Safe Sanctuary: How you can support CPC’s efforts beginning this Sunday
Sign up to serve — and — Please enter through the front door on Gorham Street
God calls us to be a sanctuary for all who seek to worship and grow in God’s love. Our vision process helped us put words to this enduring value of Christ Pres.
Our world makes realizing this vision a complex task. As people, we come with a wide range of abilities, identities, and histories. Life’s fullness means that we don’t know everyone with whom we worship, though we hope to. More gravely, across our country today, houses of worship are targeted by groups who don’t share God’s vision of an expansive welcome for all people.
In recent months, CPC church leaders have sought to learn more from each other and civic leaders about how to enhance our abilities to provide safe sanctuary. Church leaders have been carefully selecting measures that align with our values and adopting new policies that integrate our growing awareness.
For example, we’ve adopted a mantra that “an open door is a hosted door.” By following it, we hope to ensure that each person who enters our building is met by someone who can offer a warm welcome to each individual, while also seeking to ensure that our sanctuary remains a safe space for others.
This week, church and civic leaders find it’s time to ask your help in more fully living into our call.
- - Beginning this Sunday, as we gather for worship and fellowship, you’ll notice that open doors will be hosted doors.
- - Given our current staff and volunteer capacity, this means that we will start with one open and hosted door — the front one that opens to Gorham Street.
This weekend, in order to ensure that we can leave the front door of our building open, we’ll contract with someone who can host this door while our members and guests move into worship. In the coming days, we’ll seek to expand our greeter and usher teams, and we’d love your help.
If you’re willing to serve in this capacity one Sunday a month for 90 minutes, please register to join the Contemporary or Classical Worship Greeting Teams — or — email Sharol Hayner to get connected.
Please join us in praying for our church community and all of God’s creation, that one day, every corner of this earth will be that safe sanctuary God has always intended it to be for all people.