leading that Kingdom work
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, who made us and redeemed us and calls us into service.
As we start a new church year, my first as your called pastor, I’m making plans for how we can work together to grow our ministry for the next generation. We have so much good work to do!
I want to develop my role as an equipping pastor—someone who helps identify gifts and calling, and works to grow both for service to Jesus. I love this part of my job.
In my relationship to the whole congregation, it’s my responsibility to communicate the wide range of opportunities for growing in spiritual maturity and effective service. That’s the focus of my teaching and preaching, my conversations and counseling, and (maybe most importantly) my listening. My role is to invite each person who makes First Pres their church home to hear God’s call, and then to help them live into that call in a meaningful way.
Here's how I plan to do that.
My goal is to be in a cycle of relationship that follows this pattern:
To inspire,
To equip,
To resource,
To celebrate.
Preaching and teaching are my primary means of inspiration. That’s more than just getting excited about something—it’s helping people find the place where God is stirring in their hearts.
Equipping is helping people walk through the process of praying about their calling, and growing spiritually in a way that allows them to step into a new role in ministry or service.
Resourcing is helping to organize the space and/or funding that is needed in order for this new area of service can be most effective.
Finally, it’s good for us to celebrate when some new effort or ministry bears fruit in the congregation or community. We don’t do this part enough!
If you’ve read this far, here’s my invitation: In addition to the way I will be doing this work with the whole congregation, I would like to enter into a more focused process of growth and training with ten people in the congregation. We’ll use the four steps to give shape to our work, and see where God might be calling you to deeper service. This will be a serious commitment—it will take time and effort and initiative. If this is something you’re interested in, please contact me at the church office, or by email: jdelia@fpcslo.org.
First Pres SLO has a future of service and impact in this community. Who wants to take the next steps toward leading that Kingdom work?
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
THank you!
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the one who loves us and loves when we celebrate together.
This is a very different kind of Midweek…
Shelley and I are still basking in the outpouring of love we received from you this past weekend. It’s not often that a church hosts the wedding if its own pastor, but that just made it all the more special to both of us. The ceremony was beautiful, and the reception was over-the-top wonderful. So many tasty things to sample, all in the company of the church we love.
To those who planned and organized the reception on Saturday—Evelyn Ruehr, Margo Smith, and Kathy Wolff—we offer our heartfelt thanks. We know that took a lot of time and effort and planning, and we’re so grateful.
To the people who brought so many wonderful dishes to share, thank you so much! The food was lovely and I’m so glad we could all share in that time together.
To the staff who came out and made Saturday work smoothly and beautifully—Jen, Andrew V., Andrew H., and Brooke—I thank you. I know it’s a part of the job, but we really appreciate how you all went the extra mile for us.
Shelley and I are looking forward to life getting back to some kind of normal, but we’ll never forget the way you shared your love and blessings with us on Saturday. Thank you so much!
Blessings to you, and I’ll see you soon.
Pastor John and Shelley
ON this date in 1799
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who came and lived and loved and spoke to us in language we can understand. That may be one of the most important gifts he gave us.
The Rosetta Stone was discovered on this date in 1799. Now if your high school history is failing you today, the Rosetta stone is a large slab of rock with a bunch of writing on it. The inscriptions on the stone remain one of the most significant discoveries ever made.
There are three languages on the Stone: Greek, Egyptian Demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the Greek inscription identifies it as an announcement of a law from an ancient ruler, and also that all three inscriptions say the same thing, only in different languages.
With me so far?
Greek and Demotic were languages that were already known, but for 2000 years the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs were lost…that is, until the Rosetta Stone gave scholars a tool for translation. This single discovery unlocked the history of Egypt, of the Pharaohs, and the entire Mediterranean region.
Why is that important?
Apart from the benefits to historians and language scholars, the Rosetta Stone reminds us that sometimes our message gets lost over time. We can get so busy doing other things that the reason we do them can get buried or covered or hidden from our view. When that happens, we find ourselves going through motions that don’t have any meaning.
I think that happens in churches.
That’s why we try to stay close to the central messages of the Bible, and it’s why we place the highest value on the words of Jesus. The things that Jesus says are most important are the things that are meant to be most important to us. We remind ourselves of his words and teachings as a way of staying focused on who God has called us to be as individual followers of Jesus, and as the church.
When those teachings get buried or covered or hidden from our view, it’s our job to rediscover them—to read them and reflect on them and to make sure that our actions aren’t just going through any motions, but are focused on the purpose of sharing Christ’s love with our neighbors.
And so we read the Bible, we listen to teachers and even preachers (just seeing if you’re awake). We do what we need to do to keep the message of Jesus from being lost in all our business and busyness. We do all of that in order to be faithful disciples of the one who shared the message of the gospel with us in the first place.
The Rosetta Stone unlocked a language and culture which had been lost for centuries. I’m thinking it would be better if all that history hadn’t been lost in the first place. The same is true for us and for the gospel of Jesus.
Rediscovering it is great. Not losing it in the first place is even better.
Let me encourage you as we enter into the heart of the summer season, to reflect on the message of our faith. Familiar passages like John 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 get at the heart of the message. One of my seminary professors summed it up this way:
“The ‘gospel’ then is the message that God acted in and through Jesus Messiah, God’s anointed one, to effect God’s promise of shalom, salvation, God’s reign.” Robert Guelich
If you’re in the mood to wrestle with a sentence for a while, you could do a lot worse than that one! Spend a little time with it—maybe keep it and commit it to memory.
Whatever you do, hold on to the message of the gospel—however you understand it. Let me know what I can do to help you or encourage you in that discipline—this is a vital part of the journey we’re on together.
