Barre Congregational Church
Home30 Park Street
Barre, Massachusetts
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© 2018 Barre Congregational Church 30 Park Street, Barre, MA 01005
Welcome to the Barre Congregational Church United Church of Christ (BCCUCC) website. BCCUCC is a center for community where we live the statement of ministry printed each week in the worship bulletin --
"The mission of the Barre Congregational Church is to serve God, and to spread the word and love of God's risen son, Jesus Christ, to all people through Christian faith and unity. By our words and actions, we will bring love, hope, and acceptance to family and neighbors, respecting all differences and diversities."
We live according to our statement of ministry in order to bring hope, justice, and love to people wherever they are on their path to knowing The Lord, Jesus Christ, whose ministries of compassion, extravagant hospitality, and love inspire us.
Welcoming & Serving the Quabbin Area
Worship Services:
Sundays at 9:30 a.m.
A Message From Pastor Margaret
May we be blessed with a spiritual creativity...
This past week I attended the inaugural lecture
of my former professor, Dr. Dirk Smit at Princeton
Theological Seminary. He was my advisor and
mentor during my seminary days in South Africa
and is now based at Princeton. It was an awesome
experience to sit in the “class” again of someone
who made an extraordinary impact on my life as I grappled with the role of women in the church. At the time I was the first woman to qualify for ordination and was still, after more than eight years, waiting for a church to call me. Dr. Smit took me under his wing in my post-graduate research and thesis, which focused on women and men as partners in the church.
In his address he described the sadness of Calvin and other Protestant theologians, both in earlier years and in recent times, over the failure of the church to be one, and that the church needs to take (better) responsibility of its role in public life. He drew from the experiences of the church in South Africa in its prophetic outcry against apartheid, as well as the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, of which I was a member, in its adoption of a confession that proclaimed apartheid as a heresy, calling the church as a whole to be united in its diversity. He explored the identity of the church as the Church of Jesus Christ in Communion with God and with one another. He also drew from specific world gatherings through the years where the church acknowledged its divisive habits, and that it needed a spiritual creativity to heal its failures.
I felt extremely inspired during his presentation, because it was a reminder to me about the power and importance of the church as a living organism where God is, the place where we gather and are in relationship with our Creator and with one another. It speaks to the responsibility we have to keep the dream of God alive; that there be living communities of faith everywhere, and that each one of us has a responsibility to be spiritually and physically present and creative in our own ways to make that happen. It is also our call to be in a spirit of sadness and confess when we fail to keep the dream of God alive and fail the call of the church of Christ to be together, and not apart.
The implication of all of this means that we have to be present and available as much as possible within and among the community; to grow together in the witness and teachings of Christ, and to be in prayer together, in order for the church to grow and be meaningful and have its rightful and authentic place in public. Being the church together means being in communion together, being at peace with God and one another. This living and loving organism will then, through the power of God, be a witness to the world and its challenges.
Dr. Smit’s presentation spanned a few centuries, reflecting on the accomplishments and failures of the church in its broadest sense. The message about the church then and now is the same. I am grateful to have heard a message that confirmed for me what we have here together, a community of faith aware of its strengths and weaknesses, a community humbled and relying on the grace and presence of the Holy Spirit in all we need.
May God continue to bless us here at Barre to be one, and to grow in our spiritual creativity.
God bless you all,
Pastor Margaret
From the Church Committee
Spring is here! This month the thermostats will be lowered. Sand, salt and shovels will be put away. Hopefully, warm weather will lower our operating costs.
We are investigating the cost of replacing the suspended ceiling in the kitchen.
The ceiling panels have been
generously donated. We continue
to monitor the dumpster -- it appears
someone is using it for personal
trash.
We thank everyone for taking time to
clean up spills, dirt and put furniture
away in Fellowship Hall. Mops are
stored in the furnace room.
The floor continues to look great!
From the Deacons
The deacons have talked with Pastor Margaret, and she is willing to be available for an additional Sunday and one weekday each month.
I invited Pastor Susan Valiquette and her family to stay with me on Sunday after she spoke with our Congregation. It was a wonderful experience for me to get to know this family that has spent the last eighteen years in South Africa. They are now looking for pastoral calls and hopefully will find something soon.
In Christ,
Marsha
