Dear Church,
Some of you were part of our rich (and lengthy!) annual meeting at the beginning of February. One of the themes that emerged for many of us at that meeting, was hunger to continue the planning and dreaming work that we hoped to start in 2020. That work was largely displaced by the emergent work of learning how to be church in the midst of a global pandemic, but I am excited (and a little nervous) that it is once again time to step back into that work together!
Since the Annual Meeting, the Moderators and Pastors have been working together, and with other leaders from the congregation, to begin to imagine a process of listening to the Spirit in 2022. How can we do the work of dreaming in the midst of continuing stress, grief, and challenge? How can we faithfully listen to the Spirit’s call when we still feel a bit scattered, still not able to return to many of our once-familiar rhythms together?
And we don’t start from scratch in this work. Some of us have been praying and dreaming about the future of First Congregational Church of Bellingham since long before the pandemic. Some of us gathered and then were sent out for conversations with neighbors, last year, talking about the relationship between our church our wider community. Others of us were part of backyard and porch and patio conversations: connecting with one another when possible while the pandemic continued to rage around us last summer. And many of us have prayed and dreamed and wept together in Covenant Groups and Spirit groups and prayer times and Faith Formation times and in so many other ways.
The Gospel text for Sunday includes a story about a fig tree that is not bearing fruit. I’m sure Sharon will bring a rich and wise word about it, but today I’m thinking about the ways that fruit-bearing happens. I’m no arborist, but I know that those years when trees don’t grow fruit are part of the preparation for when they do. Now, I think we’ve borne plenty of good and healing fruit at First Congregational these past few years. But I also know that some of the work we’ve done has been about getting ready for what comes next, getting ready for what is budding and blooming, within us and around us, even now.
There’s a part of me that is a bit anxious at the prospect of trying to help hold space for the sacred work of discernment and visioning in this time. But a wiser voice in me reminds me that all along, we have been dreaming. All along, we have been planning. All along we have been growing and changing, as God calls forth fruit from every branch.
In the next week or so, we hope your mailbox will be brightened by a starting place in this visioning process; a kind of survey, some questions we’re inviting you to sit with. We hope you’ll share with us the answers to some of those questions as we try to hear the voice in the congregation- the way the Spirit moves among us more profoundly, maybe more clearly, then She moves in any one of us. You can fill out your survey and mail or bring it back to us, or you can respond to the questions online- we’ll share that link in Friday’s email. We’ll also share invitations to some group reflection times, both online and in-person, the first of many opportunities to come together in the coming months.
And just to look ahead a little bit: we hope that the summer months will be an opportunity to move from dreaming more deeply into wresting- learning from our past faith traditions, our own church’s history, and the cultures around us to make space for what comes next. While Sharon is on sabbatical, exploring the richness and complexity of her family and faith history, we hope to bring some of our own stories and histories into play here at home.
At some point, it will be time to move from reflection into more concrete planning, and we are imagining that will happen in the early fall. We can gather the themes and lessons, the transformative stories and pivotal images, and weave those together into some kind of planning about what our priorities are as a congregation, and hopefully a bit about what might be next for us!
It’s an audacious moment to undertake the work of visioning. But I believe that God supplies dreams for those who are willing to wait and pray. God’s grace can make space for hoping in the midst of grief, and wonder in the midst of, well, all the pragmatic realities of life together!
Thank you for joining me in this sacred journey. Watch your mailboxes, and I can’t wait to dream with you soon!
Yours in Allegiance to the Future,
Davi
