jw4grace.net

It is the season for winter weather advisories. Along with school officials and families, weather reporters, and road commissions, we watch the advisories to know what to expect in the future (next day; 10-day outlooks). We adjust our plans accordingly. We have canceled Mens’ Breakfast on a couple of occasions related to these advisories. We have a sense that they are mostly short-term. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us with an expanded sense of advisories.

In an insightful and timely article for the Michigan Conference (“Blizzard, winter, or ice age?), Rev. Dr. Sherry Parker-Lewis writes that “for those who are yearning for the way things have ‘always’ been, there will be disappointment. While the mission of communities of faith will remain the same, the way churches accomplish their mission will change in the months and years ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed congregations and their leaders to consider what it looks like to offer Christ to the world in a time of social distancing and post-pandemic.

Lewis’ article draws on another article, “Leading Beyond the Blizzard: Why Every Organization is Now a Startup”, where the authors suggest that church leaders may find a way forward through the use of the metaphors “blizzard, winter, and ice age.”

The early onset of the pandemic was a blizzard, an emergency. Churches pivoted to cancel in-person worship and offer online worship and Zoom meetings. We sheltered in place and waited with the assumption that the emergency would end.

When it did not, we extended our time frame for expectations. This became a winter season where we responded with enhancing online worship and electronic communication and established or improved electronic giving and invitations.

Lewis describes this stage in the context of life in Michigan: “We are familiar with pulling out our snow shovels and warm boots. We put a window scraper and an extra blanket in the car. We wear more layers and make more soup. And if we see our breath in the cold air or slap our mittened hands together for warmth, we don’t mind. Spring will come again.”

The Ice Age reference involves 1816 known as The Year Without a Summer. 1816 came toward the end of what is known to climatologists as “The Little Ice Age,” a several-century-long reduction in temperatures in the northern hemisphere that shaped European history in profound ways (“Leading Beyond the Blizzard”).

Lewis observes, “In Michigan, our lands and waterways were shaped in the Pleistocene Age. Great glaciers up to 6,000 feet thick moved over Michigan carving valleys and pushing up hills. When glaciers receded, they left behind newly formed lakes and bays. If we had been alive to witness the ‘before and after’ of the most recent ice age, we might have wrung our hands and asked, ‘How can we get back to normal?'”

In a way, the “blizzard-winter-ice age” metaphor describes the experience of the Church following Jesus’ death and resurrection. First, there was an imminent expectation of Jesus’ return. When that did not happen, the Church had to organize itself which we see in the later books/letters of the New Testament. And we now live with the “Ice Age-level” impact of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit in the Church and world through a couple of centuries.

Jesus Christ impacts us at all of these stages which means that God’s grace and love and power are available to us no matter which winter weather advisory we live under.

The season of Lent is set up for us to deal with the multiple ranges of reality in a pandemic.

The authors of “Leading Beyond the Blizzard” note that, “Christian creativity begins with grief — the grief of a world gone wrong. It enfolds it in lament — the loud cry of Good Friday, the silence of Holy Saturday — and still comes to the tomb early Sunday morning.”

They encourage us to pursue this creativity. “(W)e urge every leader to realize that their organization’s survival in weeks and months, let alone years, depends far more on radical innovation than on tactical cutbacks” (“Leading Beyond the Blizzard”).

I am grateful to be serving together with inspired disciples of Jesus Christ in the blizzards, winters, and little ice ages of our time. Let’s keep seeking God’s help and guidance to find ways “to grow a loving community while we gather, connect, learn and serve.”

Dr. Helen Czerski is a British physicist, oceanographer, and TV presenter. In her September 29, 2017, TED Talk, “The Fascinating Physics of Everyday Life”, she begins with a story about sitting at the table at her Nana’s (Mum’s Mum) house as a 2nd-year undergraduate student at Cambridge studying physics. She had quantum mechanics folders spread out in front of her. Nana looked at the folders and said, “What’s that?”

Helen tried to explain and Nana looked impressed. And then she said, “What can you do when you know that?” Helen responded, “Don’t know, Nana.”

In her TED Talk, Dr. Czerski then reflected that when we talk about physics, we don’t include the things we can do when we know that. We’ve got an image problem, let’s be honest. It’s weird and difficult and done by slightly strange people. Fundamentally, why should anyone care?

Physics is best known for its extremes or its frontiers which are quantum physics (very small, very weird, it happens very quickly), and cosmology (very large, very far away, and also very weird). There is physics in the middle. It’s just that nobody talks about it.

