Dear Glen Mar friends,

I hope you’ll join us for our 70th birthday celebration this Sunday! Pastor Emeritus Andy Lunt will be our main preacher of the day, and we will have a great time of praising God, growing disciples and serving the world together!

If you missed my sermon on Sunday, folks have been wanting a link they could share with their friends. I don’t often get applause after I preach, but this one got applause at the 9:30 service. I hope it faithfully expresses our Christian identities and commitments and task in this season.

I also wanted to share the text of the letter I propose to send to the principals of public schools in our area in response to recent events, as I alluded to on Sunday. If you would like to sign this letter, you can either a). come to church on Sunday and sign it in person or b). let me know you want your name added to it and I’ll sign it for you. We will send the text of the letter via email, to each principal, and attach the “signatures” screenshotted as an attachment. I will send it out to schools on Monday. I thought timeliness would be important.

We are the people of Glen Mar Church, a United Methodist community of faith in Ellicott City, Maryland. In this time where fear and division seem rampant, we wanted to reach out to you to voice our support and love for you, your administrators and staff, and the families you serve every day.

We are alarmed at the news of racist and hateful social media messages and posts that have recently targeted students, both in our area and around the nation. We wanted to reach out to you to say that, as followers of Christ, and as your neighbors, we stand against such messages, and against all threats to our children’s safety, well-being, learning and growth, whether those threats are based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or any other characteristic. We stand with you in your efforts to create spaces of learning, safety, and love for every child.

We are so grateful for all of your good work and want you to know that you are not alone. Attached to this email you will find a signature page from many of our church members, who wanted to add their explicit support. For each signature, there are many more in our church whose hearts are also aligned with ours.

In Christ’s love,

Rev. Mandy Sayers

Lead Pastor

See you in Church,

Pastor Mandy