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GATHER LEADER GUIDE Session 2 | Doing Good in the Community Explore How Letters Have Been and Can Be Used to Further the Work of Doing Good in the World

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GATHER LEADER GUIDE Session 2 | Doing Good in the Community Explore How Letters Have Been and Can Be Used to Further the Work of Doing Good in the World GATHER LEADER GUIDE Session 2 | Doing good in the community Explore how letters have been and can be used to further the work of doing good in the world. Be challenged to think deeply about what doing good in the world and fighting injustice look like in their everyday lives. (75 minutes) Logistics & other considerations partner with ASP to serve Appalachian families. • Review Session 2 outline Please be present, too, in our conversations during this gathering, as we learn more about • Plan your space and logistics, including ourselves, each other, and how you’re at work projection and sound for large group as well in the world around us, and especially in Central as computer/tablets for each small group Appalachia. Amen. discussion station • Plan an ice breaker for your group Ice breaker (5 minutes) • Be ready to share details about your planned We suggest you include an ice breaker in each fundraising activities and service project session. Ice breakers help get people moving, encourage meeting new people, introduce Access resources from special ASP@Home elements of teamwork, and help arrange your webpage (https://asphome.org/asp-at-home/ group into smaller teams for other activities. qr-session2/) • Galatians chapter 6, verses Introduction to Galatians & how it applies in 1-10 video today’s world (10 minutes) • Printed copies of excerpts ASP’s theme is ‘Onward’, and the focus verse is from “The Telling Takes Galatians 6:9 – Let’s not get tired of doing good, Us Home” for small group because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t discussion station 1 give up. (Common English Bible) • The Hill We Climb video Have someone provide your group with this • Printed copies of excerpts from Tex Evans’ context about who wrote this letter, and to writing for small group discussion station 3 whom it was addressed. or watch brief Tex Evans Excerpts video • In the Bible, the Book of Galatians is a • “Tex” Message sheet(s) for each participant letter. It was written by the Apostle Paul to a group of people in a place called Galatia Welcome & opening prayer (5 minutes) in the mid first century. The people were Prayer trying to be faithful to God but had different interpretations of what that meant because Dear God, thank you for this community and the they came from different faith backgrounds. opportunity to gather together in this place. As In his letter to this community, Paul is we continue this ASP@Home journey together, reminding them that God welcomes all of us we celebrate the things that make us laugh and and our faith is defined by our relationship the new relationships that we’re forming. We with Jesus. Our lives today might look ask that you continue to guide us as we work pretty different, but Paul wrote this letter to together to serve our local community and encourage people to keep doing God’s work in the world. Play the video “Galatians Chapter 6, verses 1-10” • Discuss how the stories we tell about or ask someone to read it, so your participants one another, especially those told by the have the larger context of this verse. powerful, contribute to injustice. • Encourage your group to envision the letter Have someone (or several people) read aloud Paul wrote to the Galatians as an invitation the excerpt ”Voices of Economically Vulnerable to work for good and to hold each other up Communities” from “The Telling Takes Us when we are growing weary. Home.” Small group discussion stations (15 minutes • Invite your small group to discuss which at each station—45 minutes total) voices in this letter are new to them or resonate strongly with them, and why. Break into small groups to spend time journeying through three stations to explore the • Discuss how these voices make them think use of letters and God’s call for us to do good in differently about the work of doing good the world. in the world, in Central Appalachia, and particularly in their home community. Station 1 | The Telling Takes Us Home: Taking Our Place in the Stories that Shape Us, A People’s Station 2 | “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Pastoral from the Catholic Committee of Poem for the Country”, by Amanda Gorman Appalachia Watch Amanda Gorman read her poem, “The >> A pastoral letter is an open letter Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the addressed by a bishop to Catholic clergy, Country.” laity, and all people of good will. Pastorals • Gorman refers to love becoming our legacy. generally contain instruction, consolation, What would your life look like if your legacy or directions for behavior in particular was to have loved well? circumstances. CCA [Catholic Committee of Appalachia] is known for its planning, As Gorman ends her poem, she says “For there writing, and promulgation of two pastoral is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see letters from the Appalachian bishops and it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.” one “people’s pastoral.”