Consecration Steward: Why I Give

Each Sunday leading up to Consecration Sunday, we invite community members to share why they give to Old First. Karen Bulthuis shared her reflections this past Sunday.

When Christine Scheibl asked me to speak as part of the preparation for Consecration Sunday, I immediately said yes. Because I feel so privileged to be part of this church community, and I have a lot to say about what is has given me and why I give to it.

I moved to Brooklyn in 2003, when I was 23, as part of a year long volunteer program. I lived in the Holy Name convent down on Prospect Park West with eight other full time volunteers in an intentional community. On Sundays, I and sometimes a roommate or two would visit churches in the neighborhood – we went to Greenwood Baptist, Park Slope Methodist, All Saints Episcopal.  I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but none of them stuck. And I didn’t find Old First until I had been here six months and I connected with Jessica Bratt, a friend from college who was then a seminarian here.

Jessica brought me to church with her one Sunday and I vividly remember the sense of mystery in the sanctuary, the height of the space, the sense of room … As I kept coming and got to know Old First, I realized that was not just the character of the physical space, but was also the spiritual energy of this community… At Old First we have this amazing balance of groundedness, history, tradition – a rootedness in our Christian faith – but we make room for mystery, openness, free thinking. I could bring my roommates and later other friends with me, including the ones who were not down with religion, and they were always made to feel welcome, comfortable, like there was room for them at Old First too.

Since that first year, I have become part of this community and had opportunities to support Old First in various ways…  as a deacon, as a musician, helping with arts events, helping on the steering committee… and I feel like I get to help build and contribute to that combination of rootedness – in our Christian faith, the history and tradition that we have inherited – and of openness – how we, like the city we live in, are a place of unconditional welcome.

I was at Coney Island this weekend and looking at the Parachute jump — how it has this strong base and then it just shoots up into the sky stretching out in all directions. And then we were looking at vintage postcards, and you can see people in these parachute contraptions flying all around… it’s completely crazy. That’s what Old First is like… This strong rootedness, this base,  and then this big outstretching, this opening in all directions with all of us flying all over the place. I love that.

On the Steering Committee, we talk a lot about past generations: about those who came before as stewards of Old First. And we talk even more about the generation to come… and the generation after that, and the one after that, and the one after that.  

So for me, supporting Old First means receiving a gift from the generations who came before us and it means giving a gift to the generations that will come after us. The gift we receive is the building, the tradition, the practice of our faith, the rootedness… and the gift we gift is the space, the openness, the hospitality.  And not just the extent to which we can open up and let others in and be hospitable now, but the ever wider unconditional welcome that those who come after us will give and create – to Park Slope and to Brooklyn and to New York City and to our world.