OUR NEW PROJECT, MeetingPoint, is a direct outgrowth of Greenville's Year of Altruism, which has taken our community to new heights of compassion, civic awareness, and social action. Two clear mandates emerged from YOA: First, we must take the initiative here to actualize Dr. King's vision of a “Beloved Community.” Second, building substantial, active interfaith relations in Greenville is an urg
ent civic priority. As YOA shifted gears, several of us decided to address the double-mandate via an initiative we first called “Beloved Interfaith Community.” Searching our various faith traditions, we found consistently that the Beloved Community is built on the pillars of worship, study, fellowship, and social impact. We affirmed that all our activities would take their strength from one or more of those pillars. That commitment has found significant support from the diverse spectrum of our community, and foundational work has begun in earnest. Especially worth noting from the outset: Our initiative does NOT aspire to have you leave your current religious commitment or house of worship. We intend to be a complement to your faith journey, as you also seek to share an interfaith vision of worship, study, fellowship, and community impact. Of all the pillars, the one that proved most challenging was creating opportunities for lively interfaith worship. For a variety of reasons, we tentatively associated ourselves with Jewish people who had been conducting their own traditional weekly Sabbath service (“minyan”) in Anderson. We had hoped to reshape the service into worship that would hold as much spiritual content for gentiles as it did for Jews. But, along the way we discovered that, regardless of the amount of adaptation, the vision of a meaningful service that merged traditional Jewish worship with a genuine interfaith expression was all but impossible. After much soul-searching and conversation, we determined to make the minyan an adjunct to our endeavor, not an element of its mainstream. We named it “Torah Chayim” (“Torah Gives Life”), an appropriate expression of its undertaking. Torah Chayim continues to conduct weekly Shabbat services. Rabbi Marc leads the worship and provides religious guidance. All worshipers are welcome, but the service is a mostly in Hebrew, and is a distinctly Jewish celebration of the Sabbath. Torah Chayim now has its own page on which you may note its activities, events, and other important items. At the same time, we revised the name of our interfaith project to MeetingPoint, which better expresses our vision of celebrating the common ground among various faith communities. Planning for MeetingPoint programs and projects is already well underway. MeetingPoint has its own page, and will soon unveil our interactive website and other concise ways of communicating with you about opportunities for participation, affiliation, and fellowship. We will create genuine interfaith worship by looking to the “trans-covenantal” nature of our endeavor – we will celebrate elements of the covenants that faith communities have in common, the “MeetingPoint” at which religious convictions overlap. Our worship element will have a distinct identity, not turned into oatmeal. An incredibly intelligent and well-versed task force is already diligently working to make our interfaith worship real. Given our newness, additional evolution is not out of the question, so please give us your attention and let us hear from you. We want you not only to “take note” of MeetingPoint, but to become active participants in our unprecedented efforts to fulfill the vision of a truly Beloved Community. We are eager to have you become a Facebook associate of MeetingPoint. Please invite friends to also take a look at us. Regularly check out our activities and updates. Always feel free to contact us at [email protected] or (864) 271-3715.
