Under Construction

by Jason Byassee

Jason Byassee

A friend of mine was a pastor in Montreal. He was in his office one day when a limousine rolled in and an entourage stepped out. It was Rod Stewart. He and his friends asked, “Can we pray here?” Why sure! My friend said, wondering what to have him autograph. He apologized for the disarray in his sanctuary. “We’re under construction.” Rod Stewart responded, “Isn’t the church always under construction?”

Jesus-soaked wisdom from the man who wrote “Maggie May.” Sure enough, the church is always under construction. And so are we as persons.

As a church, we’re just off a fantastic weekend in which we unveiled our new logo and graphic identity (thanks to Michaele Haas for leading that task force and to Susan Jones for her overall leadership of the task forces). We had a terrific leadership meeting in the afternoon. After Kelly Broman-Fulks’ and Jim Deal’s rousing words we were all ready to run through a wall. Our Pathways sermon series in the sanctuary and in Crossroads will include sermons on our strategy icons for the next four weeks: worship, connect, serve, and grow. We’ll plan to do all four together this month.

We had an excellent year in lay leadership in 2014. Our staff-parish committee has some recent successes to report. We have made a hire in our mission coordinator position: the Rev. Laura Beach starts work with us on February 1st. She is an elder in our conference and will ably fill Luke Edwards’ shoes, which Jaimie McGirt has done on an interim basis of late. Laura will lead us to serving Jesus in the vulnerable here and around the world. And then having met Jesus in his poor, we become different, holier, more like Jesus.

Judy Wyndham starts work with us in our administrative offices on February 1st. She came highly recommended by several longtime trusted leaders of our church and will help us in work that Denise Stanley has done brilliantly as a volunteer in communications. The trustees have pushed us to have someone in our foyer to be the face of the church greeting everyone God sends our way. Judy will be ideal at this. The words “administration” and “ministry” have the same root for a reason. Judy’s contribution to our ministry will be inestimable.

We have also made a hire in our kitchen to coordinate all our work in feeding our youth, our children, our elderly, and our community. Lynn Rollins has experience as a chef and kitchen coordinator and will start in early March. Her hire does not mean we don’t need volunteers to cook–we always will! It means when we volunteer we’ll have someone showing us how to do it well. It’s been said that Jesus eats his way through the gospels. When we meet over food he is present, in the breaking of bread. Lynn will help lead us all in this holy work.

These hires and lay leaders are guiding us all toward “loving our community and inviting all to discover life in Christ.” As one of your pastors I know this word isn’t enough, but frail words are all we ever have: thank you. God is with us. Let’s rejoice.