Happy Saturday! I hope that you are able to do something enjoyable this weekend, and I hope to see you at worship tomorrow morning. I will be doing a long run on Saturday and have hopefully recovered enough to be able to go the distance.
Sometimes “going the distance” is about more that a run. It can encompass any activity, it can encompass life.
One reason I enjoy endurance sports is that hard efforts remind me that I can do hard things.
For a congregation in transition, you’ve been going the distance as you work to be ready to call your new pastor. The next few weeks are important for that work so I hope to see you at the workshop that the Transition Team is hosting after worship. Your participation, your voice, is important.
Last week I wrote about imagining our future church. Within this imagining, I know that the Holy Spirit is present and guiding. We just need to listen. To listen as a community requires the community and I look forward to our listening together.
This week’s gospel challenges us to look at who is important to us.
Who do we most readily welcome? As we think about welcome, what does that mean for us? Is it to be friendly on a Sunday morning? I hope so. But I also want us to think about what else it means to be welcoming. How do we live as a community that embraces those who God brings to us? How do we welcome those who may not think the same us we do? What limits do we have in our ability to welcome? We’ll explore these questions a bit in worship.
Meanwhile, I am repeating some questions I asked last week. I hope you can think about them and then join us at the Transition Team workshop tomorrow.
I invite you to think about what it might look like for American Lutheran Church to be known for love of God and neighbors. What would this church be doing? Who would be present? What would be most important to this community? What would you be doing in this community?
Most weeks I invite you to respond to my thoughts. Some of you respond in person and I am thankful for that. This week I have a request. Can you please ask these questions of yourself AND of someone you know who is not part of this congregation. Then send me an email and share your answers. I hope to hear from you in the next couple of days.
Last week, one of you responded with an email answer to these questions. This week you can respond in-person to similar questions at the workshop. Let’s do this visioning and imagining together.
Pastor Nancy
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