Pastor Note for
September 2024

I am a baseball fan. Part of the attraction is seeing teams succeed in ways they haven’t for years surging in the second half of the season. The same can be true with other sports and certainly as another football season begins, we all have the highest hopes for the Bills. When we see success, especially when it has been lacking in prior years, it can make us wonder what has happened to encourage such results.

What has changed? Years of rebuilding, finally getting the right players, the team playing like … well, a team? Certainly that’s all part of what happens, but so also is the major change that has swept over sports is increasing use of statistics and corresponding formulas and not necessarily on huge budgets to secure players to win games. Certainly I am not suggesting that such an approach is good or even healthy for the church of Jesus Christ, though heavens know how the denomination loves its statistics! What I am suggesting is that we can’t simply do church as it has been in the past and expect the same results. And just as deeply as it has disrupted the culture of sports, it will disrupt the way we think church should be done or think that church should be. This will be uncomfortable because it will mean change (the dirtiest word in the church lexicon,).

We all know that things during the day don’t work for the gainfully employed and they are likewise so overtaxed in time and taxiing kids around that something after work hours is largely out of the question. Others are getting older and driving after dark is disconcerting as are things early in the morning as it takes longer to simply get going. Younger people don’t come to potlucks because it is not part of the culture any longer and is not worth the struggle with the kids to try and find something they will actually eat. Church dinners are gone because they lost their original purpose and even became only a minor financial boost for such major undertakings where fewer and fewer were willing to volunteer. What do we do? First off, we have to stop looking back. Looking back allows us to see where God was in the past, but not where God is calling us to be now or in the future. Secondly, we’ve got to get creative and try new things. A year ago we sought to do this in hosting a dream session following worship. This year we will start to create strategies relative to living those dreams.

God is calling us in fresh and new ways. What are those ways? What will the church of God look like in the coming years? Together we can be part of that next chapter which can one day be looked back upon seeing that God was present as we live and embody as a Reconciling Congregation the vision God has placed upon us – To Make

Connections and Offer Opportunities in Faith, Love, and Service.

Yours in Christ, 

Rev. Daven Oskvig