reflecting God’s love back to its source

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who shapes us with grace and love and purpose, into the people we are called to be.

Last Sunday I talked about worship as the practice of reflecting God’s love back to its source. I left you all with some homework: to tell someone a story about God, or God and you, or something about how God changed something in your life. I’ve been wondering in the days since how that went for you.

I’ll say that I’ve wrestled with what story I might tell if I had to do your homework. It’s not easy. On one hand the list of things God has changed or shaped in me is too long to consider. On the other, sometimes it’s hard to be sure where exactly God is—what God is up to.

But then I look around at this church, and I see so much of God’s hand at work here.

Over the last year and a half we have had to change just about everything we do: from how we meet, to how we give, to how we worship—and through it all you have come through. The challenge of the last near required three things that I hoped we could live into. We needed to be flexible and adaptable and creative, and that’s exactly what you all have been.

I’ve joked that before this current crisis, church people could spend a year or two choosing paint colors or debating how to arrange the decorations in the Sanctuary (maybe you’ve been a part of some of those discussions). We went from in-person services to recorded services in exactly one week, and over the next year learned new technologies that allowed us to worship together on Zoom, then in-person, adding the capabilities to livestream and still offer recorded service.

You know all of this, but as we think about our stories of what God has done in our midst, it’s worth telling a few more times.

As we enter this new year we’ll continue to embrace new things, even as we preserve and celebrate the traditions that define this place and make it special. It’s going to be a good year, full of challenges and second chances and maybe even a failure or two. It’s going to be a year of serving God faithfully and gaining some new stories of how God is working in our lives, both individually and as this community of faith.

Join us tonight for a new kind of Bible study, taught by Jen Rabenaldt and myself. Come to worship or watch us at home, and take hold of these opportunities to grow. Reflect on the Mission Study Survey—pray about where you think God is leading us in this next chapter of this church’s history.

If worship is reflecting God’s love back to its source, then join with each other to shine that glory in new ways. You’re all in my prayers. May God lead this church into a future that builds on its past, which is just as it should be.

Blessings to you and yours. Stay safe and healthy.

Pastor John