Every Fall, we enter together into a season of stewardship. We consider where God has brought us, and we look ahead to the future. These last few years have been some of the strangest, scariest and most transformational in church history! The Covid-19 pandemic has brought countless changes to our ways of being together. It has brought difficult questions about what no longer serves us well as a community and where we might be invited to follow Jesus using what we have learned; individually and as a church. Our dream is of a FUTURE WITH HOPE! But what does that look like? How do we live in that?
This particular stewardship campaign (from 10/9-10/30) will draw from imagery of movements in human life that God has built into our story; movements that have always been there as God’s natural rhythms of creation, but which seem all the more evident now that we have been through so much upheaval and change. Movements of EXILE –> RETURN –> MISSION.
We will consider Biblical stories of exile from one’s home into unknown territory–how Israel’s exile story shaped them, but also speaks to a restless homesickness that one can feel in our culture as we try to recenter ourselves in these times. Exile stories always end with a return home as people who are never quite the same and then being sent out again from our comfort zones to participate in God’s mission in the world.
This week we dive in and confront how movement and change can be so difficult for us; so disorienting and scary. And yet, we are given promises about a future with hope even in those times from a God who never changes. Join us for this journey!