Council of Churches Awards Dinner

The Annual Fall Dinner and Awards Celebration of the Capital Area Council of Churches in September will recognize “five individuals whom with their collaborative spirit and willingness to go the extra mile have made a significant impact on our community.”

 

Those individuals are:

 

Rev. Antonio Booth - Rev. Booth was Co-Pastor at Riverview Missionary Baptist Church for many years and is currently an Associate Pastor at Macedonia Baptist Church.

 

Rev. Dr. Roxanne Jones-Booth – Dr. Booth was Co-Pastor at Riverview Missionary Baptist Church and is currently an Associate Pastor at Macedonia Baptist Church.

 

Rob Kovach - Rob is the President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York.

 

Natasha Pernicka - Natasha is the Executive Director of The Alliance for a Hunger Free New York and the Food Pantries for the Capital District.

 

Rev. James Kane - Father Kane is the longtime Director of the Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

 

To join the Honorary Committee of this year’s event, click here. The cost is $120 for individuals and $200 for couples. All members of the committee will be acknowledged. Join by August 15 to be included in the program. Please note that joining the Honorary Committee includes dinner.

 

The event is September 25 at the Italian American Community Center in Albany.

70th Anniversary

Angela Cave, staff writer for The Evangelist, has an article in the most recent issue of the paper about the 70th anniversary of Capital Area Council of Churches, “looking back at its evolution from a simple ecumenical group into a provider of social services.”

"It has moved into the community in very creative ways," said Rev. Robert Lamar, pastor emeritus of First Presbyterian Church in Albany and past executive director of the council.

Rev. Lamar has been involved in the council since the late 1950s. He described those early days as focused on "churchy business." But today, the council runs an emergency homeless shelter, prison ministries, incarceration prevention services, peace and justice forums and CROP Walks to support food pantries and soup kitchens.

The CACC oversees an interfaith prayer room at the Albany International Airport and chaplaincy programs at nursing homes and at The University at Albany and Albany Medical Center.

CACC leaders are discussing challenges facing local faith and secular communities. About 85 churches, mostly Anglicans, Catholics, Orthodox and mainline Protestants from Albany and southern Rensselaer Counties, are CACC members. Affiliate members include the First Unitarian Universalist Society and the Unification Church. Another 7,000 individuals are also members.

Less than a year ago, Rev. George Brennan was named the first Catholic executive director of the council.

"I feel a lot of positive energy," said Father Brennan, who is pastor of Our Lady of Hope parish in Copake Falls. "I think we have a lot to learn from one another."

Father Brennan has visited 70 churches since he began his role. He's been impressed by the CACC's "baptism witnesses" - members who attend baptisms at each other's churches.

The pastor introduced the practice at his own parish. The ecumenical witnesses serve as a "reminder that we're baptized into the Christian community," he explained.

The rest of the article is here.

A Week of American Unity?

Deacon Walter Ayres, who chairs the Commission on Peace and Justice, has written a column for The Evangelist in which he reflects on what politicians can learn from Christians who work together in such organizatons as the Capital Area Council of Churches.

When Vernon Victorson was a young child being chased down the street by boys from the local Catholic school, he never imagined that he would grow up to be the pastor of a Lutheran church where a Catholic priest would be installed as the first Catholic executive director of the Capital Area Council of Churches.

Yet that is exactly what happened earlier this year during the Week of Christian Unity, when Rev. Victorson welcomed Rev. George Brennan to First Lutheran Church in Albany.

One can only wonder what this nation would be like if our political leaders had made as much progress over the years.

There was a time, back when both of these ministers were boys, that the issue of electing a Catholic president was a cause of much strife between Catholics and Protestants.

A number of factors can account for the subsequent change — not the least of which was the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and the willingness of Catholics to engage Protestants as followers of Jesus rather than as heretics.

Now, we work together as pilgrims on the same journey. We no longer treat each others’ congregations just as sources of potential converts; we work together to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and bring about fair laws regarding immigration.

But we also can disagree on such hot-button social issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and women’s ordination. We join forces when we can and agree to disagree when we must.

It is a shame that many of our politicians cannot do the same. They seem stuck in the same situation that Christians were in decades ago when, too often, we saw each other only as foes and rarely as friends.

The rest of the article is here.