Dear Church,
I consider 2020 a significant year in my service as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. July 1, 2020 marks 15 years since I began my first appointment in a local church. I remember walking into my first Sunday excited but also nervous as a 25-year-old, first time pastor. Fast forward five years, into my second church appointment, to the day I was commissioned by Bishop Swensen as an Elder in the church. With hands raised above my head and with the witness of the Annual Conference, I was commissioned to go and serve the church with the authority of an Elder and a challenge to follow God’s calling for my life. Ten years have passed quickly since that pivotal moment in my life and my ministry. I look back over the memories, the relationships, the defining moments and I am in awe of the awesome nature of God throughout all of it.
Now I begin to look at the next decade of life and ministry and that decade begins today and will not look like the last decade, for everything is changing. Author Sonya Renee Taylor is quoted as saying (in response to those who seek for life to return to “normal”), “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequality, exhaustion, depletion, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
I don’t know about you, but in this next decade I am ready for a new garment, one that is stitched with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that is changed by the experience that we have been living through. We have been asked over these months to make radical changes in our daily lives for our own protection, but even more for the good of our community and our neighbors. We have been asked to stand six feet apart and to wear a mask to prevent the spread of disease. We have been challenged to consider the racial inequalities and the racist actions around us and to call for change. We have been forced to worship and be in community in new ways and to find creative means for being together.
This will change us. This is changing us. Let us work to make the change for the better with a garment of love, compassion, faith and perseverance. I believe that we can be changed for the better, with God’s help and with the help of one another.
I miss you all dearly and cannot wait to be back together again, but we will wait with patience until it is safe to be together.
Blessings and love, Pastor Stacy