Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your spirit. Love your neighbor as yourself.

We each know and want to fulfill the Great Commandment. But what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Do we have to love even if we believe different things, disagree or are polar opposites? How do we do that? How do we do it well? If we are not loving our neighbor well, are we not loving God with our whole heart?

Here at Aldersgate, we want to encourage each other to seek and find God with our whole hearts and to be His loving hands and feet. Let’s come together to explore how to love like Jesus in a world that likes to fight, cancel, and exclude those different from ourselves.

In Sunday and Thursday classes, small groups, in our homes, at church, over dinner or Zoom, let’s come together as a body for five weeks and explore these questions and grow closer in oneness and unity. We want to create an opportunity to join hearts and minds with this book looking at how the church can have unity during a time of rampant disagreement on all manner of things.

We especially would like this to be our focus this spring because General Conference meets on April 23 – May 3, and together we can pray and support Bonnie Marden and the rest of our New England delegation as they navigate some tough issues facing our denomination. It is our hope the experience of reading this book, together, will knit us closer together and deepen our church family’s connections with one another, as well as spur us on to love our neighbors and love God better.

Our ONE focus will take place from April 1 to May 30. Order a copy of the book or get one here at church, and then sign up for a discussion group. Each week we will gather to watch a short video and discuss a couple chapters. Our goal is to offer a variety of dates and times so that everyone who wants to participate can find a good time and location to join in. Some groups will have a Zoom option as well. For those who can’t meet each week, we will hold a book club type discussion of the whole book.

If you would like to lead a small group, please e-mail Kim Ward at mikdraw@aol.com or Suzanne Hevelone at shevelone@gmail.com. Resources – a leader’s guide and videos – are available.

At the end of May, when we complete reading the book and the five weeks of discussion and study, we will celebrate together with a special event!

ONE – Unity in a Divided World by Deidra Riggs. Jesus didn’t say that the world would know we are his followers by our biting rhetoric, our political leanings, our charity work, or even by our knowledge of Scripture. He said the world would know us by our love for one another. Yet it’s so easy to put others at arm’s length, to lash out, to put up walls. Deidra Riggs wants us to put our focus on self-preservation aside and, like Jesus, make the first move toward reconciliation.

In One, Riggs shows readers that when Jesus offered himself up in our place, he was not only purchasing our salvation but also setting an example for us to follow. She helps readers understand that they are secure in God’s inexhaustible love, making them free to love others lavishly–not just in what they do but in what they say, what they don’t say, what they will endure, and what they will forgive.

Anyone who longs for unity in the church, in their family, and in their community will find in this book both inspiring examples of loving done well and encouragement to begin the often unnoticed hard work of building bridges with those around them.”

Deidra helps us think differently about unity, first examining our own hearts and how we are ONE with God, then examining how we interact with others as ONE Body in Christ. She tackles topics such as racial division in the Church, political convictions that ruin relationships and life experiences that shape us.