The Upload
Posted on Jan 29, 2016 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week.
Well, we had our annual meeting this past Sunday and, yes, we all survived. Oh, it was a long meeting, but it went really fast (at least I thought so!). Our leaders reviewed the finances, both last year’s and the 2106 budget, we talked about our facilities and our facility needs, we elected our new Council leaders, and we heard from our staff, who shared with us the wonderful ministries going on here at Salem and what those ministries might look like in the future. We had great conversations at the meeting, and many people expressed their joys, their concerns and their thanks for this congregation.
In the end, I believe we accomplished what we needed to accomplish. I believe we agreed that, as a thriving-yet-struggling church, our mission is not about us, but about God’s call for our lives. Regardless of what we want, we need to find new ways of being a vibrant faith community to a world that desperately needs Jesus.
You know, so often, we are too concerned with what Jesus can do for us, too interested in having a Jesus who looks like us, thinks like us, and acts like us, that we forget to consider that Jesus was not made in our image, but, rather, we in his. In our Gospel text for this coming Sunday (Luke 4:21-30), Jesus said to his hometown brothers and sisters of Nazareth that the Messiah came not just for them, but for everyone, the Jews as well as the Romans, and Greeks, and other foreigners who lived in Capernaum. All of them, Jesus said, are as much God’s children as the people who live in Nazareth. In addition, Jesus stated that sometimes the needs of those “foreigners and aliens” might even take priority over the needs of the folks who considered themselves God’s chosen people.
When Jesus shared this with his kinsfolk from Nazareth, do you know how they responded? They tried to kill him, because they thought they deserved better than that. We can be like those people of Nazareth sometimes, selfishly thinking this is all about us, but I didn’t get that feeling on Sunday. The general sense I came away with was that, as a congregation, we are ready to do what it takes to stay focused on growing God’s kingdom and following God’s mission for our lives.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, God’s mission is a big one, and we are called to be the hands and feet of Christ. I am excited about our future, and I pray you are, too.
Have a blessed week!
Shalom,
Pr. Dave