What to Expect this Sunday (May 24)

What to Expect this Sunday

*FIRST A BIT OF NEWS*

The sale of the Knight St. building has fallen through–according to the landlord, due to the condition of the bell tower.

That said, we still do not have a lease (I have asked for one multiple times in the last five years and always been turned down) and it seems the landlord remains eager to sell. The Lead Team is discerning that we need to continue our process of prayerfully exploring our options when it comes to moving on from this facility.

With that in mind, allow us to set some expectations for what will happen in this Sunday’s gathering. We will have an interactive time of personal reflection and group discussion. We want this to be a time when we can process what is happening for us as individuals and for us as a community, and offer the entire process to God.

THE GOAL OF OUR SESSION TOGETHER THIS WEEKEND IS TO LISTEN TO OUR OWN SOULS AND THE VOICES OF OUR COMMUNITY, AND SO SEEK TO DISCERN HOW GOD IS MOVING AMONG US.

Because of that, there are a few parameters to our conversation that some of us may find disappointing:

1. We will not make a decision about our next location this Sunday. Instead, we are invited to look deeper into the things that underlie our decision-making . . . the things that stir in our souls beneath the surface.

Strong attachments to specific outcomes are usually proxies for unprocessed fears or unclarified desires. When we process our fears and clarify our desires, we can offer all to God.

So: if we are feeling very attached to a specific outcome, or a specific path, or specific idea, I invite us to ask ourselves why that outcome or path or idea is important to us.* What are the values being expressed? What anxieties are influencing me? What desires are active in me? And what does it look like to offer all those things to God?*

2. We aren’t adding new facility options in our discussion this Sunday. In conversation with each other, our team is discerning that we do not have capacity to research more locations. Bonnie is on leave, I’m going on leave, the rest of the Lead Team is very much at capacity. It’s gonna take everything we have to get out of Knight St. and by God’s grace into another location. And we’re going to need a lot of help from the whole church to do even that.

Knight St has been a great home for our church, and we know that moving out of it will feel like a loss or a step backwards to not have our own space. While we don't have a perfect option available that meets all of our desires, we have two workable options right now that we’ve already researched and that don’t have to be forever. To honor the capacity of our team we can’t add more locations at this time. We will do our very best to discern our next steps based on what we are hearing together on Sunday, but those steps need to be within the limited capacity of this team–which for this session includes not adding options. As before–if you really want to add an option, ask: *Why is this important to me? What values, anxieties, and desires are operating here? Is there a way to express those things even if I don’t get my desired outcome? How do I imagine Jesus interacting with the things that are stirring within me?*

With these expectations in place, I hope we can give ourselves wholeheartedly to the work of listening to our own souls and to the voices of our community, to discern how God is leading us.

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Allow me to leave us all with these challenging words from Ruth Haley Barton in her book, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership:

We need to also pray for indifference. This is not the kind of indifference that we associate with apathy; rather, it is the prayer that we would be indifferent to everything but the will of God. Indifference in the discernment process means that I am indifferent to matters of ego, prestige, organizational politics, personal advantage, personal comfort or favor, or even my own pet project. As Danny Morris and Charles Olsen put it: “God’s will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.”

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*The prayer for indifference can be a very challenging prayer for us to pray, because most times we enter into decision-making with strong opinions and more than a little self-interest. It takes time, and often a death to self is required before we can see God’s will taking shape in our lives. Here we ask ourselves the question, What needs to die in me in order for the will of God to come forth in and among us? As a part of the discernment process, each person needs to do their own spiritual work around this question, and the group needs to be honest about it.

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Depending on the level of trust in the group, it might even be a good idea to ask, “How many are indifferent?” and then let each person talk about where they are with that question. Some might be able to report that by God’s grace they have come to the point of indifference. Others might say that they are attached to one outcome or another for whatever reason but are still praying about it and asking God to bring them to a place of being indifferent to anything but the will of God.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a model of what it means to be indifferent. Her prayer “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) is a wonderful expression of the kind of indifference we are talking about here. Her story can be helpful to us when we are struggling to let go and come to a place of indifference in our own discernment process. As challenging as this part of the process may be, it is time and energy well spent. If we do not reach the point of indifference or if we are not at least honest about the fact that we are not indifferent, the discernment process becomes little more than a rigged election! Even the process of sharing where we are with others can help us loosen our grip on our own agenda and open ourselves to the wisdom of the group.

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This is a difficult moment for our church in many respects. Yet I am so encouraged by the outpouring of love that we are showing each other in this time. We have been displaced before, and God brought us to Knight St. In those years we have seen over 30 people join this community. We are a different people today than we were when we entered this space in 2021. May God’s faithfulness in that regard give us the courage to pray like the Mother of Jesus:

Here we are, the servants of the Lord; let it be with us according to your Word.

See you Sunday.

Pastor Joel for the Lead Team

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