August 18, 2022

I continue to find myself filled with hope for the next years of our church, the ELCA, after returning from Churchwide assembly. We have plenty of work ahead of us, yet we are rooted in Christ and joined together by our common work – our worship and liturgy (liturgy meaning “the work of the people”).

If you want to read a great and succinct report from the assembly, my friend Pastor Melissa Woeppel of St. Louis put this one together: http://spiritinthehills.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CWA22-Update.pdf 
Or you can go to the ELCA website news feed for more details: https://elca.org/News-and-Events

As I return from the ELCA Churchwide Assembly filled with hope for the future of our church and filled with the Holy Spirit encountered in worship, conversation, prayer, and our common work as a denomination to embody God’s Word, I begin to set my eyes toward the most immediate work ahead of our congregation – our Seeds of Hope capital campaign.
 
The words of one of our interreligious partners are ringing in my ears. Rabbi Esther Ledermen of the Union for Reform Judaism offered a powerful word of hope and encouragement for our continued work to share God’s love in the world, “Let us become the ancestors the future needs us to be.”
 
This is at the heart of our Seeds of Hope campaign. That we would take up our mantle of responsibility and join in God’s work in the world, doing our part to make decisions and take action now that will bring about a future filled with abundant love where our congregation and this place on which we gather, in which we are formed and reformed by God’s grace and the transformative power of the gospel, and from which we are sent to be the hands and feet of Christ embodying God’s love for our neighbor, neighborhood, and world.
 
My hope and prayer is that we take the time to sow seeds of hope. To tend to these seeds knowing that one day, by the grace of God, they will become trees whose shade gives rest, bear fruit for the feeding of the hungry, grow meadows and groves where people for generations will come to connect with God, neighbor, and nature.
 
This is what our commitment, our giving, our ministry, our stewardship of people, property, and resources is all about – having received the life-giving love of God and having died and been raised to new life in Christ, we give ourselves away for the sake of the world God so loves knowing that nothing will take away God’s grace from us, nothing will separate us from God’s love, and nothing will stop God from bringing new, abundant, and everlasting life to us, to our neighbor, to our enemy, to generations yet unseen, and to the whole world.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Drew