Oct 11th: God is in All Things

Hey everybody —

Thank you for last Sunday. A church basement, a long food line, the bread and cup on every table, and a room full of people eating together on World Communion Sunday — that was exactly what we hoped it would be. (Plus Cupcake Sunday! Shout out to all the combined September and October birthday folks.) Thanks to everyone who hauled a table, covered a table, cooked for it, or just showed up and sat down.

This week we're back to normal: Sunday, October 11, 10:00 a.m., at the Foster Theater. Normal time, normal place — and one big thing that isn't normal (at least not yet).

Access Kids Launches

After a month of all-ages-in-one-room, kids ministry starts back up this Sunday. Julie McBee and James Lopez Ericksen have built it, and they'll be leading it together. Julie will explain how the whole thing works from up front during announcements, so if you have kids, that's the two minutes to pay attention to.

Here's the short version so you can arrive ready. Our new space changes how drop-off and pickup work, and it's different from how we did things at Knight St.

• Check in at the kids desk in the lobby. Julie will be there before the service until announcements start. - One bracelet per family. Not one per child. You'll get a single bracelet with all your kids' codes on it and the total number of kids checked in, circled. Fewer bracelets means fewer chances one gets dropped, tossed, or split between two parents. - No shoes in either studio. Kids church meets in the studio space, and getting there means crossing the big dance studio. Shoes come off — kids and grown-ups both. Plan your socks accordingly. - Pickup is at the small studio door, inside the ballet lobby. You'll come in from the street, get your kids, and walk them back to the theater using the outside street access.

That's more structure than some of you are used to, but it's okay... we'll get there together. There's a ballet school sharing the building, including a class that arrives right as we're wrapping up, and these rules protect our kids, our volunteers, and their students at the same time. We will continue to reassess this whole system as parents, staff, and lead team continue to weigh in. But for now, this is what we're rollin' with.

Bring your questions to Julie on Sunday. Or you can reach her at julie@accesscov.com.

This Sunday: God is in all things

Pastor Joel is preaching from Exodus 32:1–14 — the golden calf. His big idea is simple: “God is in all things.”

There's a Kirk Franklin song called “All Things” that gets at some of this, but there's an important distinction here. It's not simply that God can do all things (even though He definitely can) but it's that God is present in all seasons, situations and scenarios.

This text comes from the lectionary, which follows the church calendar. And following the church calendar is helpful in three different ways:

• It teaches us to see God in all things — in our longing, our living, our dying, and our rising. Not just the good parts. All of it. - It teaches us to resist — the 24-7 sales cycle, the clickbait economy, the cult of personality, and plain old reactivity. The calendar moves at a different speed than the feed does, on purpose. - **It teaches us to notice what we're not used to seeing.

The usual

• Give yourself extra time. Still no parking lot, still Portland construction. Street parking along Foster, neighborhood as overflow — and please leave the closest spots for families with small kids and folks with mobility issues. - Check in when you arrive. Not just people with kids, but all adults. Here's why we bother.

Reminders

• Sundays, October 18 and 25 — Foster Theater, 10:00 a.m.

One final thought

Which seasons in life do you most resonate with right now? The ones that involve longing and waiting? Living and working? Suffering and dying? Or rising and rejoicing?

For many of us, the honest answer is not the triumphant one. And maybe that’s the point. The calendar has a season for every one of those, because God is in every one of those. Nobody has to fake being in a different season than the one they're actually in.

And then here is a harder question:

“Is there something you'd rather not see, that the Spirit would lead you to look into?”

Sit with that one on the way in. We'll sit with it together.

See you Sunday.

Onward in the love and grace of Jesus, who as always, gives us Access to God.