Dear Blooming Glen Friends,

 Things are blooming at Blooming Glen (no one’s ever used that line before, right?).

 The Pathways findings have been forwarded by the Elders to CLB for their consideration. That conversation is being scheduled for the CLB meeting in June.

 Volunteers for relaunching mentoring and developing pastoral care support systems for families with children are being recruited.

 A Prayer and Business Meeting this Sunday will reveal more about what’s next.  We are turning some corners.  We’ve more or less accepted the reality of post-Christendom – the loss of narrative coherence and institutional capacity in the North American church. We’ve begun to accept that COVID and its virial children will be a chronic part of the global public health environment for years to come.  We’re recognizing that we live in a Digital Babylon (thanks to David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock for this concept) – an accelerated, complex culture that is marked by phenomenal access to information (but not wisdom), profound alienation (especially among the young), and a crisis of authority (that has certainly seeped into the church).  And unlike Peter’s counsel in his letter to the resident alien Christians of Asia Minor, we have become expert consumers, not of the sweet milk of God’s Word, but of the weak Kool-Aid of Digital Babylon, and thereby accelerated the crisis and polarized friends and family with the politics of health, the gospel of personal well-being, and a feeble moral therapeutic deism that takes all the mystery out of our faith. 

Is there a way back?  No.  Is there a way forward?  Yes.  But it will take a level of communal resilience, prayerful loyalty, and Jesus-centered devotion for which we’ve not dared to reach … yet.

But I pray we can.  I pray we can see one another with love.  I pray we can be full of faith in Jesus and celebrate what we are able to do together in His Name.  I pray we can place our hope in the Holy Spirit who comes alongside and empowers broken institutions … like the church.

Friends, watch this space.  More will be revealed.

Love you, church!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.org
951-990-4244

PS – I’m still available to listen to what’s on your mind at the Keystone Diner on Mondays (7:30-8:45 am), and at the Broad Street Grind on Fridays (3:30-4:45 pm).  It’s your time to talk with me about what’s on your mind.  And the Pathways essays are still available here.