We are one week away from the US’s Presidential Election. Michigan is a battle ground state. That means that we are being flooded with campaign ads, political mailings, and incessant text messages asking for more money. If you are experiencing what I am experiencing, politics feels unescapable at the moment. And while it is an important election (I hope you all have voted or plan to vote), this inundation of politics to every aspect of our lives can also be detrimental to our mental health.
This fall, we are discussing what it means to be a steward of faith. Part of being a good steward is making sure that we are being mindful about how we use our mental, emotional, and physical energy. When talking about stewardship, we don’t always think about our time and energy as a resource in the same way we discuss money as a resource, but it is easier to see how our attention, mental energy, and emotional energy are resources in an election year like this one. Campaign ads are trying to use your emotional energy every time they try to make you afraid or anxious. It takes mental energy to sift through headlines for the truth amongst the exaggeration truth and the outright lies. And many campaigns are asking for your physical energy as we engage in conversations about politics or as people help to canvas for particular candidates. While I am supportive of people who willingly choose to participate in campaign efforts, if you are feeling tired, anxious, or afraid due to this election, here are some of my tips on how to be better stewards of our time and energy: Set a timer for how much time you want to spend on the internet or watching television. Then, turn it off. By setting a timer or time limit, you set you intentions before engaging in an activity. This can prevent doom scrolling on the internet or watching the news for longer than you intended because of gripping headlines. Make plans to do something that is not technology-based. Schedule time to read a physical book. Make plans to spend time with family or friends. If you know that you will be tempted to scroll the internet or binge-watch the news, make plans so that you are too busy doing things to interact with the internet or tv. Remember, it is easier to avoid temptation if you don’t go near it. Set boundaries around conversations or topics that makes you angry, frustrated, or anxious. Take some time to plan out responses to conversations that you are not in a place to have. This can sound like, “I care a lot about this election, but talking about it right now is not helpful for me. Can we discuss something else?” “I can see that you care a lot about this topic. However, we don’t agree on this topic, and I don’t think we will be able to change each other’s minds. Can we change the topic?” or “I want to be able to listen to what you are saying because I care about your opinion, but I am not in the right headspace right now to give you the attention you deserve. Can we discuss this at another time?” Make a plan for how you are going to spend Election Day next Tuesday. The best time to make a plan for how you want your election day to go is to plan it out this week. How much time do you want to spend watching the news and election results? How will you let yourself know when to go to sleep? If you feel anxious or angry, how will you deal with those emotions? If you don’t follow your plan, how will you remind yourself of the intentions you have set this week? Your time, energy, emotions, and mental bandwidth are all important resources. Unlike money, we all have a limited amount of them to use and when they are gone, they are gone. So please be good stewards of your time and energy these next two weeks. There are many things that will be trying to get you to use those resources for their own purposes. By making plans, you can gain more control over how you use those resources and be able to allocate your time, energy, and emotions for things you really care about. Blessings, Pastor Chris When you are thinking about creating a painting, most art instructors will tell you to start with a gesture drawing. Gesture drawings are loose and messy. They are meant to help the artist figure out what elements to include, proportions, and a general layout. But you can’t get attached to the gesture drawing: even the best gesture drawing will be covered up by paint. After the gesture, many artists will do an underpainting. The goal of the underpainting is to help with the color palette and the tone of the paint on top. Like the gesture drawing, the underpainting will largely be unseen by the end. Next, many artists will paint color blocks: each element of the painting will be given a base color. Slowly by slowly the images will be added to. Larger details will give way to smaller and smaller details. The general will give way to the specific. If you want to see this magic happen, click here, or here for short videos showing this process.
