<\/p>\n
Communities of Hope, a synodically authorized worshipping community, began as an experiment to gather those unfamiliar with church and those who haven’t been to church in a long time. From the beginning, we made an intentional decision to include advocacy in our liturgy. In exploring how to do this, we realized advocacy could be expressed in our liturgy in many ways.\u00a0 I want to emphasize three of these examples.<\/p>\n
Second, we practice Advocacy as prayer<\/strong>.\u00a0 During our prayer time, we provide paper and coloring supplies for both adults and children to creatively offer their prayers.\u00a0 Prompts are written on paper that relating advocacy efforts to current events.\u00a0 Later, we collect and share these in a variety of formats.<\/p>\n Third, we practice Advocacy as service<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 We often end our worship time with service that can include advocacy as well.\u00a0 During this time, we have put together refugee kits for LIRS; gathered for events in our community that promote advocacy; and organized fundraisers.<\/p>\n You might have noticed that I intentionally referenced that we PRACTICE Advocacy.\u00a0 One of my daughters studied the violin using the Suzuki method. \u00a0And one of the phrases we repeated over and over throughout her years of study was, “PRACTICE MAKES EASY.”\u00a0 This is very different from Practice Makes Perfect. So we practice advocacy frequently to make it EASIER to live and do advocacy.\u00a0 Advocacy is a skill that needs to be practiced in order to make it part of our being.<\/p>\n Advocacy is not a topic for certain occasions or special events. We consider advocacy essential to our liturgy; part of who we are as God’s children gathered to do God’s work through us for the sake of the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s post is from\u00a0Jennifer Crist,\u00a0Pastor Mission Developer of Communities of Hope in\u00a0Harrisburg, PA. Communities of Hope, a synodically authorized worshipping community, began as an experiment to gather those unfamiliar with church and those who haven’t been to church in a long time. From the beginning, we made an intentional decision to include advocacy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/60\/2017\/05\/CommunitiesofHopeCard-1024x768.jpg\")
First, we practice Advocacy as offering<\/strong>.\u00a0 We often take a minute during our offering time to speak about the latest updates and action alerts from ELCA Advocacy.\u00a0 We have letters and computers available on site for those who want to write or take 20-30 seconds to fill out the action alerts online and send them at any point throughout our gathering.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/60\/2017\/05\/CommunitiesofHopeatProtest-e1494872970431-1024x768.jpg\")
Today, our first gathered missional community has now multiplied into three missional communities that all gather in public places outside of church buildings.\u00a0 Though these communities appear very different from one another, the expressions of these Communities of Hope are similar focusing on advocacy as a means of loving our neighbors.<\/p>\n