Grace Church as a spiritual home.

Transcription

1 The parishioners and staff at Grace Church, Millbrook strive toward two goals. The first is to provide a welcoming place for spiritual growth, prayer, worship, and a supportive community. The second, equally important, is to initiate and sustain efforts that provide social justice, mercy, compassion and hope to our greater community. We have been fortunate to have had a strong rector, Douglas Fisher (currently the Bishop of Western Massachusetts) and to have an empowered lay leadership. Grace Church as a spiritual home. Approximately people attend Sunday services here each week. The 7:30 a.m. service is a traditional service without music, with a quiet, prayerful feeling. The 10:00 a.m. service has choir and organ music, and is more oriented toward families with children. Our Sunday School children remain for the entire service. On occasion, childfriendly hymns are sung. Eucharist is celebrated every week at both Sunday services. In addition, there is a weekly healing service on Wednesday morning. During Lent and Advent, evening prayer is said each weekday evening, led either by the rector or by a lay reader. Sunday school is offered twice a month after the 10:00 service and year-long confirmation classes are held every other year. Each Christmas children put on a pageant open to attendance by all parishioners.

2 Being a welcoming community is important at Grace Church. We respect and welcome people with varied life-styles and different points of view. During the services we invite the participation of non-church members and favor openness and inclusivity. We also value serious and thoughtful sermons that address important topics, both theological and current. An open and thoughtful approach to issues is also reflected in our adult education discussions and our Speaker Series. The Speaker Series, which brings leaders of our community to Grace Church to address important community topics, is free and open to all. There are several struggling parishes in Northeastern Dutchess county and our former rector often provided them with support and direction. Grace Church as a caring community. Grace Church is a caring community. Coffee hours after both services are well-attended and are valued as a time to discuss issues and also to connect more personally with one another. Two adult groups, Women of Grace and Men at Grace, meet separately for a monthly dinner and usually also meet another time during each month for Evening Prayer. These gatherings allow closer social connections and sometimes involve discussions of books or outside speakers. The groups also are a nucleus for ad hoc efforts to provide support to ill or grieving members of the church community. The rector and a committed group of parishioners provide pastoral care to those in four area hospitals and also to an older group of long-time parishioners residing at the Fountains assisted living facility. We have a prayer shawl ministry in which parishioners prayerfully knit shawls that are then blessed and given to those who are ill or in need of comfort. We have an active youth group at Grace. In addition to various social events, the group prepares and serves lunch to needy people once a month at the Lunch Box in Poughkeepsie and sponsors a child in the Carpenter s Kids program. We value the diversity of our congregation, with respect to age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political affiliation and economic status. Approximately two thirds of our parishioners are local residents with the remainder commuting on weekends from New York city.

3 Grace Church as a source of social justice, compassion and hope in the community. An important part of our mission is our outreach to the larger community of Northeastern Dutchess county. Below is a summary of our current outreach programs. Latino Outreach Program. There is a significant and often overlooked Hispanic population in northeastern Dutchess county, comprised primarily of farm workers, some migrant and some permanent, most of them undocumented. From the Hispanic population of Dutchess County grew 73%, faster than any other population group. And from % of Hispanic children in Dutchess county were officially deemed to be living in poverty, compared with 6% of native-born non-hispanic children. In 2005, the members of Grace Episcopal Church, Millbrook, under the leadership of the rector Douglas Fisher and two lay members, responded to their growing awareness of the plight of the Latino population, the poorest and most vulnerable of our neighbors. They established a Latino Outreach Program to provide assistance to the Latino population in Northeastern Dutchess County. This program is open to all ideas that help us aid our immigrant population in overcoming their fear (because of lack of documents and the political atmosphere of our time) and isolation (due to living in a rural area and away from family support systems). Efforts include providing English language instruction, providing advice with changing government immigration regulations especially regulations related to undocumented individuals who entered this country before they were 16 years old, assistance interfacing with legal, financial and educational institutions and social services, accompaniment for legal proceedings, and opportunities for communal worship and celebration. To accomplish these goals the program seeks to establish trust between the Latino community and the church, the program staff and volunteers. Ms. Evelyn Garzetta, the program director, speaks fluent Spanish and has been tireless in her outreach efforts, habitually working many more hours than the time for which she is paid. Her energetic, caring and loving approach has provided a new level of trust for our program among the immigrant community and has been responsible for expanding many aspects of the program as additional people meet her and learn about the program. Currently the program sponsors ESL classes at three locations, provides counseling and accompaniment as needed and is in the midst of a major effort to support those young people who are eligible to apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, recently established by the Obama administration. Grace Church supports this program with volunteers and with donations. The program is supported by grants from Episcopal Charities and the Berkshire Taconic Foundation.