While there are styles that will start with the small details and end with the background, most paintings follow this patter I just described. However, many young artists know the struggle of wanting to draw the small details that they enjoy first. I loved drawing faces, and I had a habit of finishing all of the small details of the face before refining the details of the body or its surroundings. However, my drawings always looked unbalanced when I did this because you could tell what I found interesting and what I was bored with. When I saved my favorite details for the end, the drawing was much more likely to have a uniform, or at least harmonious, level of detail across the drawing. Details were included that made sense for that piece and details that were interesting but distracting were left out. When thinking about our ongoing conversation with CCB about them potentially sharing space with us at Northminster, I find it helpful to think about it like the process of refining a painting. We started with brainstorming conversations and created a gesture drawing to see if this idea was even possible. We presented them with an initial offer that laid out some of the brainstorming ideas with a first attempt to put the pieces together. This was like the underpainting that set the tone of our continued conversations. We are now in a stage of color-blocking: we are trying to figure out how the larger details will work together before we can address the smaller details. It is easy to want to jump straight to the details on the face and paint the curve of the lips and capture the twinkle of someone’s eyes. But before we can do that, we have to make sure that the facial proportions are correct. On Sunday in our after-service meeting, more questions arose about where the conversation between Northminster and CCB stood. There are details that were being asked that I don’t have answers to yet because they are contingent on information that we do not yet have. Here are some details that I can share:
Thank you to everyone who has been asking questions and giving feedback. Your input has helped this process immensely. If you have additional thoughts or would like to talk about things in detail, please do not hesitate to reach out to me or the members of Session to talk about this. I have never claimed to be a mind-reader, so unless people come forward, we are not able to address your concerns or needs. Gratefully, Pastor Chris Dear Northminster,
For the past two days, I have been thinking about the word consensus. Defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, consensus is 1.a) General agreement, unanimity b) The judgment arrived at by most of those concerned 2) Group solidarity in sentiment and belief Most of the systems we work with in society are not based on consensus but a system of democracy where the majority wins. Setting aside the complexity of the Electoral College where that isn’t the case, the closest our country gets to consensus is the system put into place for amending the US Constitution. Constitutional Amendments require a 2/3 vote in both the House and the Senate and then to be ratified by 3/4 of state legislatures. While 2/3rds and 3/4ths both qualify as super majorities, creating a supermajority is not the same as building consensus. Building consensus is not about ensuring that the majority of people agree with a position, but working on an issue or a solution until almost everyone is in agreement. We tend to pass over consensus building in favor of a simple majority because building consensus can be extremely difficult. While consensus is more difficult to achieve, consensus is what I am aiming for when it comes to the various changes happening at Northminster. I know that some of the changes we have discussed sound similar to previous plans that previous Northminster leadership teams have suggested. Folks have not been shy about sharing how similar plans didn’t work and the reasons why they fell apart. The Session and I has been taking notes on why those plans didn’t work. Moreover, by aiming for consensus rather than a simple majority agreement we are hoping that these changes fit our needs today. Knowing that not everything will work straight away, we are also planning check-ins to adjust our plans as we encounter issues. I am incredibly grateful for everyone who has come to the Lunch ‘n Learn sessions after worship the past two Sundays. Your feedback on our plans has been invaluable. Not only has your feedback pointed out some places where we need to fine-tune our plans, it has provided ideas we had not yet considered. Furthermore, it is only by this process of feedback, change, and more feedback that we are able to build consensus on how to move forward. If you haven’t made it to either of the previous two meetings, click here to get a copy of the committee restructuring plan, and click here to access the document that discusses the initial ideas for a CCB/Northminster rental agreement. This Sunday, we have one more Lunch ‘N Learn discussion after worship to discuss the 2025 Preliminary Budget. This Budget is not finalized but will give us an initial idea of what to expect for the following year. Blessings, Pastor Chris I am fully aware that the Northminster event calendar has been full so far this fall.
From joint worship services, to educational talks, to potluck picnics, I am touched by how many folks have dedicated much of their Sundays to eating together, learning, and fellowship with one another. And a special thank you to everyone who contributed to the potluck this past Sunday. Whether you helped set up, brought food, or stayed to talk with folks from Congregational Church of Birmingham, our guests were touched by your hospitality. While I know that the fall remains a busy season for many of us, I hope that you can make time for our next three after-church conversations: Oct 6 – Committee Restructuring Plan Oct 13 – Informational Session about CCB Rental Negotiations and Q&A Oct 20 – 2025 Budget Presentation. With each of these topics, we are hoping to present a plan or an outline in order to receive feedback from the congregation. That means we want to hear from YOU! And while these are three separate conversations, they are also interconnected. Therefore, I hope as many people as possibly are able to make time to be a part of these conversations. If you are not able to make it to one of these conversations but would like to know more about what is being presented, please send me an email and I will be happy to send you my presentation and answer any questions. The next presentation will be about restructuring our committees at Northminster. The proposal that Session has forwarded on to the Congregation for comment includes two main pieces: 1) Reducing the number of Committees down to 4, in addition to Session and Deacons 2) Changing when and how these committees meet. With these changes, our committee structure will only require 26 volunteers (down from the 38 to 53+ volunteers currently needed). Yes, this proposed plan requires less people in order to function. Since we are a smaller congregation, a smaller structure is required for our long-term viability. However, I am aware that, in the past, similar attempts were made to lighten the load of committee work but those efforts instead made people feel like they were pushed out of life-giving work they enjoyed doing. Our goal is not to push people out of positions they enjoy but to give people who are tired an off-ramp and to make all committees have a similar workload throughout the year. If you enjoy the volunteer work that you are already doing, we will find a way so that you can continue doing that work. Lastly, if you are planning on being at any of the next three after church conversations, consider volunteering to bring food to share. We are looking for three people each Sunday: one to bring soup, another to bring salad, and a third to bring bread. Let us know if you would like to volunteer to bring food. Blessings, Pastor Chris While I expected this fall to be busy, I'll admit that I didn't quite expect it to be this busy.
