The Church in the Heart of the City
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Messiah, the one who walks with us and shepherds us as we learn to follow him in faith.
With summer in the rear-view mirror and a new church year underway, I’m reflecting on what it means for us to be the church in this community. If you’ve known me over these last 6+ years, you know that talking about the church is one of my favorite things—it’s not an overstatement to say that I love the role of the local church, especially downtown churches.
Center-city churches work differently to suburban or rural churches. We have more going on around us, and sometimes that poses challenges to making our way into town for worship on Sundays. We experience some disruptions that don’t usually happen in suburban churches—sometimes our local street population can participate in unexpected ways on Sunday mornings. Even the economics of churches like ours is different. Costs are generally higher, and so often times it takes some visionary leadership to see how a facility can generate revenue (more on that in a month or so!).
Alongside the challenges, there are so many possibilities and opportunities for churches in busy places. Our church serves the neighborhood in all kinds of ways: 40 Prado, SLO4Home, and Literacy for Life, just to name a few. It reminds me of a critical question that all churches should ask themselves:
If your church disappeared from your community tomorrow, would anyone miss you?
It’s a harsh question, but a necessary one. Christians aren’t called to gather and hide from the world, we’re called to go out and serve it—to love and care and sacrifice for the world, just as Jesus did. That’s why we get to call ourselves the Body of Christ.
I like the answers we could give to that hard question, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop looking for more ways to serve. In this coming year we’ll continue to grow the ministries we have, and take some steps to create new ones, too. This Sunday we’ll kickoff our new church year, with opportunities for everyone to find their place in the work we’re doing. Don’t miss this Kickoff Sunday!
And so welcome to this new church year. I can’t wait to see what we do, and what God does in us and through us.
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John