9 different one-sheet information pages from ONE.org about the various issues related to world poverty (debt reduction, trade justice, etc) for people to read or to take home if they wanted.

We had a table for letter writing, which included envelopes that were already addressed with the Senators and the local Representatives’ information on them, and we offered to mail them for people. We did not have a form letter for anyone to copy, though, as some groups have done in the past. We just had paper and pens and a summary of the 4 acts now in Congress related to world poverty. People could decide which, or all, they support and write their own reasons why. On the next table we had more detailed information about each of those 4 acts, also.

Now, during the service we used the 10 quotes from the ONE.org website and we had people in the congregation read them during the silent time to reflect right before the confession time near the beginning of the service. We also had one of the quotes written as a confession for the whole congregation to read together. It was pretty powerful. We also had these quotes written on large sheets of paper and hung on the walls in the sanctuary for people to read…

Of course, the Pastor also used the sermon to talk about these issues and tried to tie it all together. He talked about some of the statistics, and the fact that they are improving - but very slowly. He talked about how some laws stand in the way of fighting world poverty and that there are things we can do about that. Pastor encouraged people to go to the “Gathering Space” after the service to learn more, read more, and even to write to our Congress person to make a difference…

It raised awareness, that is for sure, and that is a good start…It did prompt some to action. And I think it is a good beginning for some future efforts for our new “Social Justice Ministry” committee.

Thanks for inspiring us to do this! I think it is so important to get faith groups involved in thismovement. Thanks for all you do!

-Mary

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lakeland, FL celebrated ONE Sabbath yesterday, 11.25.07. One of our younger members alerted me to the ONE Sabbath. We created a worship team that included a dialogue sermon using the very helpful ONE Sabbath lectionary resources. We included a modified ONE Sabbath bulletin insert, some of the prayers, and the petition. The congregation was very responsive and we hope to follow up with the issues. Thank you for the idea and the Tool Kit.

-Rev. Jean Cooley, Co-pastor

While I don’t think anyone at Piedmont Baptist Church (located in Marietta, GA) took pictures of yesterday’s service, we did hold a ONE Sabbath and are thrilled to report a positive response from the 500+ congregation. One of our lead musicians even wore his jeans and ONE shirt on stage!

Dr. Ike Reighard, our Senior Pastor, designed a service dedicated to serving others. We invited Ken Dowdy from World Vision to Piedmont to talk about his organization’s work, show a poignant video on the impact of AIDS on Africa’s children, take donations, and sign up interested families for child sponsorships. Ken set up four tables in our lobby to educate the congregation about the positive impact of child sponsorships, the 30-hour famine program for youth, the Caregiver’s Kit initiative, and World Vision’s clean water campaign.

Ike spoke eloquently of World Vision’s partnership with ONE and its many activities to help alleviate extreme hunger, poverty and suffering here in the U.S. and around the world

Please keep us on the mailing list for information regarding other faith-based events sponsored by ONE. We are truly honored to be part of such a tremendous organization.

In closing, I should note that Piedmont’s mission statement is as follows: We exist to show God’s love in such a way that people exchange ordinary living for an extraordinary life through the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

Truly, when we focus our attention on helping others around the world, we are showing God’s love. We look forward to staying engaged and furthering the work of ONE and its partners.

-Thank you, Keisha L. Hoerrner, Piedmont Baptist Church member

TAGS: Faith, ONE Sabbath