The Moorestown Ministerium will hold a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration and worship service at First United Methodist Church (FUMC) in Moorestown on Sunday at 3 p.m.
The Urban Promise International Choir will sing during the event, and end with “Lift Every Voice.”
“After the worship service, we are having some mission opportunities in our Fellowship Hall,” said Rev. Jessica Campbell, associate pastor at FUMC. “There’s going to be writing letters around social justice topics, there’s going to be putting together care packages for the homeless in Camden and much more.”
Angela Cipolla, associate rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Moorestown, worked with Campbell and others to plan the service to the community.
“I think it’s really important for any worshiping community to remember and be a part of the larger, wider community that they are physically a part of,” she noted.
Cipolla and Campbell hope residents leave the service wanting to do more for others.
“I am hoping that people will feel inspired to continue to do this work, to have these kinds of conversations and to just pave the way for a brighter and better future,” Campbell explained.
“The hope is that we will bring awareness to not only the work that Martin Luther King Jr. was striving for, but the work that’s still to be done to create real equality and equal opportunities for people of color in this country, and specifically in Moorestown and the surrounding areas,” Cipolla added.
Moorestown High School Vice Principal Don Williams will be a guest speaker and ask the question, “How has Moorestown lived out MLK’s dream, and where has it fallen short?”
“I think sometimes when we try to do things as a whole, we sort of sometimes lose the focus,” he observed. “I think that sometimes we need to look internally at ourselves and we need to say, ‘Okay, this is who he (Martin Luther King Jr.) was, this is what he stood for. What can I personally do to continue the legacy that he started?’
Like Campbell and Cipolla, Williams thinks the service will inspire dedication to the community.
“I’m hopeful that they will examine themselves, and just have a greater sense of how we can impact our fellow man, and how we can go about making someone’s life a little bit more enjoyable,” he said.
“We are on this Earth but for a very short time, and I would like for us to think about, ‘What legacy do I want to leave?’ And then start to do that.”
