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            [post_date] => 2025-06-27 20:30:31
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            [post_content] => With all that is going on in the world, we want to strengthen our community spiritually. To that end, our pastors are inviting all of us to have a prayer buddy this summer. This strengthens the bonds among us, having someone you can check in with during the week, go over your concerns and joys, and offer them in prayer. We will offer you guidelines to make this fun and helpful. Click here to sign up.
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            [post_date] => 2025-06-25 21:05:22
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            [post_content] => Hi all!

I hope you all are staying cool and getting to enjoy the summer despite all of the chaos of our current moment. GBIO's season of power and relationship building has been continuing through June with more trainings, relational meetings, and network building. July will be a quieter month, but we are excited to be hosting a GBIO-wide potluck on July 24th at United Parish! I hope many of you will be able to join for an enjoyable evening of gathering as a wider-GBIO community and help us welcome our neighbors and partners to UP. See more details below!

Want to get more involved in this work? Reach out to us at gbio@upbrookline.org if you'd like to meet and learn more about the work of GBIO and specific ways you can support our mission of building community power across the Boston region.

Best,
Connor I. and David R.

United Parish GBIO Liaisons

 

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

Relational Get Together - Tuesday, June 24, 7:00 PM

Register here!

Join us on Zoom for our next Relational Get Together! Expect to log on and be matched with another GBIO leader to get to know one another and discuss your personal commitment to social justice and from where it comes in your own life, faith or tradition. These connections help prepare you to build power within your own congregation and with GBIO as a whole. You will receive the Zoom link to join the meeting upon registration.

GBIO Relational Potluck - Thursday, July 24, 6:30 PM

Register here!

Join us for a fun evening of fellowship and (of course) great food! GBIO Liaisons, clergy, core team leaders and others are all invited. We will take a look at the season ahead and reflect on progress toward our training commitments made earlier this year. We at UP are very excited to be hosting this event for our wider community!

 

UPDATES

A New Lead Organizer for GBIO!

GBIO has been operating since March 2024 without a full-time lead organizer, with the resignation of Kathleen Patron who served in this position, which is pretty much like what we think of as the Executive Director.  After a search of a little more than a year, the GBIO Strategy Team announced last week that Matt McDermott will take the Lead Organizer position in September.

Matt brings over 20 years of broad-based interfaith organizing experience to the table, with his most recent position being the Lead Organizer of Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut (CONECT), a sister organization of GBIO via the Just Power Alliance. For 12 years, Matt led CONECT through a number of successful state-level campaigns that have made an impact, including the passage of Clean Slate criminal justice legislation and in-state college tuition legislation.

Power Trainings and Relational Meetings Continue into the Summer

GBIO has been focusing in the last three months of our "Listening Campaign" on the ways its member congregations can help GBIO build its power through strengthening existing and establishing new personal relationships, both with others within our congregation, and with others outside United Parish. At its most basic level, GBIO's successful organizing model starts with these individual relationships. UP members, including Kent, have attended eleven of the in-depth training sessions and learned more about organizing for change, and many are involved in these meetings this summer.

A Successful Impact Fund Season for UP!

The United Parish community stepped up as a part of last year’s GBIO Impact fund campaign. As a congregation, our individual support for GBIO’s work rose 122% in dollars raised and 44% number of donors! Thank you to all who contributed to keeping the essential work of GBIO going through your financial support!

 

TAKE ACTION

Consider a 1-1 Relational Meeting

One way to strengthen our own power to make change, is through what we often refer to as "1-on-1" meetings, or sometimes "Relational" meetings. These meetings are not intended as times to talk about issues of the day, but rather to gain mutual insights between two people about what motivates them, what they care about. Questions can come up, for example, like, why do you come to United Parish? What excites you about our church, and what, if anything, worries you? What do you care about in your life? How are you spending your time these days? With this conversation, we can discover new opportunities to get involved with GBIO, but this is not a required part of the conversation. It's instead a way of building a new or strengthened relationship that we can use for actions, GBIO or otherwise, that we can look forward to taking on with each other.

We on the UP GBIO Core Team encourage you to initiate your own 1:1s, or to join into a 1:1 if someone calls you. The two liaisons of the UP Core Team, Connor Israel and David Rockwell, are keeping track of these meetings, so please just let one of us know.
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            [post_date] => 2025-06-16 18:53:32
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            [post_content] => This year in summer worship (June 22-August 31, 10am in Willett Hall), we will hear from one another about "how we learn to be brave," the title of a book by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde --- which we've been reading as a congregation this Spring.

In our discussion groups we have learned, like Bishop Budde, that bravery and courage come in all sorts of ways — often starting with the challenges we have when we’re young: getting back up on the bike after a spill, learning to be calm when a bee flies into the room, standing up to a bully on the playground. These lessons help us exercise and strengthen our courage so that throughout our lifetimes, we can stand up for what is right, what is good, what is worth defending.

Throughout our lives, we are called to be brave in different amounts, in different times, in different circumstances. All of us have stories about times we learned to be brave. Bishop Budde describes the different ways we learn to be brave as:
1. Deciding to go
2. Deciding to stay
3. Deciding to start
4. Accepting
5. Stepping up to the Plate
6. Learning through letdowns

In these conversations, we discovered that everyone has found ways to be brave, so we invite you to share them with our congregation.

We would love to hear one of your stories of bravery! Sign up to share your story of bravery in summer worship HERE.


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