Episcopalians invited to share stories of care, connection and courage to social media

The Very Rev. Winnie Varghese (left), dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and New York Bishop Matthew Heyd share a social media-style frame during the launch of the new #onesingleact campaign. Photo: Courtesy Diocese of new York

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City and other faith partners have launched a new social media campaign aimed at helping people share the good things taking place in their communities.

Called One Single Act and using the social media tag #onesingleact, the 100-day project was announced July 1 from the cathedral steps.

New York Bishop Matthew Heyd said during the launch event that when people experience “chaos, cruelty and carelessness” in the world around them, one antidote is to respond with “care, connection and courage.” Sharing the good things they see taking place – or doing one themselves – are “the deepest expressions of our faith.”

The Very Rev. Winnie Varghese, the cathedral’s new dean, told Episcopal News Service she knows people can feel powerless in the face of huge global and local forces that affect them. But this campaign offers people a chance to emphasize a very fundamental spiritual value.

“How we engage with one another, engage the stranger, engage our neighbor, is actually a fundamental power to be the conduit for God’s love in the world,” she said.

The campaign’s encouragement to see or to do, and then share, one single act daily is “a really accessible way to make a pretty complex spiritual reality manifest in people’s lives,” she said. And she intentionally has been trying to be more aware of good things happening in the world so she can add her own stories.

Heyd told ENS he is finding that people across the diocese and beyond “intuitively understand what the campaign is about.” He said organizers wanted to make it easy to do and to share acts of goodness, whether big or small, across social media platforms. “I’m excited to be surprised by what we hear people are doing and the places we are hearing it,” he added.

He hopes this campaign gives people a way to express the fact “that the world is transformed by our connections with each other.”

Among Facebook posts using the hashtag include a man sharing a music-themed drawing given to him by a young fellow parishioner; a photo from St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina, of a cooler of chilled bottled water at the entrance to their courtyard; and a video of a favorite piece of music. An Instagram photo shows a smiling man “using his first day of retirement” to set up the food pantry at St. Mary’s Castleton, on Staten Island, New York.

The other partners in One Single Act are Episcopal Charities, Episcopal Divinity School and the Interfaith Center of New York.

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.