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
Jetlag
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Jetlag is a strange thing. When you travel far enough out of your time zone your body reacts in all kinds of strange ways. You get used to a certain rhythm and clock, and then you tinker with it and your body and mind team up in a rebellion. It’s strange.
We’re just back in SLO after three weeks in Italy. It was a great time of family connection and sightseeing and eating wonderful food. The trip was built around celebrating my Mom’s 80th birthday, so every time we gathered for dinner we had cake and singing and another little party. It was a blast.
Being back home is very good, too. As I wrote in the Kirk last month, vacations are opportunities to step back, to refresh, and to get out of patterns or ruts that keep me from doing my best work. I’m excited about the coming year, and ready to get started.
But there’s still the jetlag to overcome.
Coming west to the US is easier than going the other direction, but it’s still a challenge. When we get to California from Italy, we have a hard time staying awake beyond 8 or 9pm for a while, but we tend to wake up rested and ready to go. Who cares if it’s 4am? When you go east you can’t get to sleep until 2 or 3am, and then it feels impossible to wake up. The third night and the day following are always the worst for me, so I’m ready for that. I feel sluggish and off-kilter right now, but it’ll go away soon.
Why talk about jetlag? Because it seems to me, even though it makes us tired and grumpy and out of sorts, that jetlag is a persistent reminder that we left places and people behind. It reminds me of the sights we visited and the cousins we got to spend time with. The feeling of jetlag as I come back to SLO makes me tired and foggy, even if just for a few days. Part of me is living in both places this week. I’m back at work here, but part of my body—my rhythm of sleeping and eating and being productive—is still in Italy. It’ll go away by the weekend, but for now I’m allowing it to remind me of the great time I had with my family, and the beautiful things I got to see.
When my son was little and we moved to the UK, he was concerned that we might love London as much as we loved our hometown of Burbank. As I scrambled to think of something to say in response, I ended up telling him that we were blessed to have two places to live that we loved equally. As it came out of my mouth it occurred to me that it was true. How gracious God was to call us to a place far away from what we knew and loved, and to teach us to love it there, too. I wonder if that’s the gift that missionaries receive in order to survive the amazing work that they do. I know that traveling gives me a little bit of that feeling.
This sense of being in two places at once reminds me that there are people all over the world living their lives, doing their work, and communing with friends and family. The world is a big and messy and complicated place, and seeing some of it teaches us that our ways are just that—our ways. The billions of people outside our own culture have their own ways, and it’s part of our calling as Christians is to learn to see a listen and experience some of those ways, so we can do a better job of loving our neighbors.
That’s my jetlagged reflection for you all today. I’m looking forward to seeing you all again this Sunday!
Blessings until then,
Pastor John
Consider this an invitation
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the one who gave everything for us, and who asks us to follow his lead.
What a week it has been!
We said goodbye to a dear saint on Saturday—it was a joy-filled service of remembrance and hope. On Sunday we welcomed a group of new members, and were reminded that God is still working in us and through us to build community and grow our vision for ministry.
And then there was the music. We celebrated the work of Scott Glysson and both the voice and bell choirs—the sounds spilled out into the street as we sang our praises in worship. It was beautiful.
I say all of that because our whole church was on display this week—so many of our ministries are bearing fruit, and it was exciting to be a part of it.
It’s a perfect time for a gentle reminder of how important your giving is to the work we do together. We’re coming up on the mid-point of the year, and our giving is running behind our costs for ministry and good stewardship of our facility. If you’ve made a pledge for this year, let me invite you to make sure it’s up-to-date. I’ll dare to go even further than that: if you made a pledge for this year, join me in increasing it by 10 or 15%.
If you haven’t made a pledge for this year, I’m happy to invite you to do so. It’s an important part of the life of discipleship when it’s lived out in community. It’s also an opportunity to share in the joy of Sundays like the one we just had. We’re attaching a link to a pledge form, just in case you don’t have one!
The church of Jesus Christ isn’t about money, but it would be foolish to think that money doesn’t matter. The work we do, the people we employ, the ministries we support—all of that requires a group of faithful, committed people to provide financial support. I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t say that to you.
As we move into summer it may seem like things have slowed down, but nothing could be further from the truth. Some programs may take a break, but we’re working hard to create new ministries and to grow the ones we already have in anticipation of the start of a new church year this fall.
Consider this an invitation to play a bigger part in these exciting plans.
Giving is a very personal thing, but that doesn’t mean we avoid the conversation. I encourage you to prayerfully consider this important part of your life at First Pres. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me or Jen or one of the elders about what we’re doing. Our commitment is to make the best and most careful use of your support, even as we leap out in faith and in new areas of service.
Blessings to you and yours as you pray about this important commitment!
Pastor John
Maybe you know someone…
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
(Trigger warning: I speak about depression and suicide in this note.)
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Messiah, the one who offers healing and reconciliation and peace in our times of struggle.
It’s the last day of May, and so I want to offer one more moment of attention for Mental Health Awareness Month.
Among the many statistics that pass in front of me as I work, few are more troubling than the ones attached to young people taking their own lives. It happens for a variety of reasons: depression, anxiety, trauma, and issues related to sexuality and identity. Veterans who have seen the horrors of war are committing suicide in astonishing numbers.
Maybe you know someone…
I grew up with a guy who was one of the funniest and most charming people I’ve ever known. He was one of a small group of friends of mine who grew up in church together and stayed friends long into adulthood. He battled issues of addiction and depression, though he kept them covered up. When we got the call that he had died we were shocked, but as his hidden story came to light we began to understand.
