Dear First Church family,
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It’s always good to begin with gratitude. I want to express my gratitude to the worship team at First Church for agreeing to a summer of guest preachers: we’ve had seven guest preachers over 9 weeks as a cohort of churches share their virtual pulpits this summer. I have only preached once since the end of June—wait, stop celebrating! 🙂
I’m grateful because such hospitality has allowed the staff to move forward with a second worship transition: moving to live-streaming Sunday worship. This was needed because every staff person at First Church seeks excellence. And every team works towards that same goal of providing a faithful witness to the world and to the rest of the church. So even though we were comfortable in pre recorded worship, we knew we needed to move forward to the type of worship service that will be multi-access for people in person, and for people online.
I wanted to share two reflections after a summer of this experience.
First is that I really appreciated the extra time to be able to catch up on other ministry areas. I feel like in a pandemic, we are always juggling time trying to find work/life balance. And something has always had to give. We told ourselves before the pandemic that if we just had more time, we would be able to do more. And it turns out that’s not the case for most people. Even though I had more time, I don’t feel like I was able to do more. I was just able to have a little bit more breathing space to be intentional and be more immersive in something I was already doing. So thank you again for the gift this season to immerse into live-streaming and sorting out the problems along the way!
Second, though, is that I did miss preaching, because one of my philosophies is “preaching as self-persuasion” meaning if it doesn’t persuade me, then I don’t need to preach it. Preparing Sunday messages helped me make sense of the world in which we are in and gave me a framework for that world, that is shaped by you as the First Church community and that is shaped by Seattle‘s urban context. It’s such an important responsibility that you give to the preachers and to the musicians and to the entire worship team, because every single thing in the worship service tells a story. And we want to make sure that that story is in line with our values and in line with our ministry context.
I’m excited to be back in that rhythm and for Pastor Yvonne and I to do that good work together again.
There are many great series in worship in study in small groups in ministry and mission opportunities that have been percolating all summer, and are ready to be unveiled. Be sure to join our rally Sunday worship service at 10:30am either live or later, in-person and online. It’s a big year ahead, and I can’t wait to worship with you.
Blessings, ~Pastor Jeremy