ROUNDING THE CORNER

ROUNDING THE CORNER..................................2-3 BIBLE 101: PENTECOST ...................................4-5 community life ...........................................6-7 JOURNEYINGS / OUR JOURNEY.....................8-9 CHANGE IS A CHANCE ....................................... 10 COntact Us ........................................................ 11

“. . . take faithful risks and listen carefully for the Holy Spirit’s leading.”

CHANGE ISN’T A CURSE WORD

by Pastor Joel Wight Hoogheem (joel@lordoflife.org)

The saying goes that nobody likes change except for a baby with a wet diaper. There’s great comfort in the familiar, the routine, and the normal. Few of us like surprises and most of us appreciate predictability. What happens, though, when the familiar, the routine, and the normal are taken off the table? What do we do when “business as usual” isn’t an option? As followers of Jesus, we thankfully have role models for what to do when the former ways of doing things simply aren’t possible anymore. The book of Acts is one story after another of the apostles having to navigate through the new and unfamiliar territory of just what a Christian church would be:

What would they do? Acts2:43-47 Who was welcome?

Acts 15:1-21 What were the community standards and expectations? Acts10:1-33

There was no roadmap or rubric for the early Christian church to follow in the wake of the resurrection. They had to take faithful risks and listen carefully for the Holy Spirit’s leading. We also find ourselves in a place without much of a roadmap. The pandemic has forced Lord of Life to catapult several years ahead in our planning and mission. We find ourselves as a two-campus congregation now, with both a physical campus and a digital campus. After decades of being exclusively in person, we’ve had to navigate the last year as almost exclusively digital. Further, Lord of Life is becoming a neighborhood church, not only a destination church, as the development around the physical campus explodes. And we’ve also discovered our digital campus has made Lord of Life a global church, as people connect with worship and other ministries across the country and around the world. God is inviting us to imagine what new and renewed congregational life looks like as we round the corner on the pandemic. It’s worth reflecting (in your personal life, professional life, and church life):

What have you learned in the past year? What didn’t you miss? What’s essential?

Even though change can be scary, it’s also necessary. God’s promises have held true for the Christian church for two millennia; we can trust that those promises will hold true in the future. The church has survived pandemics and plagues, mistakes and missteps, famines and fads. The church keeps changing because life keeps changing and we have a God who is responsive to our reality each day, whatever it may be.