Dear Church,  

February is a season of many cultures. The Lunar New Year is celebrated by many Asian cultures this week, beginning last Saturday, February 10. The year 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, with rituals, food, and symbols rich with the desire for a new life, ushering in good luck, and creating a prosperous future.  It is Black History Month in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, reminding all of us, regardless of race, of the unique experience of the African diaspora, the Middle Passage of the Slave trade to the Americas, and the post-slavery experience of Emancipation, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights.  On top of those cultural and historic celebrations, Lent comes early to the church this year, with Shrove Tuesday/Madri Gras on February 13 (I hope you had your fasnachts!), and Ash Wednesday on February 14. 

It is a time, after the joys of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, to reflect, repent, and recalibrate, not with morbid sadness, but in joyous hope.  The thread running through the celebrations of Lunar New Year, Black History Month, and Lent is the desire for a new life.  Transformation is the theme of these next weeks.  The steadfast, unshakable conviction that God is doing a new thing is at the heart of this season which we are now embarking upon.   

Here at Blooming Glen, we continue to engage in transformation.  Multi-voiced preaching and well-curated worship with an intergenerational choir continues to grow in us a new identity in Christ.  Community care, through catechism, formation, and visitation seek to meet the developmental needs of belonging to the Household of Faith. Cooperative mission through efforts in neighborhood engagement, peacebuilding, and global connections unite us in the shared purpose of reaching out to neighbors near and far with the gospel of Jesus.   

These efforts of cooperative mission include neighborhood engagements through games, Easter celebrations, back to school bashes, and harvest festivals invite people to experience us as a church.  We embrace peacebuilding efforts of reforestation and teaching peaceful practices to offer new ways to apply the Jesus story to everyday life.  We engage in global connections through projects like Healthy Niños (in partnership with Mosaic Conference) and the International Visitor Exchange Program (in partnership with Mennonite Central Committee) that embolden us to see the world in more holistic ways and bring healing and hope to those in need. 

It’s a season of transformation at Blooming Glen Mennonite Church.  It’s a new year of creating a prosperous spirit. It’s a time to remember the past and move on to the future.  It’s a time for fired dough, powered sugar, and the power of mutual forgiveness.  Blooming Glen is, in our curating worship, community care, and cooperative mission, becoming a church that beholds God’s beautiful and broken world, and with joy, rolls up its sleeves, and gets busy with healing and hope.  Thank you for the privilege of sharing in such an experience.  In this season of Lent, let us joyfully surrender that which ensnares and binds us, run with joyful perseverance the new race of answering the call of Jesus to follow Him. 

Grateful for each of you!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net 

PS - IMPORTANT NEWS! It’s Debbie’s birthday this week.  We are skipping town, Thursday-Saturday, February 15-17.  That means I won’t be at the Broad Street Grind on Friday, February 16, but plan be back at the A&N Diner on Monday, February 19, 7:30-8:45 am (even though it is President’s Day).  I’m also planning to be back at the Broad Street Grind on Friday, February 23, 3:30-4:45 pm. 

Dear Church,  

Between now and the end of July, I’ll be working with our staff, elders, and various core ministry leaders to collaborate in launching new and ongoing ministry efforts.  We want to continue to strengthen already strong team ministries in pastoral care, peacebuilding, and music.  We want to add greater preaching capacity by forming a preaching team (see last week’s blog).  We want to build on the various family engagement ministries with children and youth, making sure we as a church are complying with Pennsylvania law and regulations for child safety clearances, and making sure our teachers have adequate access to curriculum resources that they will use. We want to develop more creative expressions of worship on Sunday morning. We want to generate stronger adult formation opportunities in the Sunday Second Hour, and beyond. We want to increase our capacity for neighborhood engagements of invitation and service. Finally, as we head toward the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement, we want to advance into new global connections and possible partnerships with the church around the world.   Through these ministry efforts, we want to strengthen our identity as people shaped by the grace of Jesus.  We want to belong to a community of faith at Blooming Glen that encounters the rich, stubborn love of God.  We want to find greater purpose in service to our neighbors near and far as a fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 

Part of my journey in these last two years with you has continued to be one of leading a transition from being a church with a staff who mostly does ministry to the congregation, and instead becoming a congregation unleashed to do ministry in our local townships, villages, boroughs, and school districts with support from a pastoral, program, and administrative staff who can coach the congregation with best practices and spiritual habits, so that we together follow Jesus into the great commissions of the gospels. 

This active work of transition has not been perfect, nor is it yet complete.  My work among you so far has not, apart from preaching, had a strong program leadership component.  I have not had a mandate from the CLB and the congregation to change much regarding our public ministries, such as worship, Sunday School, or peacebuilding.  Your call to me has been about reengineering the systems, and helping Blooming Glen change its culture of staff set up over a long period of time and accelerated during COVID as gatekeepers of ministry.  To that end, I introduced the REDS strategy for our church staff (recruit, equip, deploy, and support others for the ministry of the congregation).  I’ve worked with the staff to provide greater confidence, cohesion, and collaboration through an emphasis on gratitude, thanksgiving, and understanding the liminal space we inhabit.  I’ve worked with the staff to identify the core ministries of curating worship, community care, and cooperative mission. I’ve worked with the staff and elders to form a collaborative partnership in uniting together with core ministries.   

Now, a big part of my work in these next six months is to gear up these core ministries to become more ready and able to work in concert to fulfill our congregational mission of disciplemaking.   

Watch this space.  More will be revealed…as we discover it together. 

Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net 

PS - I’ll be at the Broad Street Grind in Souderton for a Friday afternoon cup of coffee, on February 9 and February 16, from 3:30 to 4:45 pm.  I’ll be at the A&N Diner on Monday, February 12 from 7:30 to 8:45 am.  My purpose is to listen to whatever is on your mind.  If those dates don’t work for you, and you still want to give me a piece of your mind, please call Gretchen, mornings at the church office, or text me, and let me know what time and place would work for me to stop in and listen.  Thanks.