She continued that the joy that you get by spotting common patterns of physical laws doesn’t go away as an adult. To help things move along at a boring party, she suggested fishing some raisins out of the snack mix and putting them in the lemonade. This has three consequences: 1) It’s quite good to watch, 2) It sends the boring people away, and 3) It brings the interesting people to you.

She affirms the value of what you can do when you know physics. Being familiar with these concepts means we’re not helpless. This isn’t about knowing all the answers. It’s about having the right framework and confidence so you can ask the right questions.

For four years, I was a presenter at the Exploring Future Pathways Career Fair at North Rockford Middle School. I presented on the vocation of being a pastor.

For the record, the veterinarian had an unfair advantage in bringing a dog. I talked about how construction workers build your house, plumbers install and repair your pipes, doctors and nurses care for your body, a mechanic fixes your car, bankers help you with money, and that I help people in their relationship with God and that’s kind of hard to understand and maybe a little weird.

I remember talking about the Bible and prayer and being with people in their homes and at the cemetery and in the hospital as well as gathering at the Church building. I brought vitamin C drops as a treat which we were giving out in worship in those days. We wrote our names with our non-dominant hand to show how it feels to recognize something but not have a lot of confidence about it. In other words, it can be awkward learning about God. We also did a Yurt Circle to demonstrate how we depend on each other (you hold hands and every other person leans in or back to create a support circle; it’s cool to do).

Through teaching about ministry with middle school students, I gained an appreciation for how our work fits in the larger world and contributes to the common good.

Through being the Church we learn that God loves us and the world; and that Jesus Christ is God’s Son and our Savior; and that we can feel the power of the Holy Spirit when we are doing all kinds of things and remember what Jesus taught his disciples.

And what we can do when we know that, is LOVE!

We learn and then teach how to love God, our neighbor, ourselves, and our world. And we also learn that all those other vocations can be versions of the gift and task of LOVE. From God’s perspective, we all can learn how to LOVE.

As we enter the Lenten season mid-month, I invite you to respond to the question “What can you do when you know that?” by seeing your vocation or twilight career or daily life as an expression of LOVE.

How have you been moved this year? What is saving you or breaking your heart as we move into the Advent/Christmas season?

Beverly and I peacefully moved to Greenville mid-year in the regular course of The United Methodist Church appointment system. We are grateful for Pastor Don and Shelly who preceded us here and Rev. Paul Reissmann and Ashleigh who followed us in Wayland.

The Hebrew people were liberated by God from slavery in Egypt and moved into and through the wilderness.

With the death of their husbands, “Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22). Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David.

Generations later Joseph and Mary were on the move from Nazareth to Bethlehem in response to a decree from Emperor Augustus because Joseph was descended from the house and family of David.

God acted with purpose in each of these moves. The sources or reasons or circumstances for the moves did not determine or prevent God’s actions but were the worldly occasions for God’s story of redemption to be told.

Each of these moves was a disruption. Bonds of friendship and family were changed. Bondage was broken.

These are common occurrences in the human story.

While written to preachers, Frederick Buechner’s challenge also is good as we consider the role of the church in ministry with our community.

“They must address themselves to the fullness of who we are and to the emptiness too, the emptiness where grace and peace belong but mostly are not, because terrible as well as wonderful things have happened to us all” (Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale, 4).

The COVID-19 pandemic has moved us apart in many ways. There is suffering we are unable to share at loved ones’ sides and there are overworked, exhausted healthcare workers who represent us in caring for them. We await the anticipated rise in cases following the Thanksgiving holiday and the colder months that will prevent outdoor gatherings. And in the midst of this, the news about vaccines is promising.

We are completing federal, state, and local elections, and the transfer of national governmental power whose integrity is questioned in courts of law and public opinion and affirmed in the intentional organization of a new administration.

The worldly momentum seems to be moving us toward chaos and strife.

These conditions characterize our entrance into Advent and the preparation for Christmas. But they don’t change the story of God’s loving, redeeming action in the world. We can learn from Buechner how to tell the Gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s redeeming grace as a tragedy, comedy, or fairy tale.

Buechner writes, “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.” The tragedy is that we are sinners whose hearts are sick. The comedy is that we are “loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.” The fairy tale is that extraordinary things happen to us “just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen…Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul set out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ” (Telling the Truth, 7). We can add Mary’s astonishment that she will bear the holy child who will be called the Son of God and her song of the mercy and strength of God who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly…filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:50-53).

