……..Some A FIRST FUTURE STEP Thoughts from Your Pastor

 

 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.     Peter 2:9-10

 

Guided by this Word of God above and facilitated by our long-time friend Pastor Terry Dittmer, more than 40 of us took the first exciting step into Gethsemane’s future together on Saturday, May 18, 2008.  I wish I  could adequately describe to those of you who were not there, all the excitement and togetherness and  positive energy that filled the church basement and flowed back-and-forth between us as we talked and listened to each other and to God’s Spirit in us for almost 7 hours.

 

Yes, we’ve had a number of feel-good and do-good planning retreats here at Gethsemane over the years, but never one in my pastoral time like this—one where every last participant, young and old, church leader or not, seemed spiritually primed to be soon led by the Holy Spirit TO REACH OUT WITH CHRIST’S LOVE to anyone and everyone in our Lemay community who will let us rub shoulders with them for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of their souls.

 

Yes, it was only a good FIRST FUTURE STEP and let’s not forget that.  For while many good REACH OUT ideas were expressed and collected, not one of them has yet been adopted.  And, no Gethsemane board or committee has yet met to talk about any of them or decided yet to recommend any of them to our Voters’ for adoption and implementation.  So, for me or for anyone else who attended this planning retreat to share any of these exciting REACH OUT ideas with you at this time would be pre-mature.  But, we sure didn’t think or act like a down or dying old congregation that we are sometimes afraid to believe we might be.

 

Those of you who were in worship on the weekend of May 17-18, 2008 will recall how I challenged us on the basis of Matthew 28:16-20 to “just relax and trust our Triune God, who has been the faithful owner of our Gethsemane spiritual café for over a century, to give us in His own time and way His Holy Menu for Gethsemane’s tomorrow.  When He does, of course,

Our job as His faithful children will be to COME and GET IT and to GO OUT and DO IT!”

 

Hopefully, when Pastor Dittmer’s formally-written Planning Retreat Report comes in the mail, our Board of Directors and Board of Elders will eagerly dig into it and lead the way and help us take the next future steps in REACHING OUT WITH CHRIST’S LOVE here in Lemay like never before.      

                                                                                                             

 PASTOR SIEVERS