Update from Pastor Nate - June 2023
Friends, Christ is in our midst!
These past several weeks of Eastertide have been an incredible season of growth for our community as we’ve deepened our understanding and engagement with the Easter mystery. I continue to be grateful for the opportunity to walk alongside this community in our mutual faith journey, and I’m excited for what the Holy One is doing in our midst!
As we’re wrapping up the Easter season, I want to highlight a couple of points of interest, and to give you a little roadmap for where we’re headed this summer.
First, I want to thank everyone who participated in our spring discernment gatherings in April and May. The goal of this work was, in part, to take our pulse as a congregation and see where we are at following the transitions, trials, and triumphs of the last three years.
As I mentioned several times over the course of those gatherings, my hope is that this becomes a yearly practice for us during the Easter season, because discernment is never a one-and-done matter.
The feedback and ideas y’all generated in your small groups are going to do several things: this information is going to shape the work that the Church Council does in discerning our specific strategies over the next year. You had some wonderful ideas, and we’re going to work on developing those within our capacity so that we’re taking the initiative in embodying God’s love in our community.
The information we discerned together will also serve as a hand-hold for me in determining how to nourish and challenge you in my preaching and teaching. So, you’re helping all of us do our jobs better! What a gift.
Second, as many of you already know, our organist, Barb Stephon, has retired after several decades of faithful ministry of music,the last six years of which she has spent with us. Many thanks to Barb for the music and ministry expertise she has brought to our worship, and we hope that her retirement is full of joy, blessing, and most importantly, rest!
Naturally, this transition has left some of y’all wondering what the plan for music is moving forward. Our music director, Lucy Lower, and I have been in our own season of discernment around this, and here’s the step we’re feeling led to take: at this time, we are not going to re-hire Barb’s position, but instead are going to let that part of our garden lie fallow, so to speak.
The intention for this pause in organ music is so that we can get some deeper clarity as a community about how God is calling us to develop the music side of our worship, and to ask questions about how to faithfully build the music ministry of our next evolution as a faith community.
My hope is that, as this discernment continues, we can find a way forward for music that meets the needs of everyone to whom we’re accountable as a faith community—both folks who are already here and those who are not yet part of our life together.
For now, our intention is to facilitate worship that is simple, elegant, and heart-felt, using the resources we have at our disposal: piano, our summer choir, and the gifts of anyone who wants to share their musical gifts with us in worship.
On that note, we’ve been building a songbook of simple, elegant, and heart-felt songs, as well as favorite hymns, to have as a resource. You can expect some of your favorites to make an appearance, as well as some newer choruses and chants that may be less familiar but are no less accessible.
(And maybe I’ll play some more saxophone for us, who knows?)
Third, I want to share a little bit about the summer series. Simply put, we’re gonna continue our journey through the experience of the early Christian movement. That means, for the summer, we’ll hang out in the Book of Acts and explore how a community of people changed and transformed by love meets the radical challenges of their moment in history, so that we can discern how to faithfully meet the radical challenges of our own. We’ll cover a gamut of topics, ranging from AI to climate change to interfaith relationships and everything in between.
(Speaking of, I enlisted the assistance of the AI chatbot ChatGPT in planning this series, and we’ve got some fantastic stuff coming up. Invite your friends!
Beyond that, there’s a ton of other stuff: for those wanting to dig in and deepen their faith through asking honest questions, we’ve got our next round of Living the Questions coming up in June as a wonderful spiritual formation opportunity—many thanks to Ann Maddox for her leadership in that.
As well, I am always available to you as a resource for your spiritual journey, and I offer one-on-one spiritual direction and coaching using a variety of different tools and techniques as part of my work here.
For those wanting to get their hands dirty in service to others, the work at Fremont Garden is popping off. We’d love your help keeping the garden weeded and watered, so that we can grow a bumper crop for our neighborhood. (Jaimie is the point of contact on that, so please reach out to them if you’re interested).
The building transformation work via Partners for Sacred Places is continuing onward and upward, and our building steering committee is now meeting monthly to continue that process.
There’s a lot going on, and a ton of places to jump in. So, please, be bold! Show up! Dig in! Let’s be the Church!
And if you feel limited in what you can do or commit to, remember that the most important thing you can do is pray. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. In your heart, turn toward the Holy. And remember: remember our church, remember our friends, remember all those whom you carry on the altar of your own hearts, and remember the vision of the Beloved Community that is blossoming in our midst.
That’s about as much as I can reasonably cram into one update, but there’s always more. If you have questions about anything, or if you ever just want to talk, please let me know. I’ll see y’all in church!
Peace and all good,
+Nate