This past Sunday, we held our second Lunch 'n Learn about the Israel/Palestine Conflict - a date for Part Three will be announced shortly. There have been neighborhood gatherings, interfaith events, and memorial services. If you haven't been able to make it to everything (or everything that you have wanted to), we understand. There is always more to do than most of us have time for in a day, a week, or even a month. However, the next event on Northminster's social calendar is coming up this Sunday after worship: Northminster's Fall Potluck Picnic. I encourage everyone to 1) bring some food to share & 2) invite someone to come. Call someone up and see how they are doing and ask what they are planning on bringing. Send an email to ask if a friend has made plans to come. Or simply, let someone in our community know that you are thinking about them. The weather forecast for this week looks like rain. If it is rainy or drizzly on Sunday like it is today, we will move our picnic inside to the Ark. While I hope you all are excited to come and fellowship with one another, we also expect guests to join us: The Congregational Church of Birmingham. As we enter into official space sharing negations with CCB, we felt that it was important that the two congregations get to meet each other and mingle for a bit in order to see if the culture of our congregations is a good fit. Since we were already planning to gather for some extended fellowship time, we felt that the Potluck Picnic would be a perfect opportunity for the congregations to officially meet one another. As I mentioned on Sunday, we at the beginning stages of negotiations with CCB. We have not come to a formalized agreement, and we will be discussing the details of a possible agreement in the coming weeks. We expect this process to take time in order to make sure that we have gotten input and feedback from both congregations, have found solutions to potential issues, and ironed out details of our weekly rhythms before we sign any agreements. By taking this slowly, it also gives both communities a chance to envision what this will look like before implementation. We also hope that this process will give us opportunities to change plans if we think something won't work. This Sunday's Potluck Picnic will be an important step on this journey: we get to meet each other and put names, faces, and personalities to a congregation that we have mostly just heard about. My hope is that you make this picnic a priority this week so that you will be able to contribute feedback as we continue on this path. If you have any questions about this process or what next steps look like, do not hesitate to email me with your thoughts. Blessings, Pastor Chris Let’s cut to the chase: there is a lot of this coming up the next few weeks.
So let us take a moment and touch on some of the highlights: Lunch n’ Learn: The History of Israel & Palestine The conflict between Israel and Gaza continues to be in the news but the full history of the conflict is rarely discussed in detail. Come and learn about how this conflict devolved, the major players, and the key issues. Lunch will be provided. Talk will be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel afterward.
Troy-area Interfaith Group: International Day of Peace Building Harmony to Create Peace Sunday, September 22, 2024 at 7 p.m. at Congregation Shir Tikvah Join together with our interfaith partners for a night of singing and discussion about harmony and how building harmony in our community can create peace. Northminster’s Homecoming Potluck Picnic. Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. in the Pavilion, weather permitting. It is time to christen our new pavilion with a Homecoming Potluck Picnic. We will gather in the front yard after worship to in fellowship to celebrate the harvest season when we take time to remember where we came from and the communities that shaped us. Haven’t visited in a while? Now is a great time to stop on by! Haven’t seen someone in a while? Now is a great time to invite them to come! Bring a dish to share. In addition to these events, there are a couple of things that you will be hearing more about in the coming weeks.