4 Feeding Programs There is significant poverty and hunger in Poughkeepsie and in NE Dutchess especially around Dover Plains. To help address this, Grace church supports three feeding programs in our area. We provide strong support, with weekly volunteers and contributions of money and food, for the Food of Life (Comida de Vida) food pantry at St. Thomas church in Amenia Union ( This pantry provides meals for three days to approximately 200 people each week. Approximately half of these clients are Latino. We also support the Lunch Box in Poughkeepsie, which provides hot meals to homeless and indigent people in Poughkeepsie ( Finally, as part of the Latino Outreach Program, we provide free dinners twice a week to those attending ESL classes at Grace Church. The students help prepare the meal and converse in English. All the feeding programs involve Grace Church volunteers and donations from parishioners. Carpenter s Kids This program is a partnership between the Anglican Diocese of Central Tanganyika and the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Grace Church sponsors 50 children who are Tanzanian HIV/AIDs orphans and other vulnerable children, selected by a screening panel. This support provides a school uniform, a pair of shoes, breakfast every morning, and adequate school supplies to enable the children to attend Rural and Migrant Ministry Members of Grace Church support RMM ( by volunteering in their programs and by making financial contributions. RMM advocates for farm workers and provides many programs for them and their families. RMM is also a partner with our Latino Outreach program in providing support and financial assistance to those applying for status change under DACA. Community support and counseling. We have had a monthly support group for those who are unemployed or underemployed. Our rector provides counseling to both parishioners and others in the community who request it. Sharing our facilities with the Millbrook community. We have hosted Quinceanera and Our Lady of Guadelupe services for the Spanish speaking community in our sanctuary. We host a reception for the Jewish community

5 after their annual Menorah Lighting at Hanukkah. Alcoholics Anonymous and Millbrook Seniors use our Parish Hall each week. The Millbrook Preschool is also housed in our Parish Hall. Other facts about Grace Church. Grace Church, Millbrook was initially consecrated in 1864 as Grace Church, Hart s Landing. When that church burned, a new building at a new location in Millbrook was incorporated in 1879 and admitted to the diocese of New York the following year. (For a complete history, see Years of Grace by Rev. Canon Elliott Lindsley, a parishioner at Grace Church.) Grace Church owns five historic buildings all located on the main street of Millbrook. These include the sanctuary (1901), the five bedroom rectory, the parish hall (1909) a converted barn which houses church offices and another home adjacent to the rectory which may in the future be used for a new outreach effort by the parish or the diocese. The upkeep of these buildings is supported by an endowment established with a recent capital campaign. We have a full-time church secretary and a part-time facilities manager. The church has several fund-raising events each year, including a golf tournament in the summer, cookie sale at Christmas, a tag sale in the fall and an antique shop, which is open from May through October. The Hudson Valley is full of physical beauty and rich history. The Millbrook area has a vibrant mix of both rural and urban settings. In addition to dairy and horse farms, many people from New York City have weekend houses or retirement homes in the area. Several local colleges including Vassar, Bard, The Culinary Institute of America, Marist and Dutchess Community College enrich the cultural environment of our community. Millbrook is a town of approximately 1,500 people, which is an hour and a half drive north of New York City. For more information about Millbrook, see