Where Do We Go?
by Rev. David Garvin, Executive Pastor Take a moment. Catch your breath. Experience God’s peace.
What an amazing Lent and Easter season at St. Paul Church. The first quarter of 2017 was full of amazing ministries and overwhelming generosity that transformed many lives.
So, where do we go from here? What is in store for St. Paul during the remainder of 2017?
Like always, over the coming months, we’ll plan and carry out long-standing ministries for our church and community. We’ll meet weekly to worship with music, prayer, scripture, and Holy Communion. We’ll gather in small groups to laugh, support, and encourage one another. And of course, we’ll have a few meetings along the way.
But what if, amidst our planning, busyness, and reenacting what we’ve always done, we miss something? What if we’re so consumed with many, many things that we neglect – or worse, ignore – the one thing God might be calling us to be or do?
I have an annual spring tradition, as baseball’s opening day approaches, to read a new book about baseball and re-read an essay or two from The Faith of 50 Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture. For the past decade, I’ve read many wonderful baseball biographies, histories, and tales.
This year I read 42: Faith, a work that tells the story of how Jackie Robinson’s and Branch Rickey’s shared Christian faith informed their decisions and lives that integrated Major League Baseball in 1947. While both men struggled with decisions and consequences throughout the book, a recurring theme emerged. Both men, in times of despair and uncertainty routinely groped for a wisdom beyond themselves.
For us, as disciples and as a church, are we open to a wisdom beyond ourselves? Are we willing – and even actively seeking – to be informed, encouraged, and guided by something other than our own whims, passions, and plans?
I am reminded of the early church wrestling and struggling with its next best steps. The early church’s guiding wisdom – “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15).
So, where do we go…or where is God calling us…in the coming year?
The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. and God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
– ACTS 15: 6-11
I am reminded of the early church wrestling and struggling with its next best steps. The early church’s guiding wisdom – “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15).
So, where do we go…or where is God calling us…in the coming year?
So, please join me in praying for St. Paul’s staff, ministry teams, volunteers, and the larger community as we discern and embody God’s vision for St. Paul in the coming year.