His story is important to me. It’s precious because I loved him and miss him still, even though it’s been 12 years already. I said at his funeral that I couldn’t imagine a world without him in it, and even though I’ve had to do just that, he’s still the missing person at our gatherings.
But his story is also important because he reminds me that we never really know when people around us might be suffering from mental health issues. Increasing our awareness of the different ways people are hurting can give us fresh eyes to notice and care and help. That’s why we keep mentioning it in our services and newsletters and Midweek Reflections. Part of loving our neighbors is learning to help them and encourage them in times of distress and despair—to offer our own hands and voices in places where they can soothe and heal.
It doesn’t always work.
Sometimes the best we can do is show our care even when it doesn’t magically take someone’s pain away. If we only helped when it solved problems, people with deep and unsolvable issues wouldn’t feel our compassion along the way. That would be a shame.
And so I invite you to make use of the resources we’ve been sharing. Be a part of a new way of addressing issues of mental health, and of serving those who suffer. Some of those resources are a click away on this page. Read them. Save them. Share them.
Maybe one way to help is to pray for those around you who may be struggling. You don’t have to know their names—God can manage that part—just caring enough to lift people up in prayer can be enough. It will bless them, and it will also soften your heart toward people in pain.
Blessings to you and yours, and to those in our midst who need a little help,
Pastor John
Mental Health
Hi - it's Jen - taking a turn with the midweek…
I wanted to start by thanking everyone who supported Youth Sunday, the Memorial Tree and Eagle Scout dedication, and the Grad Honor Banquet. It was an excellent day and we are so grateful for you!
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I wanted to continue the conversation here and pray the conversations will continue long after the month has ended.
When we think about cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, we don't wait years to treat them.
We start before Stage 4—we begin with prevention. When people are in the first stage of those diseases and are beginning to show signs or symptoms, we try immediately to reverse these symptoms. We don't ignore them. In fact, we develop a plan of action to reverse and sometimes stop the progression of the disease. So why don't we do the same for individuals who are dealing with mental illness? Statistics tell us,
1 in 5 American adults will have a diagnosable mental health condition in any given year.
50 percent of Americans will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition sometime in their life, and half of those people will develop conditions by the age of 14. Read that again, by the age of 14.
Catching mental health conditions early is known as Early Identification and Intervention. However, many times people may not realize that their symptoms are being caused by a mental health condition or feel ashamed to pursue help because of the stigma associated with mental illness. It's up to all of us to know the signs and take action so that mental illnesses can be caught early and treated, and we can live up to our full potential. Even though mental illnesses may require intensive, long-term treatment and a lot of hard work at the later stages, people can and do recover and reclaim their lives.
One way to see if you may be experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition is to take a screening. If you are interested in taking a screening or curious about what that looks like you can visit www.mhascreening.org to take a quick, confidential screening for a variety of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, mood disorders or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Use your screening results to start a conversation with your primary care provider, or a trusted friend or family member and begin to plan a course of action for addressing your mental health.
Remember, mental health conditions are not only common, they are treatable. There is a wide variety of treatment options for mental illnesses ranging from talk therapy to medication to peer support, and it may take some time for a person to find the right treatment or combination of treatments that works best for them. But when they do, the results can be truly amazing and life changing.
At First Pres we are committed to continuing the conversations. We are working towards becoming a resource center for Mental Health. We want people to know First Pres is a safe place to come and seek help and resources. One day we hope to expand what is available, for those in need of Mental Health services, here on our campus. Please continue to pray for this endeavor and please continue to have those conversations. We want to become part of breaking the "stigma".
Christian Ed has committed to having age appropriate conversations in all of our Programs. As you heard on Youth Sunday - it matters! Together we can do hard things. As we continue to Love God, Love People and Do Things we encourage you "Do Things", through love, and become part of tackling Mental Health head on. Maybe your own, maybe a family members maybe a neighbors. All are welcome at First Pres, in your belief and your doubt. God is ok with all of it.
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
-Jeremiah 29:11
Because I have been there I want others to be able to look to me, not with pity but with hope. Hope that the strength, that God has given me, will become their hope and their strength. Let's all become part of the hope and strength for the future. Not only for ourselves but for the Church here on the corner of Marsh and Morro.
With all kinds of hope,
Jen Rabenaldt
Christ’s Ascension
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who came and loved and died and rose again, then left so we could become his reflection here on earth.
It’s that leaving that we reflect on today. Tomorrow is Ascension Day, a little known and largely ignored date in the Christian calendar. Ascension Day commemorates the way Jesus left the earth, and it marks a crucial shift in the way God interacts with Creation. Up until the Ascension of Jesus, the Bible’s narrative is focused on “place”—literally, on where God lives and where the people of God reside. A garden, an Ark, the Promised Land, the Temple—you get the idea. Jerusalem becomes the central place in the story of God’s love for humanity…that is, until the Ascension.
We see the story of Christ’s Ascension in Luke 24:50-53. Some background will help here. The events of Holy Week come to their big finish with the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross. The disciples were amazed and emboldened—the same people who ran away or fell asleep when the chips were down suddenly became brave preachers and healers, even at the risk of their own lives.
The Bible tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus spent 50 days with his followers, spending virtually all of it talking about his favorite topic: the Kingdom of God. We know (because I keep going on about it) that the Kingdom of God is actually the reign of God—God’s demonstration of ongoing sovereign power over all times and places and things, even death. The values of the Kingdom are the focus of Jesus’s teaching in the parables, and they are the values we’re called to live as disciples of Jesus.
With me so far?
