A farewell parade for Pastor Fischer

Community members and congregants of Baldwin First Presbyterian Church celebrated their five-year journey with Pastor Adam Fischer and gave him a proper send-off to South Carolina during a farewell parade on the sunny morning of May 2.

The caravan of people waved and slowly drove by in their cars decorated with colorful posters, balloons and affectionate messages.

“This is certainly not how we anticipated departing and traveling with everybody, so it’s strange,” Fischer said.

The next day, after leading one last virtual session of worship, he moved to South Carolina with his family to pursue a new position with St. Giles Presbyterian Church, a 400-member church in Greenville. The church leaders asked him and his wife, Meg, who also works as a pastor in Melville, to serve as co-pastors.

“It’ll be a nice move for us and our family,” Fischer said, his two sons, Huck and Finch, nearby, “but it’s really hard to say goodbye to this congregation. They’ve been tremendously wonderful and supportive, and this congregation, especially, really did a lot of work to figure out who they are in the world and then trying to reach back out to the community, and so I feel like they’re in that place of trying to say, this is who we are, we believe that God loves us, and we are called to share that love with the world, and reach out and connect in tangible ways.”

In February, the church hosted a Mental Health First Aid training session conducted by Nassau County health care professionals, at which participants learned how to help someone struggling with mental illness or substance abuse. The parish also hosted a Blessing of the Animals, and pursued other outreach opportunities as well.

The congregants, he said, “want to help people and make the community a better place so that people notice and care about each other in ways that are significant.”

He hopes that the church will continue to spread messages of love.

“It’s exciting, I think, to see a church that’s trying to embody love and truth rather than just dogma or whatever that is, it’s just judgment,” Fischer said. “I’ve appreciated their ministry and their tremendous attempts to connect with everybody.”