Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Wisdom Wednesday: Forging A New Path, Part 3

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, reflections, church news, and book studies. Today is Wednesday, May 24, 2023 The past two weeks, I’ve been sharing my thoughts with you on a book I’ve been reading, Forging a New Path: moving the church forward in a post-pandemic world, written by one of my mentors Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter, a United Methodist clergy who now does leadership training for church leaders full time. Peakland will be reading this book together later this fall but you all are getting a preview now. In the past two weeks, I’ve covered the three persistent questions that Rebekah has heard again and again from congregations and church leaders. When do things go back to normal? How do we get people back to church? And (3) How do we do more with less? The short answers to those questions are: Things in church aren’t going back to what was normal before Covid. We in the church are creating the new normal now. We get people back to church or to our church for the first time by inviting them to church, and finally we all have to be inventive and creative to do more ministries with fewer volunteers and fewer resources. Peakland is something of an exception in that we have an abundance of both volunteers and resources, so we’re blessed there. Rebecca has some longer, more thoughtfully developed responses to those questions in her book, and I look forward to the time this fall when we are all reading this book together. And Rebecca also challenges churches with three new questions that we can ponder and discuss together. Her three challenging questions for us are: How do we live faithfully in this new normal? How are we inviting new people into our church community? And finally, what can we do now that we couldn’t do before? Those are challenging questions and I have a few thoughts about that: How do we live faithfully in this new normal? How do we live faithfully? In my ideal church, I would want everyone of us to worship faithfully either in person or online. Some Sundays are packed with activities beyond our control, but on the Sundays that we are healthy and free, let’s be in church either in person or online. I’ll be here for worship on Sunday, come join me. To live faithfully, we nurture our spiritual growth. Peakland has an abundance of small group ministries that nurture our souls. United Methodist men gather on Saturday, the Ruth Circle fellowship meets monthly. We have a praise choir, a sanctuary choir, and a handbell choir for ringing and singing. We have the Bible Alive class for adults on Sunday mornings, and Peakland After Dark Sunday evenings for children, youth, and families. Andrew, Pastor Dave, and I host book studies and Bible studies throughout the year, and we are now forming activity groups. If you like Lego building, video games, hiking, cooking, or handiwork and maintenance, then come join likeminded people. Contact Andrew at PeaklandAssociate@gmail.com to learn more about them. To live faithfully, we worship, we nurture our soul, and give generously. There are two ways that we at Peakland can give faithfully and generously. Right now, we are finishing up our collection of hygiene kits and menstrual kits for annual conference. We set a sky-high goal of 100 of each kit. We’ve never done that many kits before, and it looks like we are going to hit our goal. I’m grateful to God for the generosity of the Peakland people. My hope is that our church will constantly set sky high goals for ourselves to give generously in all ways, financially and with our time and talents. I hope our people are always looking for ways to reach out to those in the community who need comfort and care. These past few months, I was volunteering at Bedford Hills Elementary school along with other church members. Now that the school year is over, I will be volunteering with Meals on Wheels. The church staff volunteered at Daily Bread last week, we will return again in a few weeks. How do we live faithfully in this new normal? Worship, nurturing our spiritual growth and giving generously. I had thought that I would wrap up the Forging a new Path discussion this week with this video, but I’ve still got two of Rebecca’s challenging questions to consider: How are we inviting new people into our church community and what can we do now that we couldn’t do before? We’ll look at those two questions next week. Thanks be to God.