Every year I wonder how things are going to go in the Advent/Christmas seasons. How will the ministry and worship plans for the Church be received? Will we address the fullness and the emptiness “where grace and peace belong but mostly are not”? And every year I am moved by the grace that Advent preparation happens and Christmas comes to the world and we hear the Gospel that God has chosen to share our tragedy-comedy-fairly tale existence in person. Thanks be to God for our shared ministry in a broken and beautiful world. Merry Christmas.

While my favorite month is October with its cooler temperatures, beautiful colors, and vivid change, it is followed by November with its own fulness of life.

November begins with All Saints’ Day. Last Sunday, we remembered 21 persons in worship who have died in the last year with the affirmation, “Absent from us. Present with God.”

While not always recognized as a major “holy day” in the Christian year, All Saints’ Day reminds us that we are related to each other not only biologically, but spiritually through faith. One of the most familiar scripture passages used on All Saints’ Day observances refers to the saints who have gone before us as “a huge cloud of witnesses to the life of faith” (Hebrews 12:1).

I appreciate Father Richard Rohr’s description that, “Saints are those who wake up while in this world, instead of waiting for the next one” (Father Richard Rohr, “Public Virtue”, 11/6/20).

Saints are those persons to whom we look for guidance on living through joyful and painful seasons of time. And their basic character is like that of Jesus who came to serve rather than be served.

The stress, confusion, division, and contention of our federal, state, and local elections clearly call for recovering public virtue.

In the face of this need, the public witness of the Church comes through lives of service, humility, compassion, and justice.

Again, from this past week’s meditations by Father Richard Rohr:

“The mystery of the body of Christ turns the focus outward, to ask: how can I be good for the sake of my neighborhood, my city, my church, my community, and even the world?” (Father Richard Rohr, “Public Virtue”, 11/1/20).

“History is continually graced with people who have been transformed and somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest for the good of the world, people who clearly operated by a power larger than their own. They are exemplars of public virtue” (Father Richard Rohr, “Public Virtue”, 11/6/20).

We conclude November with Thanksgiving which is a season I wish officially lasted longer rather than being left behind by the commercial Christmas season. Thanksgiving directs us to the deep roots and broad branches and towering clouds of service, humility, compassion, and justice in the lives of the saints and our families and communities.

We clearly have a lot of work to do in the wake of the elections and in the midst of the COVID pandemic. May our gratitude for the saints guide our paths and allow us to serve side by side with each other.

Good morning and God bless you. We are in the midst of a worship series that responds to the question,

What do active disciples of Jesus Christ in
United Methodist congregations do with their lives?

A faithful United Methodist response is that we love God and our neighbor as ourselves through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. The series is Five Paths: One Journey.

Our visual reminder of these paths woven together is the worship table display we had on World Communion Sunday.

While the limitations of the COVID pandemic deeply affect the ways we can go about active faithful lives, we are still free to serve in creative ways. Our Michigan Conference has offered these suggestions (https://michiganumc.org/8-ways-to-serve-during-a-pandemic):

• Give money: Relief, aid, and justice organizations still need money. If you are among the lucky whose bank account has been mostly unaffected by the pandemic, you can serve immediately by supplying funds towards causes and organizations.
  
• Run a fundraising or awareness campaign: You may not have the kind of funds in your bank account to make a difference. It may be time to build some awareness and community around your cause and raise some needed funds by inviting others into service, too.
  
• Send a meal: Perhaps you know someone locally who could use a hand up. Did you know you can send meals through businesses like DoorDash or Uber Eats? Sending a meal during this time is a double-dip of service: you offer a lift to the recipient while supporting a local business that is likely struggling.
  
• Write letters: Now could be the perfect time to become a penpal. There are many who are vulnerable but still feel a want for connection and community. Your letter could be a big reminder that we’re still connected and that people care. Write to the elderly in your life. Write to military personnel. Write to the incarcerated.
  
• Serve as a mentor: More than ever, young people and eager learners are looking for meaningful ways to connect with teachers and role models. Many mentoring programs now offer online means for connecting people.
  
• Share the good stuff: Remember how much we loved it when John Krasinski shared Some Good News? Take on the same role. You may not need to produce your own news show, but use the platforms available to you to share about the good stuff happening.
  
• Serve from a distance: Many United Methodist churches began protective mask-making programs…VolunteerMatch is full of opportunities for socially-distanced service, as well.
  