If you are a Google Calendar user and want to say up to date with the "goings on" here, subscribe to our Google Calendar of Special Events HERE. To subscribe to our regular weekly events calendar, go HERE. Blessings, Pastor Chris With the school year starting up again, I have been inundated with people’s back-to-school photos. With school starting in mid-August in Kansas and Missouri, my family began posting photos weeks ago. I have seen little kids with “First Day of Kindergarten” signs and parents standing in barren dorm rooms that are filled with bags yet to be unpacked. I have seen friends post photos of themselves with backpacks and big grins with the caption that they are beginning their last year of graduate school. I have also seen side-by-side comparison pictures of the current first-day-of-school picture with the last-first-day-of-school picture. And today being the first day after Labor Day, I have seen the last round of Michigan’s first-day-of-school pictures.
Seeing these photos today made me think about how we measure time. There is a joke on the internet that crops up every now and again that, “Americans will measure with anything other than the metric system.” Want an example? Click here to read 27 of them. Similarly, I find it interesting how many people use the school year as a tool of measurement. Never mind that we celebrate the changing of the year every January, we use the beginning of the school year as a different measure of time. Even folks like me who haven’t had a “first day of school” day in 7 school years! Never mind if you are retired, are actively teaching, or taking someone to school, September still holds a feeling of the year getting stated again. Fall programing begins, some congregations are holding Homecoming Celebrations, and committees start meeting once again. Northminster is no different: Our new fall series will start this Sunday. The following two Sundays we have lunch-n-learn classes after worship. Session meets this Thursday and the Deacon the week after. If you have questions as to what is going on at Northminster CLICK HERE to subscribe to our online calendar and stay up to date with everything happening. And CLICK HERE to subscribe to our Special Events Calendar! And with that, we are off and going again. If Northminster was to have a back-to-school picture, it would be 69 years old and in the 64th Grade. Happy School Year everyone! Blessings, Pastor Chris I have a question for you to consider today:
If you did not need a job or a wage in order to live, what would you do with your time? This may be a silly question for those of you who are already retired… but what would you have done in young adulthood if you didn’t need a job to support yourself? Would you have pursued the same career? Would you pursue a career at all? How long would you have spent basking in the nothing-ness of your days before you got bored? Would you have pursued art? Or music? Tried to write a story that lived in your head? Would you cook or read or volunteer your time? Or would you cultivate your garden and tackle all of those DIY projects that you promised yourself that you would do, “once I have energy”? In the 1970’s, it was predicted that we would only work 20 hours a week at our jobs based on the steady increase of productivity in the workplace. Technology was improving, allowing humans to do less work. And so, it followed, we would be able to work less and pursue whatever artistic and creative endeavors we so desired. But this vision of the future is not the version future we ended up with. Instead, work has expanded to the size of time that we allow it to. Cell phones mean that we are accessible 24/7, laptops and tablets mean we can carry work with us wherever we go, and a desire for metrics means that there is always another computer program to enter in data into to see if we are maximizing our time and resources wisely. We traded a future of creative leisure for an obsession with hard work and productivity. While Artificial Intelligence could be trained to do menial tasks that humans dislike doing, it is instead being trained to do creative work, like creating art or writing movies, that humans would otherwise enjoy doing. When I first read the predictions from the 1970’s compared to our workplace culture today, I felt like Kristen Bell’s character in The Good Place when she finally realizes that the supposed heaven she was in was actually the Bad Place. (Sorry for the spoiler if you haven’t seen this fantastic show!) But this realization is why I have come to love Labor Day and I love preaching about rest and how Christians and activists fought and died so that we could have a 5-day workweek with 2 days of rest. And it is why I go on and on about the importance of rest (and not feeling guilty about resting) - but there is one more part to my yearly soapbox: Life is about more than just work. Life is meant to be enjoyed. So, what would you do if you had leisure time? What would you do if you were to do something purely because you enjoy it? And I hope you get some time this weekend to do just that. Blessings, Pastor Chris As we come to the end of the “That’s NOT in the Bible!” sermon series, I am sad to report that I was not able to include everything Biblical misconception. I touched upon the topics that I thought were the most important. Some topics were chosen because of their moral implications and other topics were chose because the Christian imagination has added in details that were never there to begin with. And to be fair, I chose not to preach on a few topics because there wasn’t enough to say about these mix-ups and misconceptions. So, here is a list of Honorable Mentions of what is NOT in the Bible:
Blessings, Pastor Chris If you have been inside my office and looked on my bookshelf, you will notice a collection of objects. Some of them are souvenirs from trips I have taken. Other things are gifts that I have been given. While some objects have sentimental value only, other objects I have kept because they are beautiful. More than one has a story behind them. But one thing is for sure: with one look at my bookshelf and you can tell that I enjoy collecting unique and odd things. The same could be said about my brain: I have an odd collection of information that I have learned over the years. Even as a child, I had a penchant for remembering odd facts, like that a hippopotamus’s sweat is blood-red and people have mistaken a sweating hippo for a bleeding one. My mother used to tell me that I had a “bank of random information” that was liable to spit out a piece of trivia at any given moment. I don’t always remember where I learn these facts… but I know that odd nuggets of information stick in my brain like a ketchup stain on a white shirt.
