"Thank You"

Dear WRC,

I want to write to you today in order to say, “Thank you!” Not because it’s November and Thanksgiving is around the corner but because of something that happened at the Annual Congregational Meeting last Sunday.

As you know, for the last few years we’ve held our Annual Meeting within our morning worship service instead of afterwards. We didn’t want to perpetuate the fake division between worship and business, and wanted to carry the work of our Annual Meeting—celebrating what God has done in the past year and looking toward the next—into the praise and petition of our worshiping life together.  I love this! It’s exactly the kind of thing I want to be a part of as your pastor.

This combination isn’t without its challenges, though. Some things we need to do fit neatly into our worship; others feel a little less natural. Then there’s the timing consideration. Even though we’ve grown more comfortable with a worship service that is 70-75 minutes long over the last 10 years, I still start to get nervous as we eclipse that hour-and-fifteen-minute mark.

And I need to confess that that’s what I was thinking about for half of our Congregational Meeting this year. From the moment I stood up to begin the sermon, I knew we were in trouble. I cut some sections of my sermon and quickened the pace of everything else, but there was no way around it: we were headed for an hour-and-a-half at minimum. I was trying to avoid panicking inside and thought I was sensing the anxiety in the room growing; a restlessness at each passing moment.

I finished the service at 11:00 and breathed a deep sigh. I expected you to bolt for the doors and was ready for snarky comments over coffee in Heneveld Hall. But that’s not what happened. Some of you stuck around the sanctuary to sing the final song that had been bumped to the Postlude; there was a decent crowd at coffee hour; and the feedback I’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. A few of you have gone out of your way to comment about how great the service was and how wonderful it was to be there and celebrate it all.

It took several of these comments before I realized that I had almost missed it. I was right there with you, breathing the same air, hearing the same words, singing the same songs, but if not for your reminders I would have completely missed it: God had been with us. That shouldn’t be surprising (especially for a pastor…) and it isn’t novel, and yet here we are. I was stuck on how each part of the service fit together, on how long it was taking, and meanwhile God was drawing back the curtain and offering us a glimpse inside.

Thank you for inviting me to see how beautiful it all was. Thank you for reminding me of God’s presence within and beyond the minutiae and details. Thank you for paying more attention to the beauty God is working than the hands on the clock. Thank you for the nudge to lift my eyes and see God-with-us.

Like I said, I almost missed it! Thank God we have each other.

In Christ,

Pastor Andy