Dear Visitor,

Welcome to Grace Church Online. We're delighted you found us. Some of us have been here all our lives but most of us, like you, had to discover Grace Church. We were searching for God or for community or for a group of people who wanted to make a difference in the inner city. At Fifth and Linden, we found them all.

At other junctures in our lives, many of us looked elsewhere only to discover that we were in the wrong place or that it was the wrong time. But at Grace Church, in the Diocese of Bethlehem, in the Episcopal Church, in the world-wide Anglican Communion of Churches, we have found ourselves at home. What will you find if you come to worship with us next Sunday? You will find a growing group of 70 or 80 people: white people, black people, and an increasing number of Latino people. You will find people still in the arms of their mothers and fathers, you will find one member in her 100th year, and you will find people everywhere in between. You will find straight people and gay people, in all kinds of families. At Grace Church, whoever you are, you will find welcome. We come together, diverse as we are, for one purpose: to celebrate God's presence in Word, in Sacrament, and in the gathering of the Church. Our life is rooted in the Eucharist we celebrate together each week.

When you visit us, you will find yourself in the heart of Allentown's Center City: an area scarred by the region's loss of industry but an area being healed. You will be in the Allentown Arts District, across the street from the Baum School of Art and around the corner from the Allentown Museum of Art and Allentown's Symphony Hall. You will be one block from the Morning Call, and one block from federal, county and city government buildings, with their new plazas and gardens. Our neighborhood is in the midst of rebirth.

Come during the week and you will find our three remarkable ministries drawing people back to the inner city and serving the people who are already here.

• Every day, children and their families come to Grace Montessori School, a preschool, kindergarten and daycare center serving all sorts of children but giving special care to the poor.
  
  
• Every day, volunteers from our AIDS Outreach center go into the community to provide supportive services to 380 persons living with HIV, and their families.
  
  
• And every Friday and two Saturdays each month, scores of people come to the Grace Community Foundation, our volunteer-staffed food pantry, which last year alone distributed 44 tons of food to those in need.

In the Gospels we read a story about people asking Jesus, "Master, where do you live?" He answered, "Come and see." Today, we are making the same invitation to you. Come and see. Come and see a place where Jesus lives in the heart of the city, a place that, for many of us, has been Grace.

Yours sincerely,

The Rev. Patrick Malloy, Ph.D.