So why is the Ascension so important? It would have been easy to leave the risen Jesus on a throne in Jerusalem for all time. So many things would have been simpler—Jews would have come to see Jesus as their Messiah. People of other faiths might have seen how the deities of their religions point to the loving gospel of Jesus. We all would have been making peaceful pilgrimages to Jerusalem to see Jesus, because the place where he lived would be the most important place in the world. The holy land would have become The Holy Land, and everything and every person would have been focused there.
I think that’s why Jesus chose to leave the way he did.
Between the Ascension and its partner day, Pentecost, God does something dramatic—God changes the way we understand our relationship to the one who made us and loves us. After the Ascension
our relationship to God is no longer rooted in a place. Once the Holy
Spirit comes to empower and energize the church, the presence of God isn’t limited to a box or a Temple or a country. Each of us carries that presence with us, which is meant to be a blessing for every person and nation in the world. That has huge implications for us and for the rest of the world. Why?
Because after the Ascension and Pentecost, there isn’t any specific holy
land anymore.
After the Ascension and Pentecost, it’s all Holy Land—every beautiful, troubled, broken, glorious inch of this earth is Holy Land, rich with the presence of God because we’re in it.
How amazing is that?
The invitation to us, as we move toward the birthday of the Church at Pentecost—the invitation and challenge to us is to live our lives as if God’s presence is with us and in us. When we do that, even for brief moments, we reflect the love and reconciling mercy of God to a world that needs to see it—needs to experience it.
Make that your own prayer and action this week…and every week. Live your life in the presence of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. More than any program or event or gimmick, that’s what will grow our church. That’s what will extend the love of God to our neighbors and to each other.
May that be true for all of us. Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
the business of transformative change
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace, peace and justice to you in the name of Jesus, the one who gave his life so that we could learn to live in a new way, with new values, and new hope.
This is a different sort of Midweek Reflection. I was watching one of the new promotional videos from the Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to share it with you. I’ve said for years that I believe local churches can be the glue that holds communities together, and a force for transforming those communities into more just and whole places.
Turns out the PCUSA believes the same thing!
Near the end of this video J. Herbert Nelson, the Stated Clerk for our whole denomination says this:
“We have to be about the business of transformative change in every phase of our life.”
The Gospel of Jesus the Messiah invites us to bring his message into every area of our lives, and also to every home and alley and tent and street corner in our community.
That’s what the church is here for.
That’s what we’re here for.
Take a look at this video (click here)—it’s about six minutes long. See what God might be saying to you about how we can bring transformative change to our church and our community.
Blessings to you and yours, as we enter a new season of service together.
the very opposite of Christian hope
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the Risen Christ, the one whose life shows us how to love and serve and sacrifice…and thrive.
I share more than a few characteristics of my parents. My dad was a history teacher who loved to cook and to listen to music and watch movies and argue politics (if you know me then that should sound familiar to you). My mom taught English and prepared me well for the writing I had to do in college and graduate school. She’s also a relentlessly positive person—she can find a silver lining on just about anything, and most of the time it’s really there.
It's fun to see the ways in which I inherited that mostly positive outlook from my mom. I expect good things to happen—I expect people to be true to their word and to behave in a way that benefits others. Now don’t get me wrong, more than 30 years in ministry has taught me that bad things happen sometimes, that people can be deceptive and even cruel in the ways they interact with each other. I know bad things happen, but I choose to be surprised when they do, rather than giving in to the feeling that those negative outcomes are inevitable.
Because of that, one of my least favorite traits in other people is cynicism.
Now the dictionary has a definition of what this means. It says that to be cynical “implies having a sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity…to have a deep-rooted distrust and dislike of human beings and their society.”
See what I mean? What an awful way to live—it feels hopeless to me.
The punk rock musician and poet Nick Cave had something to say about the impact of cynicism. The tragedies he experienced in his life could have broken any of us—in the years that followed he could have retreated to the darkest of places, but he didn’t. In a moment of reflection he wrote this:
Sitting around in my own mess, [angry] at the world, disdainful of the people in it, and thinking my contempt for things somehow amounted to something, that it had some kind of nobility, hating this thing here, and that thing there, and that other thing over there, and making sure that everybody around me knew it, not just knew, but felt it too, contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don’t know, in the end, sort of dumb.
Years later he wrote more about the dangerous trap of cynicism, and I think he has something to say to us church people. He wrote:
Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.
Cynicism is the very opposite of Christian hope. And the problem is that it’s easy—it takes little thought or effort, and yet it can ruin relationships and communities with ease. In a faith built on love and sacrifice and forgiveness, there simply isn’t any room for that sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity,” or to have a “deep-rooted distrust and dislike of human beings and their society.”
That’s not why Jesus came.
That’s not why Jesus died.
That’s not why Jesus rose again.
It’s tempting to respond to being disappointed by someone or wounded by someone to allow your capacity to trust to wither and fade away. I know that some of that has happened here in this church. In this season of Easter it’s my job—and my pleasure—to remind you that you do not have to be bound by that past. Holding on to the courage to trust is our healthy and faithful response to the miracle of the resurrection. Why?
Because no one had more reason to be cynical and hopeless than Jesus. Betrayed by friends and left alone to die, he came out of the tomb ready to give everyone (everyone) a second chance…and a third, and a fourth, and a…
During this Easter season, and as we prepare for a new chapter in this church’s history, let me invite you to leave your cynicism behind—leave your lack of trust and hope behind. We’re all getting another chance to be the church of Jesus Messiah. Let’s take it.
