Sunday Fellowship is back! With our 35th anniversary celebrations behind us and the renovations complete, we’re ready to try some new things. 

Our focus this year is on discipleship and what followers of Jesus actually do to become more like him. Over the next several weeks and months, SF will explore different Christian practices like peace-making, justice-seeking, communion, baptism, sharing our spiritual gifts, sabbath rest and more. 

So far we’ve already introduced a new way of “passing the peace” using white silk scarves. We talked about what Jesus might have meant when he told his disciples before he died: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” Check out these videos that helped us come up with the idea of peace scarves and reminded us of the transformational power of practicing peace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=22&v=QgbFTBJb3xY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvOllDWTnyY.

Sunday Fellowship’s next gathering will be on October 14 at 4 p.m. Come join us as we begin to explore our spiritual gifts and John Swinton’s view that “within the body of Christ, every body has a place, and every body is recognized as a disciple with a call from Jesus and a vocation that the church needs if it is truly to be the body of Jesus.”

Thanks to everyone who donated and walked to support our mission partners Minute Man March this past weekend! We were thrilled to have 40+ walkers in our WCUC group.

On Sunday, February 11th, former WCUC pastor the Rev John Hudson joined us and offered this sermon celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Sunday Fellowship.

Mark 1:14-20

From the text: And Jesus came upon some everyday people doing everyday things and said to them, “I need your help to spread God’s love in the world. I need you to put out your nets and have faith!”

Good morning!  I can’t describe how wonderful, what a blessing it is to be in West Concord Church again, to among and with you, my friends, some old and so dear, some brand new and gift too!  The seven years I spent here as pastor and teacher from 2000 to 2007 were among the most exciting of the almost thirty years I’ve been in ministry, sometimes not so easy, but always so important and life changing and yes, world changing too: together, with God, we did good work. Thank you for that!  And a special thank you to Pastor Hannah and to Melissa, for inviting me back to on this happy day when we celebrate the amazing ministry that is Sunday Fellowship.

So imagine this.  The year is 1891, 127 years ago.  Seventeen courageous women and men founded this church.  They were not from the landed or wealthy gentry of Concord.  They did not ride to church in fancy buggies drawn by sleek thoughroubreds. They were workers for God in the toughest of places: in a prison.  Their neighbors toiled on the railroad and in the mills and on the farms and they founded West Concord Union Church as a working community, as an extension of their Christian ministry in the Reformatory.  They dared to believe that with Jesus they could transform the lives of the young criminals they worked with and therefore the whole world! This church’s forebears gifted you with a spiritual DNA of dirty hands and sweaty brows and one earnest hope: to make God’s world, more merciful, more just, and more loving.

Imagine that!  Put out your nets and have faith! And because they did, we are here! Can I get an AMEN!

Imagine this.  It is the early 1980’s, and a new home for developmentally disabled adults has opened on West Street, right here in West Concord.  But–not without some struggle.  For when it was time to get permission from the neighborhood to move in, well, most of the neighbors weren’t too happy and were not very welcoming, not at all.  But at one of the first public meetings about this proposed home, a group of folks from the West Concord Union Church: they came and they spoke up and they spoke out and they said, we would love to have these new neighbors! Not content to just let those West Street folks to merely move in, the church invited them to worship and eventually started a ministry to and with them: one that invited all God’s children, every last one, to fully participate and be fully welcomed into the full life of the church!  Sunday Fellowship was born!

Imagine that!  Put out your nets and have faith! And because they did, we are here! Can I get an AMEN!

Imagine this: it was the first Sunday I preached here at this church, August 6th, 2000.  I was very excited but I was also feeling lost, in a new place with a new home, in a new town. Would I be accepted, liked?  I really needed to feel and see Christ’s light that morning, to let me know it would be ok. We finished communion and I asked the congregation to name out loud in prayer one thing that they were thankful for. There were several Sunday Fellowshippers in worship and I confess I was nervous about that too. I had no experience ministering with developmentally disabled adults.  As people were offering their thanks, one Sunday Fellowshipper, Carl Alden, stood up from his front row pew walked towards me as I stood behind the communion table.  I kind of panicked–did I do or say something wrong?  Carl strolled right up next to me, gently put his arm around my shoulder, so I asked him, “What are you thankful for?” He replied, “You!” and then he kissed me, kissed me, right on the cheek, and then returned to his seat! And from that moment I was never the same again, was radically transformed as a pastor, as person, in having Sunday Fellowship become a part of my life, my world.  Thank God!

Imagine that!  Put out your nets and have faith! And because I did, I am here! Can I get an AMEN!