This “bank of random information” is my only explanation for the onslaught of odd facts in Sunday’s sermon. In case you were wondering, here is an article that explains what a bacculum is and why the Hebrew might imply that Eve was made from one. I’ll be honest with you all, I am not sure where I first heard this theory… it may have been in a seminary textbook, or it may have been from this book: The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book. What I do know is this: there is a lot more I could say about the first three chapters of Genesis. In case you want to hear a longer discussion, here are the videos from our Tuesday morning Bible Study where we discuss many of these topics in greater detail:
With all of this contextual information that presents us with a slightly different narrative than we expect, it is fair to wonder, “How are we able to make sense of the story in scripture at all?” Another way to ask this is, “Do I need a seminary degree to understand the Bible, or is my plain reading of the text enough?” This question is at the core of what we will be discussing this coming Sunday - and the simple answer is… it’s complicated. With two Sundays left in this series - strap in! - because there is a lot more random pieces of information heading your way! Blessings, Pastor Chris At the moment, the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France are in full swing.
Day by day we are seeing more videos and news clips of the stunning abilities of individuals and the human body. While the Olympics, at its heart, is a competition and every person is striving for a metal, it is also a beautiful display of the beauty of humanity. It is hard not to marvel and just how much these athletes can do. I know that the full range of emotions is also on display as people try their best (which is miles beyond what I could even attempt) and still fail to win. We see both joy and grief in these competitions, but I cannot help but to see beauty through it all. On my grumpier days, I can be heard saying to my friend Melissa, “Mel, I hate people! People are the worst! Why do we have to deal with people!?” She reminds me that a person is often lovely: it is just collectively that people can be awful. Other days, it is the other way around. Other days, she is grumpy at people in general and I am the one to remind her that people can also be wonderfully kind and full of surprises. It is on our grumpier days that I like to think about the beauty of the Olympics. On my grumpy days, I ask God, “Why do you pay attention to us at all? We are horrible to each other! Why do you even love and care about us?” And then I watch the wonders of the human that God designed, and I am floored by the beauty of God’s creation. On those same days, I will get caught off-guard by a stranger offering a compliment, and I will see the kindness that God instilled in our hearts. Other days, it is the hug of a family member… and I wonder how anyone could want to do away with humanity. Yes, hell can be other people… but so is our paradise. It seems like the greatest contradiction: other people can be our greatest pain and the source of our comfort. In the end, watching the Olympics doesn’t make me want to attempt ANYTHING they are doing on screen, but it does make me want to make something beautiful. It makes me want to create so that this world is more beautiful because of me and my work. The question is, what will you do to make this world beautiful? Blessings, Pastor Chris "Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God'.” -John Green, Looking for Alaska Dear Northminster Friend, On Sunday my sermon discussed hell and the afterlife as it exists in scripture and in the imaginative work of Dante Alighieri. As I stated then, scripture doesn’t actually spend much time talking about what this afterlife is like. While Dante gave us vivid imagery that has influenced our conception of hell ever since, we are also able to use what we read in scripture and image something else. In light of that, I thought I’d share with you all what I envision when I think of hell. My beliefs about hell changed in 2011 when Mega-Church Pastor and author Rob Bell published the book Love Wins. Rob Bell had built a 10,000-member evangelical mega-church in Grand Rapids and was thought to be the next Bill Graham (source). But that went off the rails when he wrote a book explaining why Hell didn’t exist. Not only did this book rock my world, but it also had me asking questions that I had never considered before. While I was already uncomfortable with the idea of eternal damnation, Rob Bell was the first to give me a framework for a different way of understanding what comes next. Here is how I envision what is next: After death, you arrive at the threshold of heaven. God is waiting there with open arms saying, “Good and faithful servant, well done!” And you are welcomed into everlasting peace. But right as you are about to cross the threshold, you see a person you don’t expect, someone you hated or that you considered to have lived a horrible life, causing you pain and suffering. Someone you think is not deserving of eternal peace. “Wait! God, how