• Donate what you have: You’ve likely spent a little extra time at home this season–and by now, are well aware of what items you use and those lying around your house that you don’t utilize. Charity organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill Industries could use your under-used items. Utilize this time to have a cleaning day and donate what you weed out to an organization you’d like to support.

I write about voting now in advance of Tuesday, November 3, because according to the Michigan Students Vote Toolkit “Important Dates and Deadlines” (https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Michigan_Students_Vote_Toolkit_701243_7.docx):

September 24: Absentee ballots available

Clerks begin to mail ballots to voters who requested to vote from home.
In person absentee voting is available in city and township clerk’s offices.

I confirmed my voter registration at the Michigan Voter Information Center (https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/).

Elections are volatile and vulnerable national events. Attempts at genuine persuasion based on reliable sources of information are assailed from every direction by misinformation, disinformation, deceit, malice, and contempt.

One of the books I read near the end of 2019 was Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer. They present recent history along economic, racial, political, and gender and sexuality fault lines. They support their time period this way:

But the turbulent decade of the 1960s caused the common ground of the mid-twentieth century to crumble beneath Americans’ feet. Rather than seek to find new sources of agreement, the nation reconstituted itself in the 1970s and the decades that followed in ways that augmented and institutionalized these lines of division (p.3).

Fault lines have at least a double meaning as the authors explain:

While these fault lines in America were important, so too were the lines Americans were fed about who was at fault. The media became increasingly fractured during these decades, changing from a fairly rigid industry dominated by three television networks and a handful of prominent newspapers to a more cluttered, chaotic landscape (p.3).

We evaluate candidates and policies in accordance with these affirmations while living with fault lines all around us. I hold deep and abiding convictions about the positive responsibilities of our secular government and how these responsibilities are denied in cruel, racist, and violent ways.

Jesus and the prophets remind us that our world always has been marred by cruelty and oppression and unjust distributions of wealth and benefits. It’s really hard work to stay engaged in our national and local and Church communities. Jesus also declares that the reign of God is near and by grace, we are capable of change.

Our opportunity as disciples of Jesus Christ and citizens of the United States is to faithfully participate in the governing processes available to us. The responsibility for this comes from our baptism service:

Do (we) accept the freedom and power God gives (us) to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?

According to the grace given to (us), will (we) remain faithful members of Christ’s holy church and serve as Christ’s representatives in the world?

I invite you to confirm your voter registration and make a plan for voting. Let’s make it our fault that there is a noticeably greater turnout in this election cycle and pray for the grace to stay engaged in the church and the world.

After considering several apparel choices at the 2012 ICHTHUS event (annual Christian music festival outside Wilmore, Kentucky), I chose this one:

The simple message is appealing and I am inspired by its directive. In the Alpha course video, founder Nicky Gumbel comments on a Japanese woman learning English phrases who converted “What on earth are you doing?” to “What are you doing on earth?” The rephrasing shifts the emphasis just enough to hear it in a fresh way.

The Virtual Michigan Annual Conference took place on July 26-28. I am grateful for Chuck Hill, our Lay Member of Annual Conference, for participating with me and bringing some fine Kenyan AA coffee to the parsonage where we shared the morning session on July 27. The theme for this year was Sowing Seeds: rooting-tending-reaping with a focus on Congregational Vibrancy. The Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-9) was the centering story.

We are understandably disturbed and disoriented by our lives these days with COVID-19 and the now pressing decisions about reopening schools, and street protests across the nation for racial justice and against police brutality. Aren’t these things just hardening the ground on which the seeds of the Gospel fall? Or are they breaking up the hardened soil of racism and discrimination and ignorance to receive the seeds of the Gospel?

It depends on what we are willing to do on earth, right where we are. The power of God’s presence in Jesus Christ is that the Word of God became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. Rooting, tending, and reaping in our mission field is what we are called to do even as we learn how we are related to sisters, brothers, and siblings throughout the world.

I am glad to take root and bear fruit here in Greenville and invite you to continue your growing journey with God through the wisdom of God’s creation expressed in Advice from a Tree by Ilan Shamir (The Power of a Positive No, 233):

“Stand Tall and Proud
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
Reflect the light of a greater source
Think long term
Go out on a limb…
Be flexible
remember your roots
Enjoy the view!”

