Church donors’ generosity during our Minnesota FoodShare drive will feed hungry people with more than a ton and a half of food and $840 in cash, thanks to multiple matches.

Falcon Heights Church contributed nearly 750 pounds of food for the Department of Indian Work food shelf at Interfaith Action in St. Paul.

That was matched by an anonymous donor at FHC, who got so excited about our congregation’s efforts that they increased their match to 1,000 pounds.

The FoodShare organization is matching the donations again, for a grand total of 3,500 pounds of food–roughly the weight of a compact SUV.

Thanks to all who made this a successful campaign!

Ramadan is a holy month of the Islamic lunar calendar (May 5-June 4 this year) during which Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. A meal called an Iftar breaks the fast each day. Next month, members of our congregation are invited to attend a traditional Iftar through Taking Heart, a long-running program coordinated by the Minnesota Council of Churches and the Muslim American Society of Minnesota.

Taking Heart aims to bring Christians and members of other faith communities together with Muslims for wonderful food and conversation during Ramadan. FHC members have participated in the past. There are two nearby open houses in May:

• May 13 at 7 p.m. at Masjid Alhuda–ICCC in Northeast Minneapolis.
• May 21 at 8 p.m. at Masjid At-taqwa, just outside the State Fairgrounds in St. Paul.

The open houses are free and open to the public, but you need to register online.

More information on Taking Heart

By Larry Schumacher

Now the Crossroads Team needs your input.

A small but plucky team of Falcon Heights UCC members began a year-long journey this winter to understand where we as a congregation might be going and how to prepare for our future.

The Crossroads team, led by Cor Wilson and including Rev. Rick King, Margee Fabyanske Conee Biggs, Larry Schumacher, Brian Knapp, Mary Gaasch and Carol Holm are working this spring on understanding the demographic trends affecting our community and revisiting our congregational road map from the pastoral search process.

We plan to bring the findings of our initial steps to the congregation and begin gathering input from members about their hopes for the future of Falcon Heights UCC and its relationship to the community at a presentation and discussion on May 5.

Come celebrate Mardi Gras with us Tuesday, March 5, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

• Eat a rich dinner of pancakes, sausage, donuts and fruit before we head into the season of Lent.
• We will have a craft project starting at 5:30 and dinner around 6.
• After supper, join us for a pancake toss and limbo.
• We will conclude the evening with a simple Ash Wednesday service appropriate for all ages.

By Rev. Rick King

(This column is part of a series on church vitality.)

The work begins. Last Saturday, our church and team hosted the first of four Crossroads retreats for church revitalization. Tonight, our church’s Crossroads team will have our first meeting. [Editor’s note: The meeting will be rescheduled due to bad weather.] Team members and I are excited at what’s possible for us as a church.

But it’s going to take all of us working together.

Jim LaDoux, our consultant from VibrantFaith, LLC, and Associate Conference Minister Anita Bradshaw, led the teams from the three churches in our cohort in understanding that church renewal doesn’t just happen because of one or two things, but strategically.

In my years as a leader, I’ve come to identify three types of planning and three types of change in congregations:

• There’s problem-solving planning and the changes that resolve difficulties.
• There’s developmental planning that addresses how to do what we currently do, only better.
• Adaptive planning changes the way we embody our vision and mission and shapes what priorities we embrace, and how we look at what church is and how it works in the world. It also means discerning a new vision to guide our work, in response to the changes in our community, our individual and collective lives, and religious life.

In the Discovery process, our church took really crucial steps during the interim period to develop a new vision and mission to guide us into this new chapter in FHC’s life. Interim Pastor Anne may have discussed with you the concept of “adaptive work”—work that adapts an organization such as a church to be more effective in a changed context.

Crossroads will provide us a partnership and the expertise to help us live into our vision and mission in ways that transform us as a church. We’re in a cohort of three other churches this year: Robbinsdale, Parkway Minneapolis, and St. Mark’s Bloomington. We will learn from each other, pray for each other, and celebrate victories big and small together.

But YOU are the crucial part of whether our plans get legs and become reality!

A compelling VISION for ministry is not imposed on a congregation by one person or even a team; it has to bubble up from the people. Crossroads requires everybody in FHC to engage in this process of change.

NARRATIVES—the story or stories we tell ourselves and others—powerfully shape our lives and how we live them. Jim LaDoux, our VibrantFaith consultant, speaks of identifying and articulating a “preferred future” for FHC; it’s another way of saying, you and I and our Team together are writing the next chapter in FHC’s long story. What will it tell?

Nobody, not even our Team, can give us a magic formula for revitalizing our church; we have to work together.

Can I have your agreement that you will embrace this process in 2019, and try?