Church News – February

Greetings and blessings in this new year! And much gratitude for all of the blessings of the year we just left behind.

A year ago we were in the process of assessing the damages that time and weather had wrought on our sanctuary building, and strategizing how we were going to pay for this project.

After all, we are just a teeny tiny church, on a teeny tiny speck of a peninsula, on a fairly small planet, under the viral siege of a pandemic.

So having just dramatically stated the obvious of that moment in time, here is the update a year on: To put it briefly, our little church grew. It grew and it grew as our fundraising committee put out the word, and the support began to flow in like high tide.

And as the months passed it became obvious that ours is not a teeny tiny church on a tiny peninsula. And we weren’t just a small congregation gathered in a back room on Sunday morning. We were a broad community of people who knew and loved a rickety building, who remembered weddings and funerals and memorials and, yes, Tuesday school! Christmas Eves (singing “Silent Night” in Icelandic), and music camps and bazaars and concerts (Oh, the concerts!), beautiful quilts on the walls, and gathering in the parish hall to make more; yoga and Knee Club and Healing Touch (we feel so much better now!), and the Power of Music!

And we were reminded that our little church is part of a wider circle of support and care. And we are part of a small but also very large (we are international!) community of hearts and souls who know how to love and support this life we live together in Point Roberts.

I remember this song from Sunday School:

“I am the church; you are the church;

We are the church together.

Yes! We’re the church together!”

The church is not a meeting place; the church is a people!”

Yes, we are fixing a building with a steeple, and rebuilding a meeting place. But we are doing this as a people. We are diverse in our connections to this place, in our memories and stories of this building’s rich history, and in our love for this beautiful, unique community. And its teeny tiny church. On a teeny tiny speck of a peninsula. With a heart as big as the world.