Something NEw
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who has walked with us and sustained us during this long season of disruption.
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
As anniversaries go, this one ought to be remembered, even if it’s nothing to celebrate.
Tuesday marked two years since we closed for COVID—it was in between the first and second services on March 15th, 2020. As the virus started to appear in the US we thought we could get one more Sunday in before having to make the decision to close, but we planned to record the services just in case. As it happened the first infections in SLO were reported that Sunday morning, so we cancelled the second service and sent a link to the congregation with the one recording we had.
It was the start of something new. And we continue to learn new lessons and skills.
Lent is the season for personal reflection and repentance where we need it, but it’s not all about us. This season is meant to reorder our lives so that Jesus occupies his rightful place as our deliverer and Lord—it’s meant to be a time where we re-learn how to listen for God’s voice. That’s not easy. There’s a lot of interfering noise.
In his Lent devotional, Show Me The Way, Henri Nouwen wrote this:
“...it is clear that we are usually surrounded by so much inner and outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us. We have become deaf, unable to know when God calls us and unable to understand in which direction he calls us. Thus our lives have become absurd. In the word 'absurd' we find the Latin word 'surdus,' which means 'deaf.' A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear.”
Among the many things I appreciate about the people of First Pres—the staff, leaders, and everyone who has participated—is the ways we’ve listened for God’s voice and leading over these past two years. We’ve considered questions and made decisions that most churches would take years to act on—we went from recorded services to Zoom to in-person worship, and along the way this church has demonstrated a capacity for creativity, flexibility and adaptability that I’ll bet you didn’t know you had.
The temptation back in early 2020, in the midst of some church conflict and facing a pandemic that threatened our core plans and practices, might have been to make ourselves deaf—to hear only our own voices—to become “absurd” as Nouwen describes it. It would have been easy for the people of this church to retreat to their corners and ignore everyone else. Some did. But the rest of you—the overwhelming majority of you—stayed and listened and learned and even thrived. Over these past two years you’ve developed new ways to gather, to praise, to grow, and even to serve. You should be hearing in that list: fellowship, worship, discipleship and mission—the expressions of a healthy community of Jesus followers.
And so while I can’t wish you a happy anniversary—that would diminish the terrible impact and suffering of the pandemic—I can invite you to be thankful for what God has taught us in these past two years. I can also honor the ways you have listened for God’s voice and acted in response. Well done, First Pres!
Blessings to you and yours. Stay safe and healthy. Our Lent journey continues.
Pastor John