Dear friends,
I have been thinking lately about a question that does not have an easy answer:
What do we hope someone will say about this church twenty years from now?
It is a big question. It is also a faithful one.
Some of you remember when this congregation was young. Some were here when people were still dreaming about what this church might become. They gave their time, prayers, work, and love to create something for people they had not yet met.
They could not see the future they were building toward.
And yet, here we are.
God’s Grace Goes Before Us
John Wesley had a wonderful confidence that God’s grace is already at work before we recognize it.
We call that prevenient grace.
That is the grace that goes before us. It prepares the way. It opens doors. It stirs hearts. It plants seeds whose fruit we may never live to see.
Maybe there is prevenient grace at work in the life of a congregation too.
God may already be preparing people who will someday walk through our doors. God may already be working in our community in ways we have not yet noticed. God may already be creating new possibilities none of us can imagine right now.
Our calling is not to control that future.
Our calling is to be faithful in the present.
Wesley’s Three Simple Rules for Faithful Living
For Wesley, faithfulness was wonderfully practical.
He gave the early Methodists three General Rules:
- Do no harm.
- Do good.
- Stay in love with God.
That sounds simple.
Of course, anyone who has tried to live that way knows it will keep you busy for a lifetime.
But imagine if that became the legacy of a congregation.
A Legacy of Love and Welcome
Twenty years from now, I hope someone will say:
“That church taught us how to love our neighbors.”
I hope someone remembers:
“When my family was hurting, those people showed up.”
I hope someone says:
“I wasn’t sure I belonged in a church, but they made room for me.”
I hope someone remembers a community that tried to do no harm, looked for chances to do good, and kept returning to prayer, worship, Scripture, Communion, and the practices through which God keeps drawing us closer.
That would be a beautiful legacy.
Sanctifying Grace Shapes Us Over Time
That kind of life is sanctifying grace at work.
God does not simply forgive us and leave us where we are. Grace keeps working on us. It slowly shapes us into people who love God and neighbor more fully.
And that work does not happen alone.
We need one another.
Christian community is one of the places where grace gets its hands dirty.
It happens around tables.
Beside hospital beds.
In worship.
In hard conversations handled with patience.
In meals carried to someone’s home.
In prayers offered when another person cannot find the words.
This is how grace becomes visible.
What Has God Entrusted to Us?
So perhaps the question before us is not only:
How do we preserve what we have?
Maybe the better question is:
What has God entrusted to us, and how can we faithfully pass it on?
That is part of the work our Visioning Committee will be doing in the months ahead.
But this work belongs to all of us.
We cannot know what this church will look like twenty years from now.
Neither could the people who came before us.
They planted anyway.
They prayed anyway.
They trusted grace to keep working.
Now it is our turn.
Trusting God With the Future of Our Church
May we do no harm.
May we do all the good we can.
May we stay deeply rooted in the love of God.
And may we trust that the grace which brought us this far is already preparing a future we cannot yet see.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Rob
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