The View from Here

By Rev. Adam Blons, Lead Minister

The Create Our Future strategic planning process has reached a critical junction. The data gathering and brainstorming stages have yielded a pile of wonderful ideas about the future of the church. The next step is narrowing those possibilities down to a digestible few that address not just our needs, but respond to God's unique call to us in this time. The initial narrowing down work will be done by the Create Our Future team and then shared with the congregation. Please pray for us!

The underlying assumption in our discernment is that financially and energetically, we are stretched thin and doing too much. We need to focus, doing a little more of some things and less of others. God is inviting us to change.  

Most of us, including me, resist change. Even when we know change is necessary and even inevitable, we sometimes tighten up, hold up our hands and close our eyes, holding on to some idealized version of the past instead of seeing the future ahead. But the author Kathleen Norris said, "Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.”  

I believe God creates from the future, not the past. God has a dream for the world, for our church, for each of us, and continually nudges us towards it, drawing us in. It is okay to love the way things are and important to grieve the losses that come with change, but faithfulness is about looking ahead. Faithfulness is opening to God's dream for us and embracing this new reality.  

The paradox is that God promises a surprising abundance when we are able to let go. May we embrace God's future for the church together.