FROM THE PASTOR
Opportunity for Renewal
As you know, the Church Council unanimously adopted the Strategic Plan coming out of the Vision Team’s good work. By the end of this week I will have identified an Implementation Team to move our Strategic Plan forward. I will then reach out to them to get their agreement to serve and then we will go to work in rolling out the plan, including how we will communicate the recommendations with the congregation and receive feedback, participation and support. The Implementation Team will connect the recommendations with existing structures, cabinets and leadership, and create task forces for some others. It is important to remember that we are building on the good work of our congregation over the years. Some recommendations will be new, but many will refocus and renew work in which we have already been engaged. This is a wonderful opportunity for the renewal of our congregation and its mission as we re-connect with one another and our community.
Two of the recommendations have already been shared with you. First, continuing one 10AM liturgy on Sundays, with an education hour (Sunday school, confirmation, Adult Forum) at 8:30. We anticipate renewed energy, participation and impact on our mission and life together as we all connect at the same time on the Lord’s Day. There is an announcement about this in this newsletter. Second, is an Every Member Visitation this Fall. We hope to connect with those we see every Sunday, those we have not seen in a long time, those who participate virtually in the worship and life of our church. We also hope there will be an outreach component to this visitation as we connect with those who have shared in the life of our congregation through baptisms, funerals, marriages, Sunday visits or other ways of engaging with St. Luke’s.
Georges Bernanos in his lovely novel, “Diary of a Country Priest,” gives us these thoughts of the priest fighting the good fight of faith: “No, I have not lost my faith. The expression “to lose one’s faith,” as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish. It must be one of those sayings of bourgeois piety, a legacy of those wretched priests of the eighteenth century who talked so much. Faith is not a thing one “loses,” we merely cease to shape our lives by it.”
My deepest prayerful hope for us as we live into this plan for mission and ministry is that we would have a revival of our faith and a re-focus on Christ as the cornerstone of our church. As we reconnect may we also reshape our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Stephen Paul Bouman
