What’s in your water? An exploration into water, locally and beyond.
Is water a right or privilege? Who owns water? Gift or commodity? Come and find out what’s happening with bottled water in our screening of the award winning film “Tapped.” This next “lunch and learn” session of What’s in Your Water will take place on Sunday 4/3, in the parlor from 12-1:30pm. A very informative film to bring a friend to!
Save the date: Sunday, 4/24, 12-1pm, for a visiting speaker for What’s in Your Water. Everyone is welcome to “lunch and learn” about water and our responsibility to be stewards of this precious gift.

Reconciliation Season was originally conceived at the Church of the Redeemer when the racial dialogue group came to the worship committee saying “racism is alive and well in the United States and what is Redeemer going to do about it?” An entire set of vestments and hangings were created based on the secret quilt code of the Underground Railroad. The hangings remind us of the courage and determination of those held in slavery and those who risked it all to help them. They remind us of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Stephen Biko, Matthew Shepherd, and countless others who gave their lives because of who they were or what it is that they believed.

Join us as the story of slavery is told. Learn of life on the plantations, the beginnings of the Underground Railroad movement and those who helped and how it was that the Secret Quilt Code informed those who knew the secrets held within the beautiful images to gain freedom and wholeness. The message of hope is loud and clear and so it is we use these vestments at Redeemer to honor that courage and call us all into accountability for what it is that we do and what it is that we leave undone as we experience words and actions of hatred.

The child-size shirt is hard not to notice in the “Memorials to the Lost” exhibit on the lawn in front of the church. Sadly, there’s more than one. Each t-shirt is for someone who died as a result of gun violence in 2014. There are 46 t-shirts, a number somewhat arbitrarily chosen, as we wanted to make sure all of the counties in NJ comprising the Diocese of Newark were represented. The names were gathered from police reports, prosecutor’s websites and news reports. As we approach the third anniversary of the Newtown shootings, and in a time that seems rife with gun violence, as a faith community we were inspired by Heeding God’s Call, a movement that works to prevent gun violence.