Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Wisdom Wednesday: Forging a New Path, Part 4

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, June 1, 2023 These past 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. Last week, I introduced some challenging questions the Rebekah asks us to ponder: I discussed the first question last week: How do we in the church live faithfully in this new normal? I proposed that to live faithfully in our new normal, we worship each Sunday either online or in person, we make a commitment to nurturing our souls through participation in a Bible study, or prayer group, or participating in one of the church choirs. We nurture our souls through the church meals, or fellowship groups like Peakland After Dark, the Ruth Circle or the United Methodist Men’s group, and finally we give generously. We give financial gifts to the church, and we give our time and our talents not only here at the church but in the community. As Peakland’s pastor my role is to work with the staff and church lay leader to ensure that Peakland is always offering ways to worship God and to nurture our faith and to give generously so that we can live faithfully Forging a New Path also challenges us with the question: How do we invite folks to church so that our ministries and our community grow stronger? How do we do that? How do we invite people to church? Used to be a church just had to be open on Sundays and folks would find their way to us. We didn’t have to invite them at all. If the pastor was clever and didn’t take too long in the pulpit and if there were children’s and youth ministries that the church had, then that was enough for a church to sustain itself. That’s not our reality anymore. Fewer and fewer folks just come to a new church on their own. Now for those who do come to Peakland, they will find a clever pastor who doesn’t take too long in the pulpit, and our Peakland After Dark Sunday evening ministry for children, youth and adults is growing and welcoming. Peakland After Dark isn’t the same as the old model of Sunday school in the morning and youth group on Sunday night, but what we’re doing at Peakland After Dark is uniting youth, children and adults to lean about our faith together. As a parent, Peakland After Dark has been a blessing to me and to my family. Two weeks ago, our church united for worship and lunch and conversation about how to strengthen our ministries. One of the insights I took away from that conversation was the need to update our website and have some information to give to visitors and guests. When folks are looking for a new church, a good website and up to date information about our church helps them get to know us. Those are good suggestions and the church staff and I will start creating those. Stay tuned. In a conversation that Andrew and I had with Peakland’s Staff Parish Relations Committee last week, Andrew told us that an essential way for Peakland to invite folks to our church was for us Peakland people to be out in the community serving and helping and showing the community that we at Peakland are serious about our faith and reaching out, serving all, and extending God’s Table. That’s an excellent insight. Instead of waiting for people to come to church, we in the church need to be out in the world, showing our faith in action and inviting folks to join us. We need to be where the people are. Andrew and I are both committed to being out in the community on a regular basis, giving our time and talents. I just finished a season of tutoring at Bedford Hills Elementary and beginning next month, I’ll be volunteering my time with Meals on Wheels. The church staff volunteered at Daily Bread last month, we’ll return in the weeks to come. Peakland has a strong scout troop and a phenomenal pre-school which meet in our church building, and I’m eager to build stronger connections between us so that those scout families and pre-school families who might be looking for a church home can find one here at Peakland. How do we invite people to church? Meeting people where they are out in the world, going to them instead of waiting for them to come to us, helping where we can, sharing our time and talents, sharing our faith, and then inviting them to join us on that journey…that strikes me as something Jesus himself did, so let’s us do that too. Thanks be to God.