Blessings to you as we walk in the miracle of Easter,
Pastor John
Christ is risen
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the Risen One, Jesus the Messiah, who lived and loved and served and died…and rose again, proving that God has authority over all things, even death.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
What a joy-filled time we had on Easter Sunday! The Sunrise Service at the Stapps’ home was beautiful, and the sanctuary was full for our 10am celebration, complete with horns and timpani and our wonderful choir. After all the reflecting and repenting of Lent, it was wonderful to let loose and sing our Alleluias and say together:
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
After all the waiting, we finally got to celebrate the Empty Tomb.
Now what?
It’s easy to feel a letdown after such a huge celebration. It’s easy to follow up the mountain top of Easter with a descent into the reality of our everyday lives, filled with problems and struggles and even disappointments.
Christ is risen! (I’ll wait)—now what do I do?
Part of truly experiencing Easter is soaking up what that special day represents. Easter means that God can be trusted to have power over death, and that’s meant to be an enormous source of joy for us. But it doesn’t mean that all of our problems magically disappear. Easter requires of us the capacity to trust that God will make good on the promises we see in the Bible, and that requires us to know those promises. Otherwise, we miss the point of the resurrection.
Henry Nouwen wrote this in celebration of Easter:
Easter brings the awareness that God is present even when his presence is not directly noticed. Easter brings the good news that, although things seem to get worse in the world, the Evil One has already been overcome. Easter allows us to affirm that although God seems very distant and although we remain preoccupied with many little things, our Lord walks with us on the road and keeps explaining the Scriptures to us.
The key is for us always to remember that something important happens in the resurrection of Jesus—something is wholly (and holy) different about us and about Creation. That means that even when God might feel distant, we have seen the Easter miracle and we know that we’re not alone. For the people of the resurrection (that’s us), hope is the only option. Karol Wojtyła, whom we know as Pope John Paul II, wrote this:
“Do not abandon yourselves to despair.
We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
And so the answer to the “now what” question is this: Even when this life does its best to get in the way of our Easter joy, our job is to put our faith in the resurrected Messiah, and to keep singing our hallelujahs.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
Thank God!
Blessings to you this Easter season,
Pastor John
The Love of God
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the one who walked into Jerusalem hailed as a King, only to be arrested and killed. We have to find our own role in that series of events, even if it takes us to dark places.
It’s that idea of darkness that catches me today. Holy Week is a name we give to the last few days of Jesus’ life—from his entry on Palm Sunday to his burial on Good Friday. We know the events along the way—they come to us again every year at this time. We know the events, but we can’t escape them as we close the season of Lent and enter into the joy of Easter.
Not so fast, though.
It’s the betrayal of Jesus by a friend, and the unjust sentence carried out upon him, that plunge us into the darkness of the last days of Holy Week. In darkness we can’t see, and even worse, in darkness we can’t be seen. It’s good for us to pass through a few days like this so that we truly understand what happened, and what’s happening. It’s good, but it doesn’t feel very good.
Hiding in the darkness is our default position—it’s been like that since the story of the Garden of Eden. We hide when we don’t want our worst places to be seen by God or anyone else. We hide in the shadows so that no one sees things we think will ruin us in their eyes and separate us from God. Again, it’s good for us to pass through a few days like this, if only to remind ourselves of just how far Jesus went to redeem us fully—to cleanse us from anything that would try to keep us from the love of God, even when it’s us.
Henri Nouwen gets at this idea of seeing, and being seen, in his Lent devotional for today:
I gradually realize that I want to be seen by you, to dwell under your caring gaze, and to grow strong and gentle in your sight. Lord, let me see what you see—the love of God and the suffering of people so that my eyes may become more and more like yours, eyes that can heal wounded hearts.
Wait, what?
It’s not just seeing and being seen that this journey with Jesus brings, it’s seeing in a way that extends God’s healing to anyone we encounter. As with most things, God’s version of this is deeper and more meaningful than our simple wish to be restored. We’re not put back in place or set back on our feet. No, we ask to see again so that our eyes are more tuned to the people around us who hurt, who despair, who need. We ask for our healed eyes back so that we can become agents of that healing for others.
The Bible has a theme, and it runs from start to finish with reminders along the way. God blesses us, and sends us out to be a blessing to others. We say it here almost every week: Love God, love others, and do things. It’s in that blend of loving God and each other and doing something about it—it’s in that mix that we experience resurrection.
In these last few days of Lent, pray the prayer that Nouwen writes so beautifully. Pray that God will take away the darkness—that God will see us and restore our own capacity to see. I wonder what God could do with a restored congregation of people who have eyes for the needs around us. I wonder… Pray that God will restore the light of your faith, and the faith of your neighbors.
Part of our celebration of that dawning light is our Easter Sunrise Service, held again this year at the home of Garett and Amy Stapp. We invite you to come and see the sunrise as we worship together and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus once more.
Blessings to you this Holy Week,
Pastor John
prepare our hearts for the Easter miracle
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Messiah, the one whose footsteps we follow as we make our way to Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Our Lenten season is coming to an end, almost. This time of reflection and repentance as we prepare our hearts for the Easter miracle is different every year, because we’re different every year. How has it been different for you?
The events of Holy Week and Easter are a part of a wider drama that includes the Ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. They’re all connected, because they have to do with God’s work to redeem the earth, and also our calling to continue that mission now, today, wherever we might be.
It’s a big deal.
In Henri Nouwen’s reading for today he writes this:
Jesus sends the Spirit so that we may be led to the full truth of the divine life. Truth does not mean an idea, concept or doctrine, but the true relationship. To be led into the truth is to be led into the same relationship that Jesus has with the Father; it is to enter into a divine betrothal.
