Ministry In The Church Summer 2022 Update

Let’s start with the most concrete.  The church connects her members to the needs of the broader community and works to meet those needs.  Over the past several years, this has been a true hallmark of the parish, from our food ministries and firewood ministry to our work through Saint James’ builds, from local kindergarten preparedness to sponsoring students in Uganda.  In addition to the aforementioned and other servant ministries and monthly service projects, the parish discretionary fund has provided direct relief from food cards, gas cards, power and water bills, rental assistance, medication, and more.

The church also provides a true north when the world gets topsy turvy.  When we are angry, hurting, confused, disheartened, we gather as a loving community, we support one another, and we center our lives on a God who is love, relentless pursuing love, and we proclaim that as dark as any day may seem that that is not the end of the story.  We also have a place where we can leave all of our baggage right there in confidence that God wants us to let it go, to walk out with lighter shoulders.  There is power in song, collective prayer and worship.  Through the church, God directs our hearts, paints a vision of what could be, and assures us we are not alone in our efforts to walk closer to God’s dream for us and all creation.

At her best the church is a place where we can hold deeply held and very disparate views and do so in love with careful listening, respect, and a desire to understand.  Our world is hurting and we are facing complicated realities in every direction.  I don’t know that we can find healing and a way forward apart from those who disagree with us.  We need to show the world what it is to live in communion with our differences.  In doing so we also reveal the Love that holds us all, a Love that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

From our youngest members to our wisest, church provides a unique community.  We are not gathered because of our common interests, life experiences, political persuasions, vocations, we have been brought together because of a force, a Love beyond ourselves.  That binding Love and the beautiful people within its embrace make church special if not unique.  We acknowledge this special communion at our Eucharistic table each Sunday (and Wednesday, and Thursday) but it is present at ECW meetings, on the softball field, at men’s bible studies, in hospitals or nursing home rooms, at unexpected meetings in the grocery aisle or sidelines of a soccer field.

Just in the past month we have gathered for many funerals, some for long cherished friends, others barely known to us.  We have baptized, blessed unions, graduated and honored graduates.  We have celebrated together, wept together, shared our lives together.  We have opened our doors for others.

I pray that the description above feels like the church you have known and that we live even more deeply into this vision.  I also pray that this is the church that your children, grandchildren, and their children come to know.  As you pray for discernment, I also ask that you pray for the church, that it may not only continue to be what it has been, but that she may be a place of deeper and wider communion and may shine more brightly God’s orienting and assuring light.

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