The best way to get involved in the life of First Parish is to take a look around. If you are here on Sunday, visit our worship and afterwards, go to coffee hour, find the newcomer’s table, browse the bulletin boarding the hall, take pamphlets and sermons from the table by the front office.
Imagine that you are a traveler stepping into a new country. What languages do you hear spoken? What new things do you want to learn? What might you seek out tomorrow on the next leg of your journey? Ask yourself: “what piques my curiosity about this community?” “where does my heart feel pulled to get involved?”
The best journey is not rushed. You don’t have to be either. Take your time to get to know First Parish, its people, its history, our present-day community. Is it music that speaks to your soul? Is it a social action project that helps you go out into the world and try to make a difference? Perhaps it is a class in yoga or meditation to help you re-center and slow down. Maybe it is an opportunity for your child to sing with our fabulous children’s choir director or for you to come on a Friday night to “Rise up Singing” and make music with others. It might be a chance to eat a meal, mix and mingle informally with others at our First Tuesday community supper. It might be joining a covenant group, an affinity group or a book group.
Perhaps for you and your family right now the thing to do is simply slip into a pew on Sunday and worship with us. Find a seat and let the music and silence and words take you to a new place. We hope this will be an oasis in a busy world for you and your children. We hope you will get a sense of who our community is and who we have been in the last almost-four hundred years that we have been gathered here as a congregation in Concord, Massachusetts.
Take your time. Look around. Something will speak to you. We tell people that the best way to get to know us better is to pick one thing and get involved.
Look at the list of Small Group Opportunities at First Parish. We have affinity groups like knitting or photography, small group ministry where people gather to share spiritual discussion, we have book groups, choirs, groups that cook for our shut-ins. We have groups who go out and visit our older members in nursing homes.
Read the monthly newsletter (the Meeting House News). We will send a copy to your home if you click here. Read the Sunday News, the yellow page in your Order of Service on Sunday that is full of news about this week’s happenings in and around First Parish. Pick up a Program Guide (kind of like a college catalog to “Life at First Parish 2005-2006) or click here and we will mail you one. Pick up a copy of the catalog for the Wright Tavern Center for Spiritual Renewal.
It isn’t always easy to find your way in a big and bustling place like this one. We hope you will email one of the ministers with questions or to come in and talk. We meet with people in our offices during the week. It doesn’t need to be a crisis. We enjoy sitting down one on one and getting to know who you are. Email us to make an appointment: Gary Smith This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Jenny Rankin This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Margie King Saphier This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
It isn’t always easy to find your way in, but when we listen to the stories of our members, of how they came to First Parish, and made their way in, and what they found here for themselves or their children, we remember that the journey, although rocky at times, was well worth it. I remember one woman who said she had been coming to church for a while, had been going to coffee hour, hanging around the edges, didn’t really feel like she “fit in.” One day, an older lady asked her if she would help with coffee hour. And this lady took her into the kitchen and showed her where the spoons were kept and what china cups to use. From that time on, the woman told me, “I felt like I belonged.”
I don’t know what your path will be, but I look forward to hearing your story. I am glad you have come to pay us a call.
Know that our doors are open. We are glad you are here.
-- Rev. Jenny M. Rankin