(This was written for the July 2020 newsletter for Greenville First UMC)

Good morning, Church! God bless you. I say good morning anytime in memory of my late father-in-law who said it’s not a time of day, it’s a state of mind.

Beverly and I have successfully moved into the parsonage. Thank you, Leadership Board, and Wendy Bates, John Raven, Jeff and Jennifer Loding, for your work on preparing the house for its next occupants.

I am grateful for Pastor Don and Shelly who have oriented us for a good beginning here. And I praise God for Pastor Don’s 38 years of pastoral ministry.

As your incoming pastor, I want to listen, learn, and love.

• Listen to you for God’s voice in the stories of your lives and the life of the congregation.
• Learn from you about what it means to be faithful here and how decisions are made and guidance is sought and how peace and justice are pursued and practiced.
• Love you and our neighbors as an expression of our love for God.

I listen, learn, and love from perspectives of grace, hospitality, and peace.

Grace is the best way I experience God. In grace, God comforts, confronts, and confounds me with unmerited love that will not let me go. I know grace most directly in Beverly, my wife, and our three adult daughters, two sons-in-law, three grandchildren, family, and friends. I like Anne Lamott’s desire to be with her Sunday School kids to “assure them that we can trust God no matter how things look and how long things take…(and) that grace bats last.”

I value hospitality because my life has been shaped in significant ways by moving. I was a new student in a new school in 4th grade, 5th grade, 7th grade, and 9th grade following the educational career of my dad who started as a remedial English teacher in Elkhart, Indiana, and finished as superintendent of the River Valley School District in southwest Michigan. It was through the hospitality of Three Oaks United Methodist Church that I formed an initial call to ministry. The late Henri Nouwen wrote that “Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place” (Reaching Out, 71).

My search and desire for peace are grounded in the social consciousness of my faith and my name. My faith gained a social consciousness through the Wesley Foundation at Central Michigan University and my pastor, Rev. Tom Jones. He was a prophet in a true sense and taught me the Gospel’s disruption and irritation and protest of unjust ways that cannot be denied. The Social Principles of The United Methodist Church have been a guide and companion in ministry for me (proposed new version here: https://www.umcjustice.org/documents/124). A deeper affirmation of peace is in the meaning of my name, Jeffrey, which means “God’s peace.”

So, we are on our way together. I am excited to listen, learn, and love with you as we witness and cooperate with all the Spirit of God is doing in our midst.

What I’m learning about grief
is that it sits in the space between laughs
comes in the dark steals the warmth from the bed covers
threads sleep with thin tendrils
is a hauntingly familiar song,
yet I can’t remember the words…
What I’m learning about grief
I learned a long time ago.
Knead grief, as you would bread.
Weave grief, as you would thread.
(excerpts from a crowdsourced poem, “If the Trees Can Keep Dancing, So Can I”, shared on NPR’s Morning Edition, 4/30/20)

Well, I did not have “In-person worship stops after March 15 until further notice” and “A pandemic calls for social distancing for the last three and a half months of your appointment” on my Wayland UMC bingo card.

The Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic has overtaken us. And it is dominating the remaining months we have together as a pastoral family and congregation. Though I hope it is not the case, there is an outside chance that we will not gather for worship again before Beverly and I leave. We are scheduled to move out of the parsonage on Tuesday, June 16, and move into the Greenville parsonage the next day. Our last Sunday worship is scheduled for June 21.

There is power and there is truth in lamenting the losses related to the pandemic. This is grieving because it’s bad. And as a congregation, we are entering a pastoral transition that prompts another kind of grief.

The grief I feel in leaving Wayland is because it’s been good to be here. I am grateful for what we have learned and known and loved together.

My call to ministry is grounded in grief. In my grief for my grandpa, I experienced the first stirring of ministry awareness while shooting baskets on my grandparents’ farm after he died in the mid-1970s. I miss him and so remember the love and acceptance he showed me. This is grief because it’s good. And it is grief “I learned a long time ago.”

It is one way I feel Jesus’ words on the Sermon-Mountain in Matthew: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

There is so much to celebrate and remember in our six-year season of ministry.

