On the Sunday following the presidential election, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Assemblymember Matt Haney, our President & CEO Dr. Gina Fromer, and our Minister of Celebration Marvin K. White all urged our community to stay hopeful and inspired.
Together, we celebrated progress on the Church Building Fund and contemplated how GLIDE will always be a beacon of light and a refuge for people to turn to. Pictured here is our stained glass window, newly restored, thanks to state and federal funding. Check out the story of hope and resilience on CBS:
“Today, we will sing with you, dance with you, pray with you, and you will come out of this sanctuary ready to fight again,” proclaimed Minister Marvin as he opened the electrifying service. Dr. Fromer set the stage by saying, “We’ve got so much more work to do. The people most affected by what happened in our country last week, they’re going to get hit the hardest, they’re going to get hit the fastest, and we’ll be here to respond.”
Then Dr. Fromer shared her plan for a $100 million fundraising effort to expand GLIDE’s facilities to better serve our most marginalized community members. Our CEO wants to complete this fundraising over the next five years, so on GLIDE’s hundredth birthday, we will be prepared for our next hundred years.
The Church Building Fund represents the first ten million of $100 million needed, and we hope you are ready and willing to support us!
After thunderous applause, Speaker Emerita Pelosi began her remarks by saying, “Where is hope? Hope is where it always has been, sitting right between faith and charity. We need hope now, because of what happened the other day… but let’s see everything as an opportunity.”
Then she spoke about how every human being has a spark of divinity inside of them, and we are called on to love and respect every person. Unhoused people, immigrants (documented or not) and even our political enemies all had sparks of divinity within them, according to the Speaker Emerita Pelosi.
When Assemblymember Haney used the cheerful strains of the Change Band to dance up to the podium, he said, “Even if I wasn’t speaking here today, I still would come to GLIDE this morning. It helps that I live only two blocks away.”
We appreciated that Assemblymember Haney acknowledged GLIDE as a treasured neighbor and a source of spiritual comfort in tough times, and for his assistance getting state funding for our Church Building Fund.
He went on to say, “This week I’ve been praying more, I’ve been talking with God more, so I wanna thank God for GLIDE! I think about what we’re up against right now, and I think about who is going to find themselves under attack. Those people are right outside the door right now. They are our neighbors, my neighbors, they are immigrant and trangender neighbors. They have GLIDE: here, they are seen and cared for and loved. GLIDE makes sure that they know we care for them. The real fight we’re in right now is the fight to make sure every single human being has dignity, worth and is seen and cared for and loved.”
“The haters are going to hate, us we gota love,” Assemblymember Haney added, the most-applauded line of his speech. Next came our Minister of Celebration’s rousing words of comfort and hope, well-worth viewing in full:
Highlights from Minister Marvin’s words include, “We cannot afford to let fear calcify in our bodies. We can’t lose faith in one another. We cannot lose our drive to make sure that we no longer have people who might be considered disposable. We must look to the margins more than ever.” He also spoke with sympathy and protectiveness of the many women who are getting threatening messages that say, “Your body, my choice,” after the election.
For his text, Minister Marvin took Isaiah 61, which speaks of the comfort God gives to the grieving and the broken-hearted. “In the streets of the Tenderloin, Isaiah’s call to bind up the broken hearted, becomes an invitation to see one another more deeply,” the minister said.
“It challenges us to stand against mass incarceration, racial injustice, women’s right to choose, and the criminalization of the homeless. Transformation is still possible, y’all. Community can indeed rise from despair.”
Our board member Del Seymour, the subject of the recently released book, The Mayor of the Tenderloin, honored Veteran’s Day by saying, “Veteran’s Day is not a day we celebrate war. It is a day we celebrate coming home.” He urged people to remember to advocate for homeless veterans, and called a witness to speak movingly about his own time as a homeless veteran.
The work of hope, justice, and spiritual healing that takes place at our church is made possible by your support, so please consider donating to our Church Building Fund.
As Minister Marvin says, “The Tenderloin deserves beauty. Please don’t think it’s a small thing or a beautification project.” We need a modernized, accessible, and restored sanctuary to continue sharing a message of hope and love, join us!