Senior Pastor Ray Barnard of Impact Live Church talks about what Flags of Fellowship represents to him and his congregation as they participate in this year’s movement in an op-ed with the Washington Examiner:
On Oct. 7, people across our region will gather for Flags of Fellowship, a campaign hosted by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. It is a time of remembrance, prayer, solidarity, and relationship-building between Christians and Jews. At Impact, that will include a unity luncheon bringing together clergy, rabbis, and community leaders, followed by an interfaith unity service where people from different backgrounds will worship, reflect, and stand together.
These gatherings matter because we live in a time when it is increasingly easy to retreat to our separate corners. We can live in the same community, drive the same streets, and send our children to the same schools, yet never really know one another.
I have become convinced that healing happens when we choose proximity.
I had an experience that changed the way I understood that truth. I traveled to Selma, Alabama, and crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside my friend and brother Rabbi Aaron Krupnick and other Jewish and Christian leaders.
You cannot walk across that bridge without feeling the weight of history.