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Veterans Ministry Adapts and Expands
Veterans Ministry Adapts and Expands
The Rev. Christopher Carlisle, Director, Building Bridges Veteran Initiative
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At the heart of the Building Bridges Veterans Initiative is collaboration: collaboration with the parishes of the diocese; with our diocesan philanthropic entity, Human to Human; with veteran organizations and Elks lodges where many of the Building Bridges lunch communities are hosted; and of course, with our hundreds of veterans who participate in Building Bridges.
It is our conviction that a wonderful thing is happening as the church is necessarily moving further and further into the world. And that wonderful thing is a fuller, richer engagement with so-called “secular” organizations and communities which are also doing the work of Jesus. Indeed, in the words of Human to Human: “Love is our only agenda.”
If the pandemic has significantly altered how Building Bridges has operated, it has not slowed us down, but it has allowed us to strategize about further expansion. While we continue to have contact with many of our veterans -- most commonly by way of drive-through lunches -- we are also at work developing a digital platform to sustain and amplify the initiative in the larger world. Fundraising, hosting webinars, and simply “getting the word out,” is allowing us to build bridges of collaboration between the church and the world.
As we anticipate reconvening our nine veteran communities in the diocese -- which at this stage, we hope will begin to take place in summer or early fall -- we are also laying groundwork for our first site in the Diocese of Massachusetts, which marks yet another example of collaboration in the larger church. Indeed, the word “collaboration” literally means “united labor,” and speaks to the very nature of creation as an ultimately unified whole. In the words of Saint Paul: “ There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body.”
In the spirit of Paul, let us all work ever more fully together to be the one body of Christ. ♦