• Beverly and I had breakfast the very first day at Effie Greenawalt’s home and met Lee, Roxie, Wade, and Rex.
• Sandi and Gary Ragan introduced us to the Hotel Bar & Grill and the Firehouse for seasonal breakfasts.
• The main events of the Harvest Dinner, Henderson Settlement, Mega-Sports Camp, and Amazing Arts Academy.
• Our faithful staff members: Kimberly Wolff, Theresa Bodenberg, Wilma Straight, and musicians, Ellen Messner, Danny Reeves, Somi Yoon, Andria Savara, Roxie Muczynski, and Mitchell Lapham.
• Our Certified Lay Speaker (Ron Thebo) and Certified Lay Servant (Gwyn Meisenbach) as reliable spiritual and worship leaders when Beverly and I were gone.
• Beverly and the handbell choirs, and Ellie Bayer and our seasonal choirs (full of Ellie’s exciting energy).
• The baptisms, weddings, funerals (thank you, Margaret Smith, for meal planning), and regular worship services (including the Living Advent Wreath, Bea Stewart’s bulletin boards, Roxie Muczynski’s sanctuary designs, children’s messages, my 30-year ministry celebration (thank you, Jon & Sue Jensen), losses of power, and that empty communion bread plate just as Keith Kohtz was ready to be served).
• Adult Sunday School and Bea Stewart’s estimate that it would take us about 22 years to get through the Bible at our pace of study.
• The adult small group that grew out of Jon Jensen’s spiritual journey.
• The recognition dinners for First Responders and Educators, Chili-Cook Offs (thank you, Wayne and Laurie Trainor), Graduate recognitions, and Baccalaureate services.
• Native American Ministry Sundays of shared worship and meals with Bradley and Salem UMCs.
• Seasonal study and worship with United Church.
• Breakfasts with Paul Schloop the morning of Ad Council/Finance Team meetings.
• Children’s Church thanks to Beverly, Sue Schloop, Sue Jensen, Vanessa Dodson, Becky Villarreal, Gwyn Meisenbach, and Tammy Button.
• Eagle Scout awards for Landon Kohtz and Mitchell Lapham.
• Harry Smith fixing anything that needed fixing at the parsonage.
• Kelvin Lapham faithfully plowing snow for the church and parsonage.
• Landon Kohtz and Roxie and Dennis Muczynski mowing the church and parsonage lawns.
• The early ice cream social at Donna and Bob Priestap’s home and annual ice cream socials at Paul and Robin Nyenhuis’ home.
• Traveling to/from Bradley and Carlisle UMCs with Wade Greenawalt for communion preparation.
• Being overwhelmed (in a good way) by opening the church as a rain site for the Kiwanis’ Easter Egg Hunt and being the site for an impromptu community memorial service for Jason Morgan.
• And so many more…

On the personal side, you have been our Church family through my dad’s death in 2015, Sarah’s and Flo’s wedding in 2017, and the births of three grandchildren in 2015, 2017, and 2019. In her social work vocation, Beverly has moved from Metro Health Hospital to Easter Seals to Hope Network. And you have allowed me the time to serve beyond the local church with the Division of Higher Education & Campus Ministry, mentoring ministry candidates, Friends of the Henika District Library, and two Midwest District teams. We have gone up, up, and away thanks to the Kohtz family, and I was drenched at their house in the Ice Bucket Challenge. We consulted with Mickala Kohtz on bats in the parsonage garage. We have been out on Lake Michigan with Paul and Susan Schloop. We have enjoyed the annual 4th of July delicious fish fry at the Meisenbachs. We got our Christmas tree each year off the Scouts’ parade float.

Deep breath…

I am re-reading one of the few books from which I have learned genuinely new ideas in these most recent years of ministry. It is called Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice. The editor, Ched Myers, reflects on the connection of learning, knowing, loving, and saving sacred places:

Almost a half a century ago, Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum suggested that at the root of our pathology is a crisis of affection. To paraphrase him: “We won’t save places we don’t love, we can’t love places we don’t know, and we don’t know places we haven’t learned” (Ched Myers, ed. Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice, 16; my emphasis).

As I mentioned, I am grateful for what we have learned and known and loved together.

Grieving because it’s bad or good can be exhausting. Jesus knew the weight that comes with faithful living and striving and loving and invited us to a transformed life: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

We have found our way by learning from and following Jesus in these years of ministry and I am grateful for the privilege of serving as your pastor.

I want to grieve more out of gratitude than lament, but I know both are woven within me. While we may miss gathering with you in person, please know how thankful Beverly and I are for being the Church with you these last six years. We are happy and excited for Pastor Paul & Ashleigh Reissmann to enter into life and ministry with you.

While I know the location of Wayland UMC is on the corner of Church and Maple (as it has been since 1864), I will remember living at this kind of intersection with all of you.