Sometimes Nouwen finds a path to the heart that pierces my defenses and opens me to the meaning of Jesus. This is one of those word paths. We are called to a relationship. Not only that, but we’re called into the same relationship that Jesus has with his Father. And when we open ourselves to that experience, it’s like a divine betrothal.
A divine betrothal.
Betrothal used to mean something different than being engaged. To be engaged was to express an intention to marry, but a betrothal was a contract that began the process of completing the marriage contract.
God invites us not just to be his intended, but to be his betrothed.
Maybe my own marriage this past year has made me more aware of this kind of language—maybe it affects me because of my own experience. But we are all invited to this deep, connected relationship with God, whatever our own life path might be. This divine betrothal is for everyone. Everyone.
As you make use of these last days of Lent in your own life—as you do the reflecting and repenting and reordering that the season invites—open yourself to this deep connection that God offers. Lean into the relationship that Jesus has with the Father, as you deepen your own relationship with God. Nouwen offers this prayer at the end of the reading:
Dear Lord, you are the Truth.
When I keep myself rooted in you, I will live in the Truth.
Help me, Lord, to live a truthful life,
a life in which I am guided not by popularity, public opinion,
current fashion, or convenience,
but by a knowledge that comes from knowing you.
Lord, bring me always closer to you.
Amen.
Blessings to you all,
Pastor John
who takes our brokenness and makes us whole
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, who takes our brokenness and makes us whole, and from our isolation draws us together.
It’s that together part that I want to talk about today.
For all our attempts to make the Christian faith about us as individuals, the Bible says a lot more about who we are in community. Our tendency is to think about “my sin” and “my gifts” and “what Jesus has done for me”. But God often thinks about us in fellowship with one another. We read about being God’s people, God’s called-out ones, and the gathering of the saints. It’s for community that we were made and redeemed, and we grow deeper in our faith when we stretch our “togetherness” muscles just a bit.
Henri Nouwen’s reading for this day in Lent says this:
This eternal community of love is the center and source of Jesus’ spiritual life, a life of uninterrupted attentiveness to the Father in the Spirit of love. It is from this life that Jesus’ ministry grows…We will never understand the full meaning of Jesus’ richly varied ministry unless we see how the many things are rooted in the one thing: listening to the Father in the intimacy of perfect love. When we see this, we will also realize that the goal of Jesus’ ministry is nothing less than to bring us into his most intimate community.
I wonder how often we think of the life of faith in this way.
If Nouwen is right, and I think he is, and “the goal of Jesus’ ministry is nothing less than to bring us into his most intimate community”, then our gatherings are much more than social get-togethers. Our gatherings represent something important and precious and even holy—they represent our participation in the intimacy of God’s love.
Now I tend to think that a lot of us would rather just think correct thoughtsabout God, and avoid the messy and revealing challenge of intimacy with God. I’ll admit that that’s true for me most of the time. But Lent is a season of reflection and repentance and internal housecleaning, and it’s in that process that we can make room for a closer, deeper, and more meaningful connection with God and each other.
True fellowship, what the early Christian writers called koinonia, is a way of experiencing the presence of God through the love and care and help we give and receive with other people. It’s a rich life, not in money but in depth and purpose. It’s a strong life, even if it requires us to show each other our weak and broken places. It’s a risky life, but one that promises to be worth the feeling of uncertainty when we enter into it.
In the end, koinonia fellowship is a place where we meet God through the gifts of our brothers and sisters, healed and restored from their own brokenness, and now sharing their lives with us. How meaningful. How wonderful.
As we enter the home stretch of the Lenten season, take these days to look into your own heart and see where God might be gently putting you back together. And as you experience that miracle of healing, take a chance and share it with the rest of us. It is in this community that we meet God, and in which others meet God in us.
Blessings to you during this season of Lent,
Pastor John
A little history
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who saved and saves us, sometimes even from ourselves.
A little history is in order. This is a longer-than-usual Midweek.
Today marks three years since I had to make a big decision. It was a Sunday, and we’d been tracking reports about a dangerous pandemic that was moving quickly around the country and around the world. It was just my tenth Sunday at the church—I was a part-time sabbatical replacement, and still getting to know you. We’d heard about the first COVID-19 cases in SLO, and needed to act to keep everyone as safe as possible. When the first service was finished, we decided not to stay open for the second.
Here was the first note that went out on March 15, 2020:
Update Regarding Today's Services
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Due to the positive test for the Coronavirus in SLO yesterday, we are limiting our services today. The first service will go on as planned. It will be recorded and distributed through a YouTube link on our webpage and through email. The Second Service today is cancelled, and so is our Adult Education class. We will have a plan in place for next week, and distribute it via email and the webpage. Thank you for your patience and prayers as we deal with a situation that is changing very quickly!
Blessings to you, and please follow the guidelines for staying healthy!
John D'Elia
It wasn’t long before we understood that the decision to close would carry on longer than we expected or hoped, and so two days later I sent this note, which turned out to be my very first Midweek Reflection:
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to all of you as we navigate some truly unexpected times. So much of what we’re doing is completely unprecedented, but I’m happy to say that the church staff and leadership are working hard to serve this wonderful church.
I’ve been working with our staff and talking through the things we need to do to serve our congregation and offer a weekly time of worship.
Some updates about our work at the church. Please read them all!
I’m going through the church directory and calling older members who live alone, with help from Jenifer and Kenneth. I’ve been working my way through the list today (I think I’m up to the “Ds”), and will continue until they all receive a personal call. If we contact someone who has a particular need, we’ll do our best to meet it.
