Dear Blooming Glen Friends,
I write this in between packing for our return trip to Pennsylvania and helping our son and daughter-in-law and their three boys unpack in their new home. For the last decade, they have lived about 30 minutes from our home in Riverside. Now, they live less than five minutes from our home.
This trip back to California was full of endings and beginnings. I spent Pentecost Sunday at our Mosaic Conference congregation in San Francisco. Pastor Joshua So has completed 33 years of service with the congregation. He was the founding pastor of the church, and his ministry patterns are etched deeply into the life of this small, Cantonese-speaking church. I met in spiritual direction with a retired Episcopal priest as has been our habit for nearly five years. He asked me, almost five years ago, if he could meet with me for spiritual direction, but it is most certainly a meeting for mutual encouragement and support. Since COVID began, we have met faithfully each month over Zoom, and now, when I am in California, we meet at his home for coffee and scones. I am hard-pressed to say it out loud, but I don’t think we have too many more in-person meetings left this side of glory.
Things change. And every change has its measure of celebration and heartbreak. Every change. There is no such thing as an easy fix. The ripples that radiate from one action create the potential for tsunamis elsewhere.
As I get ready for the next season with you as your interim pastor, I am deeply aware that the shine may have worn off just a bit. Being provocative in pulpit can sound, at this point, like just the same old, same old. Advocating for the church staff in fresh ways when I arrived, may now feel to some like a loss of balance and credibility. Continuing to harp on about aligning the congregational systems can leave one to wonder if I’m paying too much attention to the mechanics of organizational life, and insufficient attention to the Holy Spirit of God.
I’ll leave your points of view to your good judgements as a congregation (and invite you to share your concerns with me directly, as I lack the spiritual gift of telepathy). But here’s what I hope for in the time I have remaining with you:
Beginning to implement a robust approach to ministry with children, youth, and families that is intent, as the centerpiece of our call to be a missional church, on drawing newcomers into the congregation who can belong in order to believe.
Growing out of that centerpiece effort, a life of worship (the journey inward) and mission (the journey outward) that makes gospel discipleship about the application of the art and skill of following Jesus daily in life.
Supporting these efforts, a ministry of adult formation that energizes and supports discipleship and a ministry of pastoral care that assures those in crisis that they are not alone.
To accomplish this, our efforts need to be framed by a shared understanding of discipleship: Reliance on the scriptures. Embracing the spiritual habits of peaceful practices. Applying radical candor (caring deeply and challenging directly) to our life together. Holding fast to the historic confessions of our faith.
At first glance, this list may look rather mundane. Maybe even simplistic. I assure you that it is not. Doing this will be hard work. Doing this will require a commitment to change. But if I have learned anything in sixteen months of walking with you, it is this: At Blooming Glen, when there is a will, a way is made.
Things change. Even in a 270-year-old congregation. The celebrations and the heartbreaks are real. The world as it is – Post-Christendom, Chronic COVID, and Digital Babylon – is full of the tragedy of change, and the possibilities to renewal.
I look forward to seeing what the future reveals at Blooming Glen.
Love you, Church!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net
P.S. Monday morning listening breakfast starts again on June 5, at A&N Diner in Sellersville, 7:30-8:45 am. Friday afternoon listening with caffeine starts again on June 9, 3:30-4:45 pm. No agenda. I’m there to listen to whatever is on your mind.