As a congregation we decided at our last congregational meeting to join with 17 other congregations of many faiths to work together to address an issue of social justice in our community. The original name for this coalition was Pensacola Area InterFaith Justice Coalition. That name will be changed soon to something a little easier to remember and to say. The organization itself is growing in strength and numbers. The process of identifying the social issue to address includes training for some of the members of each congregation. The training is in preparation for finding out from our membership what issues we see as pressing. Then representatives of all the congregations will compare notes and decide where to apply our collective strength and voice to making a needed change.

The way we will find out from our membership what is of pressing need in our community is listening to each of our voices. This will be done in a series of home meetings in the month of October. The congregational members who attended the training will meet in different homes with groups of around 10 congregational members. We will listen and take notes. When we have elicited the ideas of our members, we will take those ideas back to the larger group of all the congregations and select an issue to address this year. The process takes about a year and can be repeated each year. This is our first year. It is an exciting opportunity to work together on something very important with other congregations in our community.

The dates of the home meetings will be October 8,9,10, 15,16, and 17. These can be morning, afternoon or evening meetings. We all need to participate. We also will need to identify homes where the meetings can be held. If you are wiling to let about 10members of our congregation meet at your home on one of those dates. Please let me know.

What date or dates are you available to attend one of these meetings? What dates and times do you know you will be unavailable. In the month of September, I will post a list on the Social Justice bulletin board where you can sign up. If I can locate someone talented in internet questionnaires, we will try to use that as well, in order to set up the dates and times. So if you know how to set that up, please contact me.

Paula Montgomery
Montpns@aol.com