Pastor's Welcome

Usually these pastoral welcomes are accompanied by smiling faces and sunny perspectives that rival a community’s chamber of commerce spiel. We could certainly do that here. Like our community, we offer an array of opportunities and involvements to speak to the hearts and minds of all ages and stages.   An account of the accomplishments and activities of our church would rival the length of a Russian novel. You would leave this account thinking us to be a church that had arrived and a people who had it all figured out.

But let’s be clear. Jesus asked in Matthew 9.21, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick?” Both the answer and the meaning of the question are obvious – Jesus came for people who are challenged by the life they have and the culture they live in. It seems that an authentic church would follow his words very closely, and I think that would make us more like a hospital than the chamber of commerce or anything else. People find refuge, healing, strength, and purpose here. They find it in relationships: knowing and being known, loving and being loved, serving and being served.

More than anything else these days, I sense the desire in our church to be free of the hypocrisy and pretense of playing at church and managing our individual or collective image. We are people with problems – but we have found a great doctor, and each other, and we are glad that you have found your way into our church’s story. Welcome.