"Making a joyful noise unto the Lord," the Memorial Christian Church choir is part of the church's worship service from September through June. Under the direction of a choir director and accompanied by the church musician, the choir's anthems range from traditional church music through Gospel to modern church hymns. The choir welcomes all who feel called to sing. Practice is Thursday evening.

Since we are designated a "Shalom Church"--that is, a church particularly devoted to issues of peace and justice, the Shalom Group tries to keep up with the daily news as it applies to these subjects and inform the congregation about the actions and non-actions of our government that we believe need the attention of us all. We have a large bulletin board -- the Shalom Board -- in the narthex and encourage all MCC-ers to task up articles of interest and conver, information about signficant meetings, local and far-reaching: anything that a Shalom church should be aware of and, when appropriate interested in acting upon.

Every two or three months we conduct a "Letters at Lunch" program after the worship service, before which the Group has selected one or two salient topics we believe our representatives should hear from us about. Participants are urged to write their own letters, but sample letters are also provided. We also write a monthly article for MCC's newsletter, "The Messenger," and keep Board members apprised of peace and justice groups we believe the church should support financially. MCC's traditional Peace Vigil early in Advent is another of the Shalom Group's responsibilities and one in which we take great delight. For 24 hours a fire is kept burning as people who have signed up for an hour, settle down in the parlor to read articles and books scattered about, look at pictures, read and write in notebooks kept and treasured since 1983, when the Vigil began. Other participants choose to pray, ponder, possibly doze. For many of us, the Peace Vigil is a time of renewal.

For a number of years now we have run two programs which over time we have named Russia With Love. Once aspect of this involves an effort to follow up on hte initiatve that this church took when it sponsored a resolution at the 1989 General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) on promoting exchanges by our church related schools with the former Soviet Union. The other aspect involves our church's support since January 1999 of an ecumenical effort to raise money to support a joint Danish Lutheran/Russian Orthodox outreach to the poor in Moscow. This support involves the church providing assistance in administrating the funds raised for the Moscow project through our treasurer and financial secretary in addition to providing a venue for the monthly meetings of the Russia With Love Steering Committee.

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