Let me start with a big—THANK YOU! As most of you know, I was gone for the last month on paternity leave, and it was such incredibly valuable time with my kids. It truly is a blessing to be serving a church that makes that kind of care of family a priority.
In addition to enjoying time with my children, I feel like I am coming back refreshed and reinvigorated for the Fall! Which is a good thing too, because we have some wonderful opportunities coming up this Fall as a church community. We will worship with three of the former pastors of the church as a part of our celebration of the 60th anniversary of the church (Catherine, John, and Jan). We have yet another International Peacemaker coming to spend time with us. There are our usual Fall programs starting and events like the Parking Lot Sale (Don’t bring your stuff yet!). We also have several weddings for church families! It is always an exciting time of year, but this year is more exciting than most!
To start off this wonderful season, we will be jumping into the book of James on Sunday morning. In so many ways this is a perfect way to frame our life together in this season. As James 2:17 puts it, “I will show you my faith by what I do.” I believe that sentiment points us in a direction of our community’s faith being rich and vibrant—rooted in longstanding tradition while branching out into new mission opportunities. To go further, this is a faith of action, not just talk. I know that many would point to James as being “Works Righteousness,” but I think that label is a failure to understand that faith is not about belief, but about how we live our lives. It’s not just about having an opinion about who Christ is, but about a knowledge of Christ that causes us to respond with a desire to make the world a better place.
James gets a bad wrap at times, and we will start this Sunday by talking a bit about that, before we jump off this fall into doing our faith. So excited to see you all again this week!
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