A VERY MEMORIAL CAMPAIGN
Memorial Makes Room: Justice, Community and Faith
Grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
Acts 4:29-30
In early 2020, Memorial received a generous pledge toward long-anticipated work in the sanctuary: air conditioning, new floors, improved lighting. Amid the pandemic, the vestry put the project on pause to focus on the physical and spiritual health of our people, on our relationships with our neighbors, and on the needs in our community. This has helped us as a community to focus on our core values: Faith, Community, and Justice.
We share faith in Christ’s love, healing and hope, and we place faith in each other to care for all in need.
We are a community of love seeking to break barriers and make friends of strangers.
We are committed to justice, inspired by the Beatitudes, raising up the lowly, and speaking truth to power, working for just policy, and developing deep partnerships.
We recognize Memorial’s history of not acting out these values for Black residents of Baltimore. We are intentional about our conversations and actions. We removed plaques and covered the triptych in a physical demonstration that we do not see the Memorial parish of this century the same way as that of the past.
Now we concentrate on our work for the 21st century:
In reparations for our predecessors’ efforts to segregate, deny rights, and create and maintain inequality, and because we are one Body in Christ, children of the same God called to work for the least of these:
Memorial Makes Room for and supports programs from nearby public schools, art and music after-school programs, and offsite virtual learning. Strong Schools Maryland, led by members of Memorial, advocates for getting public schools the support they need.
Memorial Makes Room for and supports justice organizations as they plan, strategize, and work for change.
Memorial Makes Room for and supports the Samaritan Community to see clients; for Kindred Coaches to offer classes and workshops; and for BlueGreenJust to organize events to counteract environmental racism.
Memorial Makes Room for all to feel the love of Christ, a sense of community and a place to worship.
To continue and expand this work and our communal lives together, to Make Room, we need your support to gather talents and treasures to make Memorial a model parish for this century:
A $550,000 commitment to modernize our worship space so that it can be a sanctuary for everyone, including year-round educational programs, youth development programs, assistance for the poor and those in need, community justice groups, and anyone in the wider Center-West Baltimore Community.
A commitment over the next four years to establish a Memorial Justice Fund which will allow us to move from talking about justice to making it a reality on our premises, to identify partners in this work, and to seek grants to support it in addition to our own contributions. We say that as a parish and a people we are justice-focused and Jesus-centered. The Memorial Justice Fund is one way to put visible meaning to those words.
Capital Campaign Pledge: Memorial Makes Room Virtual Pledge Card
Jan 1, 2021-Dec 31, 2023
Sharing faith, a community of love, committed to justice