“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

 –Charles Dickens.

Dear Members and Friends of First Congregational Church:

Hello from your Outreach team! It’s that time of year where we wonder if Spring will ever arrive. Such dramatic seasons are endemic to New England–the place we are lucky to call home. However, imagine this sense of impermanence in family, home and work. What if even food was as mutable as this spring season?

For children, adolescents and young adults in foster care system, a sense of permanence is invaluable. This is why in 1855, Caroline Plummer generously bequeathed more than $23,000 for the founding of a “farm school of reform for boys,” on Salem’s Winter Island. Caroline understood the challenges of providing for children after the death of her parents and she had to care for her siblings. The home was constructed in the 1860s and served as a boys’ orphanage with residents aged five to 18 attending school, church, and work.

As the years passed, and in consideration of emerging data on child psychology, the reform school model was changed to a home for boys. For decades, Caroline Plummer’s commitment to youth was maintained through dedicated board members, administrators, and staff. By 2012, Plummer was serving boys and girls in residential and community-based settings.

Today, the organization is known as Plummer Youth Promise and they recently completed a new residential building on their campus at Winter Island. Residents now have a separate building with their own bedrooms and single occupancy bathrooms to provide more privacy, focus, and undisturbed sleep.

As part of the campus construction, the original house has also been renovated as a space to continue to house the administrative offices, classrooms, and to add a very special apartment for the residents’ visiting families (families were previously housed in hotels). Plummer Youth Promise will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate this restoration on May 2.

For our 2026 Easter Offering, FCC Winchester Outreach Committee would like to provide furniture for several rooms in this new apartment, including a seating room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bathroom. We are setting a goal of $10,000 to achieve this goal.

We hope we each and as a congregation will respond from the depth of our own faith and commitment to long-term solutions to challenging social issues and consider helping support Plummer Youth Promise furnish their campus apartment for visiting family of foster children. If you can donate, please note “Easter Offering” in the memo line of your check, Venmo, or electronic donation.

Psalm 68:6 “God Settles the Lonely in Families”

Your Outreach team:  Karen Bellacosa, Laurie Galica, Betsy Goodell, Rev. Maeve Kieran Hammond, Marisa Lafferty, Larisa Lindsay, Katie Shanahan, and Jennifer Uzdavinis.

Friday, April 18, 2022

Dear Members and Friends of First Congregational Church:

In this imperfect world of war, racism, and epidemics there is also renewal, restoration, and relationship.   We are Lenten people who studied these ‘re’ words and we are Easter people, called to bring hope, mercy, and justice and to shout Alleluia from our rooftops and across our happily opening town.

To celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our congregation designates a special offering. This year, your Outreach committee was faced with a very difficult decision. In planning last fall, we decided to dedicate the Easter offering to the ‘Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants Access to Justice Fund’. That seemed a fitting response to our congregational study and national dialogue on racism and white privilege. And we were keenly aware that during Holy Week, Jesus was unjustly accused and himself a prisoner.

Then the war in Ukraine broke out. The pictures of millions whose lives are in danger moved and saddened us. Shouldn’t we direct the Easter offering toward relief in Ukraine instead?  But one of our own members reminded us of our commitment and how easy it can be to de-prioritize the outsider among us.  After a lot of discussion, we decided that the cause of competent, effective advocacy for those without good access to legal representation matters for our Christian commitment to justice.

Ralph Gants, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court,

was a compassionate leader for reform in our criminal justice system.

Shortly before his untimely death he wrote that to ‘put people with criminal histories back on the path to living normal lives, [is]not only for their sake, but for the sake of our society as a whole [because] we are all interconnected, we are all part of the same team, and the successes or failures of one affect us all.’

This Fund is in his honor and to continue his work.  Some of their programs include:

• Providing $6,000 fellowships to students of color and students with disabilities who might otherwise be unable to accept a judicial summer co-op or internship.
• Establishing Justice Bridge to train law student graduates to represent individuals facing eviction in housing court or seeking legal assistance in family court.

And so we invite you this year to give generously to this work: hope for all and a little Easter right here.

Your Outreach Committee:   Laura Bailey, Don Dutton, Sarah Girotti, Julia Daggett, Betsy Goodell, and Judy Arnold

Happy Easter!  He is risen!  

There has never been a better year to shout that from our houses, rooftops, and across our gradually opening town.  Jesus brings hope and light and love right into life’s realities.  It is a gritty story that takes the mountains and the valleys of our journey and transforms those into possibilities and life and purpose.  He is risen.  There is dawn that makes sense of the darkness and shines light on our path.  Alleluia.

As the world brightens and with the hope and power of the Resurrection, this year’s Easter offering will support Boston Rescue Mission, a wonderful local organization that directly serves the homeless.  The Boston Rescue Mission transforms lives by empowering individuals experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of becoming homeless to achieve and sustain life skills necessary to become more self-sufficient.  Some of their programs include:

•  Preventing homeless through job readiness, counseling and sobriety programs, and food pantry services
• Paws for Serenity- a program in association with Tufts to provide animal support services to those in Boston Rescue’s residential sobriety programs
• Shelter services and rehousing programs
• Spiritual development opportunities with Bible study, worship, and mentoring

Many of you saw the powerful documentary by artist Willie Baronet called Signs of Humanity, exploring interrelated themes of home, homelessness, compassion, and humanity.  We also had the opportunity to talk directly with Willie as a church Zoom event to learn from his experience.  Later this fall, Ripley Presents will host an art installation of Willie Baronet’s homeless signs in Ripley Chapel.  It is one more reason this offering to Boston Rescue Mission resonates with us as we live out our faith in our community.

We are happy that our Easter giving can directly support services and support to the homeless of Boston.  Thank you for caring for those in need and their journey forward. Checks can be mailed to the office, written to FCCW with “Easter Offering” written in the memo. Donations through PayPal and Venmo also gratefully accepted.

Your Outreach Committee:   Laura Bailey, Sarah Girotti, Julia Daggett, Janet Vaughn, Betsy Goodell, and Will Burhans