Letter from the Pastor

Audra and I just received another invitation to a wedding this summer. It seems that the summer is filled with invitations. Invitations to graduations, to weddings, to family reunions, or just to neighborhood barbecues.

It is a really great feeling to be invited somewhere. To hear those three words, “you are invited” affirms our connection and importance to others. It says to us that another person finds our company and presence important in their lives. No one likes to feel excluded. We human beings are social creatures. We thrive in community and whither in isolation.

Yet, community is something that is harder and harder to keep. In our busy and fragmented world we quickly move from one thing to another such as family, work, school activities, friends, errands, extended family and on and on. In many ways we can feel stretched thin, disconnected in our relationships, or isolated, even in a crowd.

Into this situation comes an invitation. An invitation to find rest, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” An invitation to ease our anxiety, “Do not worry about tomorrow; it will have enough worries of its own.” An invitation from our God who loves us so much he took on our flesh to be in a relationship with us and invite, not force or coerce, us to be in a relationship with each other through the church, the body of Christ. Through this relationship we find a connection to something larger than ourselves. We find a common thread to pull together all the many parts of our lives as we find purpose, belonging, and most importantly, as a community, we find that we can be a transforming force on the world around us.

In other words, “you’re invited.”

You are invited to gather as the church to live out your passions and find your connection with God who cares deeply about your life. You are invited to be the church for the world. To use your God given gifts, talent, and blessings to reach out to the disconnected and lonely, maybe a shut-in, someone in the hospital, the neighbor who you know is stressed out, and make God’s love real for them through a visit, a phone call, or even a prayerful note in a card.

So, let us all realize that we are invited to be a community that excludes no one. A community that continues, in our own way, to reach out in faith, connect people to Christ, and transform this world by simply saying in the name of love, “you’re invited”.

In God’s Love,

Pastor Tim