Month: September 2025

In the Spring of 2023, the BMPC Session approved a new Statement on Belonging and Inclusion as an outgrowth of the good work of our Anti-Racism Committee over the past several years. If you have not read that statement yet, I encourage you to do so.

One of my favorite sections from that statement addresses the importance of this kind of work being a part of everything we do as a church, not just an isolated priority of one or two committees.

As an outgrowth of our willingness to learn, change, and grow, we commit to ensuring that this work embeds every aspect of our church life from welcome and hospitality to programming and fellowship; from financial, stewardship, and mission decisions to pastoral care and worship life. In all that we do and in all the ways we represent ourselves, the work of diversity and inclusion will be obvious.

To that end, this Sunday afternoon, BMPC church officers, ushers, committee leaders, teachers, staff and volunteers will gather for a training with the Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders of Luther Seminary in Minnesota to be trained on a particular aspect of our work of Belonging and Inclusion – microaggressions.

Microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges that deliver demeaning messages to people based on their group identity. These exchanges may be verbal, behavioral, or environmental, and they communicate subtle hostility, degradation, or insult directed at someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, ability, ethnicity, national origin, or religion. Their power to cause harm comes largely from the fact that perpetrators are usually unaware of them; microaggressions are often expressed unintentionally and without conscious recognition.

Throughout all of our ministries as a church we are constantly welcoming new people, caring for one another, and interacting in ways that have the potential to either convey a deep sense of belonging or to communicate in subtle ways that someone is not welcome here.

I am so grateful that in this moment, this congregation and its leadership are taking seriously the work that must be done to help us live more fully into our values of Belonging and Inclusion.

The great news is, that Dr. Sanders will also be speaking on the topic of Microaggressions this Sunday morning at 11:15 in Congregational Hall. If this aspect of anti-racism work is new to you, or if you are especially interested in learning directly from someone who is a leader in helping churches do this work with integrity, please join us for that conversation this Sunday following worship.

One of my joys this past year was accompanying the Associate Pastor Nominating Committees in their search for new pastors to call to Bryn Mawr. A pastoral search is a long, and sometimes arduous process, but the overriding sentiment of that good work remains joy. When a group of seven diverse members gets elected to an APNC, they begin as a gathering of acquaintances, church friends with a big task at hand, but also with strong and sometimes divergent opinions about the direction a ministry area should take. Initial debate and even argument ultimately pave the way for consensus to build toward a strong sense of call to an individual.

This Sunday, September 21, at 4:00 p.m. in the Chapel, we will celebrate the joyful culmination of the search that led the APNC for Youth and their Families to the Reverend Andy Greenhow. After a year of diligent work: to get input from the congregation, especially our youth; to establish values and priorities; hammer out a position description; networking, identifying potential candidates and hosting multiple interviews from across the country, we came to unanimous consensus and a strong sense that Andy was called by God to serve BMPC as a pastor and with special responsibility for youth ministry. To paraphrase Greek philosopher Aristotle, these committees become greater than the sum of their parts, and the joy in completion is but one gift of the Holy Spirit.

Join us for Andy’s Installation on Sunday afternoon and for the reception following in Congregational Hall. We are delighted to host the Commission of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, to welcome Andy’s good friend, the Reverend Vincent Kolb, as guest preacher, special musicians, and enjoy worshipping God together for this special occasion in the life of our church.

This Sunday, September 14, at 10:00 a.m. in the Gym, is Youth Kickoff. It’s a chance for 6^th to 12^th graders and their families to hear about events in the year ahead, play games together, meet the caring adults who will be looking out for the youth this year, and for adults to sign all the necessary paperwork. I won’t want to pontificate more than necessary at Youth Kickoff, so I think I’ll use this venue to share a bit about my hopes for the BMPC youth program – and for us.

Many of us will remember exactly where we were 24 years ago today. It is hard to believe that there can be people with their own ideas, dreams, ambitions, and opinions who weren’t even born yet on that day, but that’s our youth. They have only ever known the world after 9/11, with all the fear and uncertainty that we as adults feel and unwittingly impart to them.

Likewise, you may remember where you were when the early adopter in your friend group showed you their smartphone. I remember my friend Mark showing me an app – what is an app? – that could listen to music and tell you what song was playing. They changed everything, and our youth have only ever known a world where adults are buried in their phones.

Finally, our youth have spent at least half of their life in the political and social realignment that began in 2016. For those of us with longer time horizons, the normalization of violent rhetoric, which we saw again this week, will inevitably lead to acts of political violence, feels brand new. But for our youth, it is a fact of life – it has always been this way.

So, what does that mean for the youth program at BMPC? My prayer is that youth at BMPC spend time with caring adults who try hard to set aside their own fears and uncertainties and instead center the ideas, dreams, ambitions, and opinions of the youth. I pray that the BMPC youth ministry models something like an analog community, where people are present with each other and hang in there with each other, even when it would be much easier to escape into our phones. And I pray that the BMPC youth ministry is a place of peace, where the ambient violence of our culture is kept at bay.

I’m looking forward to kicking off another year on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Join us!