Greetings!

That’s all I’ve got.

I’ve been staring at this blank screen, waiting for inspiration, maybe for a Holy Spirit moment to give me just the right words to say to introduce myself to you all. I got as far as “greetings,” and then… I got nothing.

Probably not something you want to hear from someone whose vocation is communications, specifically communicating with you. I know we’d all prefer I have all the right words, at all the right times. I know for sure I would prefer that.

But that’s not how it works, though, is it?

Luckly for all of us, God has blessed us with the ecclesia. The gathering. The community. The church.

Each other.

Our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday is going to remind us that none of us are in this alone. That we are, together, in ministry; that we are, together, the “royal priesthood” of Christ, called, not out of our lives, but rather called into Christ’s service within our lives. Not set apart from our sisters and brothers, but engaged with one another out of love and reverence for neighbor, and for God.

We aren’t in this alone.

Which is why our community can endure, even through a pandemic. Why it can endure even as ministries come and go, thrive and fade. Why it can endure even then the sanctuary just doesn’t seem as full as it once was.

Which is why our ecclesia, our community, can persevere,
even when pastors seem to come and go.

For myself, and my family, we are grateful to be here. My youth was spent in cities; my first church was an urban church. Though I’ve been out of the city for a while, I’m excited to get back to my own roots: to urban ministry, to the kind of life and the calling to love that exist in the busier places of life.

Over the coming years, we’ll get to know each other well. We will laugh, and cry. We will hope, and we will wrestle with disappointment. We sing, and we will pray, and we will worship the God whose grace gives us all a foundation that cannot be shaken, even when changes come too fast or too frequently.

We will do all of these things together: working together, praying together, celebrating and grieving together, worshipping together, as, together, we seek Christ’s boldness to embody unconquerable grace in our ecclesia, in our community.

I can’t wait to get started!

In Christ,
Pastor Steve