† << • What does “being light” look like? >> To celebrate the 40th anniversary • Why does “being light” require bravery? of “This Land is Home to Me” and the >> Amanda Gorman was born and raised 20th anniversary of “At Home in Web in Los Angeles, California. She graduated of Life,” the Catholic Committee of from Harvard University in 2020. Appalachia (CCA) intended to publish a third Appalachian pastoral letter. As the She is the author of the The Hill We Climb: pastoral priorities of the regions bishops An Inaugural Poem for the Country (Viking had shifted away from social justice Books for Young Readers, March 2021), concerns, CCA opted to write a “people’s the poetry collection The Hill We Climb pastoral” without the direct involvement (Viking, September 2021) and The One for of the bishops. The people’s pastoral was Whom Food Is Not Enough (Penmanship published in 2015.† << Books, 2015). In 2017, Gorman was named the first-ever National Youth †Direct quotes from CCA website, https:// Poet Laureate of the United States. She ccappal.org. previously served as the youth poet Have someone read aloud the excerpts from the laureate of Los Angeles, and she is the Introduction to “The Telling Takes Us Home.” founder and executive director of One Pen One Page, an organization providing free • Discuss how stories help us “to make sense creative writing programs for underserved of our lives, and to create meaning within youth. them.” Gorman was selected by President Biden projects for low-income families in to read her original poem “The Hill We Appalachia is another way to fight injustice. Climb” for his Inauguration on January • Have each person write a “Tex message” to 20, 2021, making her the youngest poet one or more people. Ask them to consider to have served in this role. She also is the writing a message to someone who first poet commissioned to write a poem inspired them to do good in some way. Or to to be read at the Super Bowl. Her poem someone in the group who did something honors three individuals for their essential good for someone else. They might also work during the COVID-19 pandemic.‡ << consider writing a note of encouragement to ‡Direct quote from https://poets.org/ someone who might be feeling weary. poet/amanda-gorman >> In 1969, Rev. Glenn “Tex” Evans — a >> If we merge mercy with might, United Methodist minister — became one and might with right, of the first people to connect the energy then love becomes our legacy of youth with the deep needs of the poor. and change our children’s birthright During Tex’s 13 years as director at So let us leave behind a country Henderson Settlement in Frakes, better than the one we were left with Kentucky, he witnessed the great need for For there is always light, home repair assistance. So as part of his if only we’re brave enough to see it already-thriving outreach to the people If only we’re brave enough to be it << of Appalachia, he recruited 50 teens and adult volunteers to repair homes in Selected excerpts from The Hill We Climb: Barbourville, Kentucky. They worked on- An Inaugural Poem for the Country (Viking site during the day and worshiped in the Books for Young Readers, March 2021) evenings. By summer’s end, four families had safe, warm homes for the winter, fifty Station 3 | Selected writings of Tex Evans, ASP young lives had been changed forever — Founder and a longstanding legacy was born. Have someone read excerpts from Tex Evans’ But Tex was more than a leader; he writings, or watch the short video “Tex Evans was a born motivator. A true student Excerpts” to hear him speak. Tex believed in the of Appalachian culture and a legendary power of gathering together for positive change, storyteller, he set the tone for what ASP is and particularly in harnessing the energy and today: an extended family where laughter passion of young people to tackle injustice is king. Where relationships matter. And wherever they found it. where changing the lives of families and Ask your group to think about the service volunteers alike is the highest priority of projects they’re completing in your local all. << community and how the funds they are raising Spotlight on community leader in Appalachia for ASP will be used to address housing (5 minutes) injustice in Central Appalachia. • Invite your small group to discuss how Bring your group back together to watch the they can channel their passion and energy brief video “Spotlight on Teresa Brown-Johnson” into fighting injustice through the service to hear about how she works for good in her projects they complete in your local community on the West Side of Charleston, community.
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