Imagine this! The year is 2006 and our church owns the house right next door and uses it as a regular rental property but then some folk in the church have an idea.  What if we made that house, our house, into a new house, a new group home for more folks in need, like West Street?  What if we spiffed it up and made it accessible and then rented it through Minuteman ARC so even more of our friends and our neighbors would have a nice place to live and call home and this time the neighborhood was fine with it!

Imagine that!  Put out your nets and have faith! And because they did, we are here! Can I get an AMEN!

Imagine this–that for almost four decades, through Sunday Fellowship, this church has been changed, and oh my goodness, for so much good.  Has learned what it means to be truly and fully inviting of all people, with all abilities: has realized this is not just a ministry to but a ministry with: that Sunday Fellowship has taught West Concord Union Church about welcome; about standing with and for and by folks the world can easily forget or neglect or just pass by.  That this ministry of love has made the heart of this community bigger, wider, more service focused, less about me, more about thee.  That now, church would not be church, not really without Sunday Fellowship, right?

Imagine that!  Put out your nets and have faith! And because they did, because you still do, we are here! Can I get an AMEN!

Imagine this: that Sunday Fellowship is unique, one of kind among churches and houses of worship, not just in Massachusetts, but around the country.  That Sunday Fellowship will only grow and thrive in the next 35 years by all of you recommitting to its hopes and its dreams, to all the ways it embodies God’s love for this beautiful and broken world, as witnessed in the life of Jesus, who called and still calls out: friends will you fish with me?  Will you realize this day just how God blessed you are, and we are, by Sunday Fellowship? 

Imagine this call!  Put out your nets and have faith! And because we have, we are here! God bless us, God move to say “Yes” to the days ahead too! Can I get an AMEN!  THank you God for Sunday Fellowship, for this church, for leaders and volunteers, for Sunday Fellowshippers here and gone, for parents and caregivers, for this ministry and this community.  Make us grateful.  Make us fish, with you and each other.  Let all God’s people say, “Amen!”

Sunday Fellowship entered the Sanctuary on December 3 to find it utterly transformed. One hundred lit candles and a twelve circuit labyrinth invited us to enter the space with wonder and curiosity. Music and the tradition of Las Posadas became our guides as we began to explore what the familiar story of Jesus’ birth has to say to us and to our world at this moment in history?

Las Posadas or “The Lodgings” was first developed hundreds of years ago by Spanish religious leaders as a way of communicating the Christmas story to people unable to read the scriptures for themselves. While there are a variety of ways to celebrate Las Posadas, dramatizing the holy couple’s search for shelter in Bethlehem is always central.

Members of Sunday Fellowship acted out the story with wonderful music, costumes and a candlelit walk of the labyrinth. We took turns playing the roles of the weary travelers and the overwhelmed innkeepers. How would we respond to a stranger at our door in the middle of the night? How would we feel being refused shelter in our hour of greatest need? Las Posadas challenged us to get in touch with both our compassion and our vulnerability. Will we be prepared to offer both to God’s own child wherever and whenever he comes?  We felt a little more prepared by the end of our time together.

On October 8, scores of Dennis Lin’s family and friends gathered to celebrate his life. Dennis grew up locally and graduated from Concord Carlisle High School where he met many of his friends. After high school, Dennis achieved his goal of living independently and resided in West Concord for the past three years.

Dennis died on September 25 after a life-long battle with Prader Willi Syndrome. The love-filled memorial service was hosted by Sunday Fellowship, a ministry for people of all abilities at West Concord Union Church (WCUC), both of which Dennis was an enthusiastic participant. In addition to his many friends at WCUC and Sunday Fellowship, the service was attended by Dennis’s mother, Woahyih Lin, his father, George Chia-En Lin, his brother, Samuel and his aunt, Jenny. Many of Dennis’ former classmates and teachers at Concord-Carlisle High School, gathered with friends he made at local businesses, among Concord’s first responders and on the commuter rail to remember Dennis’ enthusiasm, his love of dancing and his inexhaustible friendliness.

Members of Sunday Fellowship led the congregation in a reading of Psalm 139 affirming that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God regardless of how our bodies move, communicate or think. Samuel read the story of the Good Samaritan, a scripture Dennis referenced in his testimony. George spoke gratefully of several notes he found among Dennis’ papers in which Dennis expressed deep love and faith. As the coordinator of Sunday Fellowship for the past three and a half years, I couldn’t help but think that Dennis would have LOVED the idea of his friends all meeting each other, especially at a Sunday Fellowship gathering. While I and so many others will always wish we could have had more time with Dennis, we are comforted to know that his time was so very full of love and joy. We love you Dennis!