WHAT’S NEXT?

Dear Friends in Christ:

In the fall of 2003 I wrote Where Do We Go From Here? for the front page of The Apostle. After he had read it, Bruce Moden told me that it should have been called Where Do We Grow From Here? Bruce was right and I changed the title on our website. We are at a similar point in our parish five years later. We have had a capital campaign and have made some significant and much-needed improvements – a new entryway from the parking lot, new heating systems, a new roof on the Barker Building, new paint in many rooms (thanks to Tom Goergen), and new lighting fixtures (thanks to Jim Stegner) – and there will be more improvements this year. As I look at the improvements that have been made, I find myself asking, “What’s next?”

As we were preparing to launch our capital campaign, I wrote No Edifice Complex for the front page of The Apostle. The stewardship of the parish’s property is important, but it is stewardship for the sake of our participation in God’s mission in our community and the wider world, not stewardship for the sake of the edifice.

I am writing on the Monday before the Annual Meeting (already four days past The Apostle deadline!) At the Annual Meeting there will be discussion of a new parish initiative, which I have been calling Beyond Buildings, although I’m sure that there will be other and better names suggested at the Annual Meeting. This proposed initiative is, as I see it, intended to focus our attention and our energy on finding new ways and revitalizing existing ways of sharing in God’s mission. Here are a few of the places that I see as very promising areas for new and renewed mission:

v     Our welcoming of new members and including them in our life together

v     Our programs for children and youth

v     Our participation in and support of outreach ministries in this community and beyond

v     Our caring for one another

These four areas, and others that you might name, are areas where we are already involved in faithful and effective ministry, but I believe that God wants us to be open to the leading of the Spirit as we engage in ministry.

I do not know where God will lead us over the next few years. I am very much aware of what the Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent refers to as "the swift and varied changes of the world...." But I also that collect’s prayer that "our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found...." As face the challenges of ministry in these changing times, we are invited to fix our hearts on the love of God which we know in Jesus Christ. With our hearts fixed there we need never that the challenges will be too great for us.

There is work to be done in this world and I believe that God is calling us to share in that work of witnessing to the Good News of God’s love Incarnate in Jesus, witnessing in both what we say and what we do. There is a saying from the civil rights movement that is true for us as well: We are the people that we have bee waiting for.

Your elder brother,

Daniel