did THEY get in?! Why are THEY in heaven?!” “Yes, my child,” God responds, “my love and forgiveness extends to all. “But they were horrible! I don’t want to be stuck in heaven with THEM!” “I can’t force you to accept them… But know that you are choosing not to enter heaven because of them. I love them and have forgiven them. I hope you can do the same so that you can be united with everyone here in heaven. There are no flames in hell: it is simply the absence of my presence. You can choose to go there, but I hope that you don’t.” And then that person will be faced with a choice: choose to enter hell knowing that their enemy will be there with them or choose to turn away and choose emptiness. It has been over a decade since I read that book. I am not sure how much of the above image came from Rob Bell’s writing and how much was simply inspired by it. Frankly, I’m not even sure what happened to my copy of that book; but when I think about hell now, I see too many people using the idea of eternal torment to inspire fear in people in order to coerce, manipulate, and control people into behaving in a certain way. When I look at scripture, I see ideas of hell being used to make the comfortable uncomfortable and giving comfort to those who are suffering. I can’t quite claim the title of being a universalist since I do still believe in a sort of hell; I just pray that hell will always remain empty. Blessings, Pastor Chris As we talked about this past Sunday, nowhere in our scriptures does it state that, “God helps those who help themselves.” On the contrary, the Bible often tells stories about how God fought on behalf of people who couldn’t fight for themselves. I discussed how the image of the Body of Christ opposes rugged individualism and self-reliance. But there is another aspect of how this phrase get used in our culture that I didn’t have time to go into on Sunday: The Prosperity Gospel.
In the simplest terms, the idea behind the Prosperity Gospel is this: God blesses those who are righteous. So, if a person is rich and successful in life, it is because God had blessed them and their lifestyle. I have heard preachers state, “God doesn’t want you to be poor! God want to shower you with abundance! So, give boldly to our collection to show God that you are committed to his cause and God will rain that abundance back down upon you!” God helps those who help themselves: so, if you work hard and live a righteous life, God will reward your efforts. You can’t sit on your hands and wait for God’s blessings to fall into your lap; you have to work for them and God will bless you in return. In my opinion, the message of the Prosperity Gospel is manipulative at best and outright predatory at worst. It works by preying on the fears of the vulnerable for the enrichment of the powerful. Most heinous of all, this is done in the name of God despite the fact that it is in direct opposition to scripture and the words of Jesus: But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets - Luke 6:24-26 Rather, our scripture tells us of how God fought for the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt and could not save themselves. We hear Jesus tell the parable of Lazarus and the Rich man in Luke 16:19-31 that speaks of the dangers of ignoring the needy that cannot help themselves. Jesus also speak of the lilies of the field in Matthew 6:25-34 where he proclaims that God will provide for us just as God provides for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. We do not earn God’s love and blessings: we already have them. Yes, there is work to do to make sure that everyone can enjoy them, but the fact that some people are not able to enjoy God’s abundance is because of the flaws in human systems, not God withholding love. So, know that you are already loved and claimed by God. Blessings, Pastor Chris In our last series about the Book of Confessions, one topic that came up frequently was the role of the PCUSA’s (and prior Presbyterian denomination’s) General Assembly. General Assembly (GA) is the PCUSA’s national gathering that is held every other year. The Next GA will be in the summer of 2026 in the Presbytery of Milwaukee. While the national gathering is over, the work of GA has just begun. While GA is a time to make decisions, vote on changes, and assemble commissions, much of the work of GA is carrying out what has been decided upon at the gathering. Think of it like this: in a church worship service, we worship God and hear about how we should live our lives in faith, but the work of the church really only begins once the service is done.
With the 226th General Assembly having officially come to a close, here are some of the things we can expect to hear more about in the coming two years:
So come with me, for the journey ahead is long. Blessings, Pastor Chris |
AuthorPastor Chris Hallam earned her degree at Princeton Theological Seminary and moved to Michigan to become a pastor. Also trained as a studio artist and graphic designer, with an interest in pop culture and social science, her passion is thinking creatively about the future of the church. Archives
October 2024
Categories |