Our worship leading team met today and planned this Sunday’s service. We’re going to record it on Friday, and have it ready for upload to YouTube on Sunday morning. It will have liturgy and music and a message, along with time and instructions for making an offering. The link to the service will be available three ways: by email, on the church website, and on our Facebook page. Ideally, we will try to send the order of service out by Friday—bear with us as we try to accomplish everything we want to do with quality and excellence.
We don’t know how long these restrictions will last, but we should all be prepared to share in recorded worship services through and including Easter.
Until further notice, all music rehearsals and Sunday morning singing are suspended. The same is true for all ministries, meetings and gatherings.
We prayed through the list of requests from Sunday’s service, and we will communicate a way for you to submit prayer requests even if we aren’t going to meet in person for a while.
Please remember to continue to support the church financially! You can mail checks to the church office, or use the online giving function on our website.
Keep us in your prayers, and please be patient as we learn to do some new things quickly. We’re committed to doing our very best to serve the people of this church and to provide a meaningful worship experience online.
Blessings to you all,
Pastor John and the First Pres SLO Team
I’m sharing this today because I think it’s important to mark important dates in our history, but I also want it to be an encouragement to you all. We’ve come through so much in the last three years, and we’ve also accomplished some great things together.
We posted a recorded service on the very first day we were closed. Within a week we were prerecording our Sunday worship services and posting them on YouTube and our website. Later we moved to Zoom services, allowing us to connect in real time—that was such a joyful moment. When we re-opened, we kept those other technologies, which allowed people to make choices for themselves about returning to public worship when they were ready. Our services are still in-person, livestreamed, and shared via recording.
Along the way we made use of Zoom not only for church business and leadership meetings, but also to stay connected. Bible studies, coffee gatherings, Bingo games, and even Christmas caroling—we stayed connected, even if the pandemic kept us apart.
I said then and I’ll say again: Never forget how creative and flexible and adaptable we were during the pandemic, because those skills and habits are going to help us grow now that it’s (mostly) over.
It’s been a very challenging three years, and through it all we learned new ways of being the church, with and for each other. As we move into this next season as First Pres SLO, my prayer is that we’ll approach it with the same creativity, flexibility, and willingness to adapt that we learned in a time of crisis.
Through it all, the call on us is to love each other and our community, and to be an honest reflection of Jesus to the world. May that be so, today and always.
Blessings to you all,
Pastor John
season of reflection and repentance
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the one who invites us each Lenten season to join him in his journey to the Cross. We can bear this not because of our strength and courage, but because we know that the Cross isn’t the end of the story. Praise God for that!
In this season of reflection and repentance, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus—what it means to grow in understanding, and what it means to grow in service.
The quest to understand comes more naturally to me, how about you? Alongside whatever else I’ve done in my working life, I’ve always tried to devote some of my time and energy to reading and listening and learning—growing in what I can know (or think I know) about who God is. This is an important part of what it means to follow Christ—he wants us to struggle and wrestle with what his life meant and means.
It's the service part that is more of a discipline for me, but it creates such a sense of joy when I allow it the space it deserves. In Henri Nouwen’s Lent reader, Show Me The Way, he says this:
Joy and gratitude are the qualities of the heart by which we recognize those who are committed to a life of service in the path of Jesus Christ…Wherever we see real service we also see joy, because in the midst of service a divine presence becomes visible and a gift is offered.
Isn’t that beautiful and challenging all at once?
When we commit ourselves to serving others, which is another way of loving our neighbors and doing things, our lives are transformed and we experience true joy and gratitude. That’s a worthy life goal if ever there was one!
During this season of Lent, as we do some interior cleaning and restoration, let me encourage you to find a way to commit yourself to service—to your loved ones, to the community, and to Jesus. My guess is that if we do, then by the time Easter rolls around we’ll be able to experience and celebrate that miracle in ways we never imagined.
In the meantime, find some way this season to prepare your heart for the resurrection of Jesus.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
the beginning of the Lenten season
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the one who brings forgiveness and restoration to each one of us and to the world, Jesus the Messiah.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season. For centuries the calendar of the Christian church was a way to tell the story of Jesus—it was a rhythm of life that went from Advent and Christmas and Epiphany, to Lent and Easter and Pentecost…and back again. Through it all, Christian people celebrated Jesus’ life by remembering the milestones in his ministry.
It's not a bad way to live.
Lent is the 40 non-Sundays that come before the celebration of Easter. It’s the most somber of the fasting seasons—you’ve probably heard someone talk about “giving something up for Lent”—that’s been a traditional practice. The point is to notice the absence of whatever it is you’re depriving yourself of—to cultivate a sense of missing it—and to use that feeling as a prompt to prayer.
Today I’m inviting you to do something like that.
However you choose to experience this Lenten journey, make it something that draws you to prayer and confession and reflection. Lent is the most introspective season of the year for us—it’s a time of spiritual housecleaning and reordering so that Jesus—either once again or for the first time—becomes the focus of our busy lives. If you’re looking for a spiritual practice to use for the season, try saying the Lord’s Prayer five times each day. Once when you get up, once before each meal, and once before you go to sleep. Let the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples remind you of what Jesus did, and what Jesus means, for all of us.
As you begin your own Lenten journey, here’s a prayer you can say to get started, from the 1979 edition of the Book of Common Prayer:
O God, your glory is always to have mercy.
Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways,
and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith
to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word,
Jesus Christ your Son,
who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Welcome to Lent. May it be a blessing to you as we walk it together.
Pastor John
This church exists to accomplish the mission of God
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Deliverer, the one who came and taught us how to live and give sacrificially.
