Dear Blooming Glen Friends, 

Pearls form when an irritant becomes an inspiration.  When a grain of sand gets into a human eye, we go through all sorts of gyrations to eliminate the irritant. Instead of eliminating the irritant, an oyster embraces the nuisance, and over time, a pearl, something we value deeply, is formed. 

Blooming Glen lives with the consequences of three present irritants to our culture of Christianity:  The loss of our institutional authority and narrative capacity to tell and live the Gospel story in a way people can hear it.  A global public health crisis that keeps us apart and mutually suspicious.  A revolution in technology that makes information universally accessible, and wisdom harder than ever to obtain. We can work like mad to try to wash away one or more of these irritants, or we can realize that we’ve been given a God-ordained opportunity to make pearls.  Truth be told, there is no going back.  Christendom is dying.  Chronic COVID will continue to polarize and divide.  The Digital Babylon we live in makes us specialists in Googling without an equal measure of expertise in loving, accepting, and forgiving. 

We claim a faith that is built on the foundation of Resurrection – the ultimate act of restoration that makes us utterly dependent on the Divine.  If that is true, then the weakness and struggle of the irritants are to our advantage.  It is to our advantage that we must learn to tell a more beautiful story.  It is to our advantage that we must form new ways of being community.  It is to our advantage that we must recover the truth of wisdom.  What lies in front of us can be the good old days. The Sunday-centric, program-driven, church growth movement paradigm and practice no longer connect.  

Can I get a Hallelujah!? 

The courageous and holy thing we must begin with is the recognition that we who truly seek to follow Jesus are a minority in a pluralistic culture.  Our young people at Blooming Glen understand that reality.  And they see us adults floundering in the triple cocktail of our cultural crisis.  

In this next year, can we begin to embrace the irritations?  Can we begin to experiment joyfully in being a new church in the face of new normal?  Can we begin to become nimble innovators that try stuff, and do more of what works, instead of arguing about what isn’t working well? Can we start to scale up and sustain new expressions of doing church? That will require from us all less burden bearing of past mistakes and a new focus on faithfulness to Christ, and forgiveness for one another.  Do we have such capacity? 

Five hundred years ago, our spiritual forebearers in Europe, the Anabaptist “movements” were those who chipped away at traditional expressions of Christianity that had grown calcified and used the irritants of new technologies and new ideas to form new interpretations of scripture that radically transformed communities and welcomed the marginalized into the saving embrace of Messiah Jesus. 

How about it, Blooming Glen?  Are you up for a little irritation to create inspiring pearls of faithfulness? 

More, I guess, will be revealed. 

Love you, Church!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net 

PS – I truly want to be available for listening anytime.  My schedule facilitates special availability on Monday mornings, 7:30-8:45 am at the A&N Diner, and Friday afternoons, 3:30-4:45pm at the Broad Street Grind.  I’m not trying to sell you anything, or hype anything.  I’m there to listen to whatever you want to talk about.  You want to give me an earful of complaints – I’ll listen.  You want to ask questions about my theology – we can talk.  You want to dream dreams and have visions – I’m all in in. I’ve been told in more than one ministry setting that I have the gift of irritation.  Would you like to try to create some pearls together?