When Life is Different
We continue to search for the right Director of Children, Youth, and Family Ministries to partner with First Church. We have hope for a great fit amongst our current candidates and look forward to updating everyone as soon as we are able! In the meantime, Pastor Rachel and I have been coordinating our family discipleship with the support of about 20 incredible volunteers.
We have gotten to share time with our young folks each Sunday morning and night, pondering trust, relationships, death, and how many kinds of UNO we have collectively played (there are apparently 700+ UNO versions and spinoffs). Reaching back to my Youth Director and intergenerational discipleship era has been a joy and a stretch!
This blast from the past has prompted reflection of not only how different this ministry is from the time when I was a Youth Director, but also since I was a young person myself.
Back in my day (something I can officially say), life was different.
We had a modest but mighty Sunday School. We would journey with a pair of teachers all year; these teachers grew to be dear, trusted adults for us. As far as I can remember, we were all every-weekers: the teachers, the students, the parents or grandparents. The church programs were fairly unilateral. No in-church or out-of-church commitments asked for our time or attention in those protected Sunday morning hours.
None of our sports, theater, lessons, or study prep were scheduled Sunday morning, making it that much easier to navigate the energy and transportation necessary to make it to the church on time.
Today, life is different.
Families today wade through tremendous demands for their time, with Sundays sometimes the only opportunity to catch their breath for just a moment. Wonderful community groups, competitive sports, important fine arts opportunities, and more are scheduled on Sunday mornings, prompting difficult choices and complicated schedules.
I am amazed by and thankful for all that our families and individuals juggle and their continued commitment to keep a life of faith in community in the messy mix!
Still, it is different (from what I’ve grown up with, anyhow. Perhaps the same is for you).
Even so, I am delighted by and hopeful for the ways that the Spirit nudges our community to build up and support one another, even as it looks different from the building up and support that formed me as a disciple in the world.
Yes, attendance looks different, certain programs may falter where they did not struggle before, and the way we are church together will continue to change. And. From where I sit, I can see that the commitment of the heart remains.
In this I rejoice!
It does not take away the nostalgia or even grief from the cheerful, fruitful ministry that has formed us and our community in years past. However, a trust in how new fruitfulness shows up today and may rise in coming years allows us to celebrate our life today with gratitude and anticipate our life tomorrow with hope.
This spiritual practice of trust in new fruitfulness applies not only to the stewardship of our time, presence, and energy, but also our financial resources. To cling tightly to our possessions so that we might preserve our current or a past way of life is to close ourselves off to the trust that God can do good with what we have been given (as different as it may look, and as much as we enjoyed the stability and security of how things have been in the past).
For us, stewardship is more than just managing resources or fulfilling a budget. It is a spiritual exercise in trust, generosity, community, and hope. Giving of ourselves and the resources that God has entrusted to us is foundational to our faith formation, just as those early Sunday School years were foundational to the faith formation of so many of us.
On this Stewardship Sunday, I invite you to come to worship having prayed over your financial commitment to our community and the ministry we are proud to share. In response to God’s generosity, we’ll have an opportunity to bring our giving estimates forward during the offering and will pray in dedication over them. We are very grateful to those who have already submitted a giving estimate and will have a card for you to bring forward for dedication.
For more information on this year’s Stewardship Campaign, head to our website.
We come together with what we have, and we come together with what we need: those who can give much, those who can give little, those who are giving for the first time, those who are struggling to give anything at all, and all who participate in the life of our community in ways that are meaningful to them.
Whether it means getting to Sunday School whenever you can make it work or worshipping with the community whenever you are in town, if our hearts are generous with the love of God that is shared with us then we are still doing this good work together.
We continue, as Beth Estock and Paul Nixon write, to cling to the core of our faith that is living and acting out of radical and ridiculous trust in that good future that God has prepared for God’s people – even as that future is not yet revealed.
Let’s discover our next chapter together!
In hope,
Pastor Karyn