Visit to All Souls Bethlehem Church

Rev.Tom Reiber-Martinez's Church

 

On December 28 2003 I visited Pastor Tom Reiber's church since the choir had the day off.  I sang the same solo “Then Shall the Eyes of the Blind Be Opened” and He shall Feed His Flock” that I sang at Christ Church on December 21.

The church is only one hour and 15 minutes away from my house on a Sunday morning.  The directions on the church web site www.allsoulsbethlehem.org are good.  I arrived at 9:30 in order to rehearse with Terry the music director who arrived at 10:15 AM.  No sweat everything is laid back at that church.

The service is held in a large room the size of a large living room in the house.  Tom and Bre live upstairs.  When I got there Tom had arranged the folding chairs in a schoolroom format and we change them to a circular format.  The congregation sort of trickled in about 10:27 AM.  About 25 people showed up which is most of the congregation.  Tom has already had new members join the church and someone came today who had found the church on the web.  They are looking for a larger space, but it is a catch 22 situation because they don't want to have too large a space that they rattle around in it, but they need space for a Sunday school and nursery, which they don't have now.  Bre had started a Sunday school and they are looking for more “volunteers” to help with this.  There were about 4 children and one infant.  As I sang my solo I laughed because since it is a lullaby I saw the mother rocking her infant to the beat of my solo.

After church each person folds up his or her chair and a table appears and is set for coffee hour.  This happened so quickly that it seemed like magic.  There were cookies and cake along with coffee and tea because it was Christmas time.

One of Tom's friends from seminary was going to be examined in an Ecclesiastical Council at Judson Memorial church so after lunch at the diner with Bre, Tom and I took the subway to New York to attend the Council.  I was needed as a member of another church because you need to have a quorum in order to run this program and Tom was afraid she would not get the numbers since it was Christmas time.  There was no problem with the quorum and she was approved for ordination.  I was interested in her choice of profession since she was being called to be a hospice pastor.  Even though she had experience in social justice and wanted to be called to parish ministry she took this position as a first step since she really had no choice, because her husband was going to graduate school in the same town.

It was a UCC day in New York as I spoke to the Associate Conference Minister of the Metro New York Conference about our Anti-Racism Task Force and asked him to be on our e-mail list serve.  Metro New York is sponsoring a conference on Evangelism to which the members of the New Jersey Association are invited.

 

Jeannette Brown

UCC Representative