Is it really November already? The month may have arrived before I was ready to say farewell to October, my favorite month, but I look forward to all the exciting activities we have planned throughout the month: our High School Youth will lead worship on the 8th; We will celebrate our Stewardship Campaign on the 15th; We will honor long-time members and the wonderful history of our church on Heritage Sunday on the 22nd; and we will mark the beginning of Advent on the 29th. The month is filled with opportunities for us to express our thanksgiving for the many blessings we have at MPC.
At our November meeting the Session will discuss our budget for 2010. It is always a joy to plan for another year’s ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. Our Session will give thanks that we have the financial resources to do as much as we do: nurture one another in worship, teach one another through Christian Education, reach out to young children through our Early Learning Center, provide a facility that is welcoming and safe for member and visitor alike, and take the love and hope of Christ to the farthest corners of the globe through our mission work. We are still hopeful that we will get that much closer to having the funding in place for us to begin the process of calling a new staff member to work with our youth.
At our October Session meeting we discussed our calling as Elders “individually and jointly to strengthen and nurture the faith and life of the congregation committed to our charge.” We do this in a number of ways, including “encouraging the people in the worship and service of God.” We devoted quite a bit of time to a wonderful discussion of how we worship, with a particular focus on an issue that many churches have wrestled with recently: should worship be “traditional” or “contemporary”?
I have never found those terms helpful – they tend to put worship in a box. Deborah Panell and I try to make every service both traditional and contemporary, a “blended” service. We follow a traditional pattern for the order of the service, but we remain open to the call of the Holy Spirit to try new ways to interpret the Word of the Lord, new ways to sing our praises to God, and new ways to nurture our faith together.
The month of November reminds us that our lives are a blend of the traditional and the contemporary. On Heritage Sunday we will give thanks for the history and the traditions built over the past 142 years by the saints who have gone before us, but we will also give thanks that the Spirit calls us into the freshness of today and the newness of tomorrow.
Every worship service reminds us of our blessings as we gather to “praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Every service should be new and fresh in response to the Spirit and the Head of our Church, Jesus Christ. Every service reminds us that our every day should begin and end with such simple words: “Thanks be to God!”
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Skip
