Living Into God’s Future
What’s the future of First Christian Church?
Parents and kids fellowship together at Art of the Covenant.
That’s been the question we’ve been asking ourselves over the last few months and years. Now that our building has been sold, we are starting to give thoughts to our next steps.
As most of you might now, I’m a bivocational pastor. I work full time as the Commuications Specialist for the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. I was having devotions on Friday with my boss, the Executive Presbyter. I was a little down about things concerning the church when we read the text for Friday. It was from Isaiah 65:
17For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. 24Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
After we read the passage, we felt rather energized. God was angry at his people and yet the passage ends with God proclaiming hope.
I think it is very easy for many of us to look at First Christian and ask if we have a future. We are an aging and declining congregation. We are a long way from the days when First was a large church. It’s hard to see how we can continue as a faith community let alone devising a future.
But the thing is, the point of this passage is that it is God who holds the future and not us. I’ve thought about the start of our new children’s Sunday School which has given several young children the chance to hear about the Good News. It was simply started in faith and God has done much. I am truly thankful for the hard work of Deb Murphy, the class teacher, but also her faith that God would do a might deed.
It might be time for us to not try to dream and new future, but to live into what God has planned for us. Of course, we don’t know what God is calling us to do. But we walk by faith and trust God along the journey. We just migth find we were walking on the road of faith all along.
First Christian has a future…God’s future. We look foward to what God has to say and where God is leading us.
-Dennis Sanders, Associate Pastor
