Rev. Boling celebrates 30th year

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The 30th anniversary of the ordination of the Rev. Ruth Boling of the Bloomfield Presbyterian Church on the Green was celebrated at the church on Sunday, Sept. 15. Earlier this week, Boling spoke about her years at the church and the need for a minister to keep up with the times by thinking outside the box.

Boling said when she was ordained on Feb. 26, 1989, at Bedford Presbyterian Church in Bedford, N.H, her responsibilities included educational ministry, outreach and general duties. She thought the match between herself and the Bedford church was perfect and she stayed there for eight years while her husband did his residency at Boston Hospital.

“At that time, and it’s still true, I love children’s ministry,” she said.”I brought experience and love and that church had a lot of children.”

After Bedford, Boling took time off and began to write, had a child and moved to Queens, N.Y., where she was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years and was involved with the Presbyterian Church in Forest Hills.

“I had a formal, but unpaid, role as a parish associate,” she said. “I performed some duties, but my focus was on children and I directed the vacation Bible school.”
At that time, she was also traveling to Haiti four times a year, which she did for three years.

“I was the grant writer for a project in Leogane, Haiti, that developed a network of community support groups for women with filariasis of the leg.”

Filariasis is a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms carried by mosquitoes. A heavy infestation of these worms can cause elephantiasis of the legs. Boling said the disease overwhelmingly occurs in women and is so debilitating that it prevents them from walking to the market.

“In Haiti, it’s a stigmatized disease,” she said.
Boling applied for and received a $200,000 grant from the Presbyterian Women’s Organization to educate Haitian women about how to avoid filariasis with simple foot care, general hygiene, wearing shoes and applying antibiotics to cuts. The name of the program was “From Clinic to Community.”

“Caregivers also provided emotional support,” she said. “It was kind of a pilot program and about 300 women were involved, but it’s endemic in the region. The program was a great thing to do.”

Boling also worked with new immigrant Presbyterian worship communities in New York City during those 10 years. Boling helped connect immigrants from Guyana, Congo, Korea, Thailand, Egypt, Pakistan and India to resources as they tried to establish new churches.

She then became an interim pastor with a Staten Island church for three years before coming to Bloomfield seven years ago.
“Many Presbyterian churches are smaller than 30 years ago, with few resources,” she said. “I don’t think any of us saw the change coming. This requires pastors, and me in particular, to think way outside the box.”

Although times have changed for the church, Boling said she has the same convictions and passion as 30 years ago.
“Churches can be vital sources for healing, joy and life for communities,” she said. “Churches can help people experience the presence of God in their lives.”

As for thinking out of the box, Boling said Sunday School was not working for the Church on the Green.
“That’s the old model,” she said. “So we asked ourselves, ‘What else can we do for teaching the Bible to children that would work?’”

The answer was the creation of a program called ‘Bible Palooza,’ which Boling calls “a three-hour extravaganza for which they “pull out all the stops.”

For Bible Palooza extravaganza there is a theme and children are given a meal, told a story, play crazy games exploring the theme, then do old-fashioned Bible study and create a service project. There are three or four of these events each year and Boling believes there is just as much education available to children during these festivities as in traditional Sunday School classes.

“We pack it all in and have an awesome time,” she said.
Another alternative way to use the church is the proposed shared use of the sanctuary with local arts organizations. The sanctuary has been closed to services for 10 years. Many local arts organizations found themselves without a venue in which to perform after the decision by Bloomfield College earlier this year to no longer rent Westminster Arts Center.

“We’re seeing this as a goal,” Boling said. “It’s preserving the sanctuary and opening it as a community and performing arts venue. That’s out of the box for us. It’s become a providential opportunity, that our resource meets an emerging need of the community.”

The grand opening of the sanctuary as a performing arts center is scheduled for April 18, 2020.

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