I’m using this week’s space to give you an update on an important part of our work. Many of you participated in the Mission Study process by reflecting on the past and present of First Pres and completing the questionnaire. A smaller group of you worked to compile the responses and edit them into a report (that report is attached below). Assembling a Mission Study Report (MSR) is an essential part of pastoral transitions in our Presbyterian tradition. A Mission Study is designed to get a sense of where a church has been, what its struggles in the present might be, and how the congregation envisions the future (or futures) of the church.
Mission studies take a lot of work, and last year your session voted unanimously to get maximum value and use from that effort in two ways. First, each committee is tasked with using the MSR as a guide for developing plans and programs. Second, we’ll use the reflections and conclusions of the MSR to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of our ministries and programs as we go. We believe that this is an important and meaningful way to make the most and best use of the MSR.
The Book of Proverbs is a part of the Wisdom Literature of the Bible. Wisdom Literature is meant to offer practical advice for living within the boundaries of the covenants God made with his people. Proverbs 19:21 says this:
Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
We could spend years with everyone going off in their own direction, each person thinking that they have the best ideas and plans for the church. Maybe that’s a temptation in all churches from time to time. Coming together in the Mission Study process is meant to create a hedge against that kind of behavior—that sort of directionless meandering that keeps the church from getting anywhere. Because this church isn’t about any person or group—it’s not just about what the pastor wants, or what the longest serving members want, or even what the biggest givers want.
This church exists to accomplish the mission of God—to worship and serve in a way that extends the grace and mercy and blessing of God to every single person and nation on earth.
Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
In the Mission Study we asked each of you to prayerfully consider the questions and prompts, and to write partly from your own experience and wisdom, but also from where you think God might be leading us in the next phase of this church’s history. In the end it’s the Lord’s purpose that we hope will prevail. It’s the Lord’s purpose we want to participate in and accomplish.
And so I invite you to read this document again (or maybe for the first time). Listen to what your brothers and sisters have identified as the priorities and goals for this church. Pray again that God will show all of us how to be a blessing to each other, and also to the ends of the earth.
Blessings to you,
Pastor John
But the greatest of these is love.
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray and serve and live.
The earthquake that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria is on all of our hearts this week. Such a staggering loss of life and destruction of cities and towns—the images are hard to see, and hard to avoid. We would be well within the boundaries of faith to ask God why. Why did this happen? Why did so many have to be lost? Why didn’t God intervene?
The theological answers are true, even if they’re nowhere near satisfying. The natural world has its own order and its own set of dangers. We’re not puppets—free will comes with risks as well as rewards. Creation has been disrupted by sin and won’t be made right again until Christ returns.
I believe those things, even if I struggle with them at times.
I believe those things, but they don’t help in the face of such suffering.
There is a name for this process of asking questions and making the case for loving God in the face of suffering and evil: It’s called Theodicy. Literally, it means speaking for God (you fans of interesting words can look that one up)—when tragedies happen we remind ourselves and others that God is good, and that God’s purposes are eternal, and not just bound up on earth.
It’s hard, but Theodicy is an important part of the life of faith in the real world. Sometimes we have to look back on the trustworthiness of God in the past, so that we can trust God again in the present. This is a task for mature disciples.
David Bentley Hart is a theologian who reflects on this very challenging area. In response to the Tsunami in 2004 that took so many lives, he wrote this about a Christian response to such events:
“Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred…And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.”
Our portion is charity.
That’s a helpful lesson, especially at a time when we feel so helpless. Hart isn’t using the narrow definition of charity—simply giving in response. He means the love that we see in 1 Corinthians 13:13. In our modern translations we see it as:
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
But in earlier versions of the English Bible it said this:
“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
The word is familiar to church people—it’s agape, the sacrificial love that we see in Jesus, and that we’re called to share with each other. In the face of tragedies that we can’t explain and that make us cry out to God, our job is to love sacrificially. Our portion is charity.
A part of that agape/love/charity is to give, and so if you’re looking for a way to support the relief work that is already underway in Turkey and Syria, I invite you to read this article. It describes the work being done to share what we have with those in need—to love them as they emerge from this time of suffering. If you want to go directly to a giving opportunity, please click here.
In the meantime let me invite you to pray for those who have been impacted by the earthquake and its aftershocks. Ask your questions and even rail at God if you need to. God can take it. But remember also the ways that God has been faithful in the past—that’s a part of today’s story, too.
Blessings to you and yours,
Pastor John
A healthy church is built on….
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who came to redeem and restore and renew all people, places and things. Now that’s some good news!
I’m in the middle of my annual series on what it means to be the church. By now you may have this sentence memorized:
A healthy church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ, and expressed through fellowship, worship, discipleship and mission.
I find that to be a helpful way of remembering who we are and whose we are. Christ is at the center of what we do. What does that mean? It means that we see our lives and our work, our recreation and our service, our mission and our meaning, all through the teachings and example of Jesus.
We express that in those four areas of community life: fellowship, where we gather and build relationships; worship, where we offer ourselves to God in praise; discipleship, where we grow into the people we were made to be; and mission, where our individual and communal lives are turned outward in love and in the sharing of the gospel.
Churches are meant to be a source of hope—an oasis for people who are thirsty for faith and community. We do that best when we remember Christ as our foundation, and when we build well-rounded lives committed to following the Jesus way of life.
As we begin this new year together, with our Annual Meeting coming up and a calendar filled with opportunities to grow and serve, let me invite you to reflect on what this description of the church means for you and those you love. May 2023 be a year where you draw near to Jesus, and closer to each other.
With Blessings,
Pastor John