Dear Friends,
It doesn’t feel like a week has swooshed by so quickly. Joe and I switched our Sundays to provide messages during Easter. It has me getting ready for a message a week ahead of time, at least thinking about it. I’m looking for someone to read a quote by Henri Nouwen on choosing joy on April 26. It is amazing what great integrity people have shown. If they can’t relate to or support what he is writing, they, out of respect for the subject, the service, the author, and themselves, have not chosen to read the quote. Don’t think I have forgotten you, because you might indeed be the next number I am calling. It makes me think of the joke about why Quakers don’t sing the first line of a hymn – “Because they are reading it to see if they agree with it or not.” There is a lot of truth in that statement. We are generally weak on the first verses. What if we are making sure it resonates with our beliefs? What if we did that with everything we are involved in? If we couldn’t be whole-heartedly involved, we just chose not to do it. The question of “Does this resonate with me?” could be one that we ask ourselves out of practice. Is it truly me? Is it something I really care about? Our problems with overscheduling ourselves might shrink or even become nonexistent. Just a thought about what happens when integrity helps us choose our priorities.
This Sunday we are having a potluck. Please come and enjoy the food and fellowship. I, for one, will be celebrating. The evaluations are over!!! It is not a time of year that any employee with sanity looks forward to. But I want to thank all of you who participated. It is an important thing for the church to help us as pastors to pastor you well, and better. Sunday the 26th will be the business meeting where the evaluations are discussed and the pastors’ contracts will be negotiated. It is by far the highest drama business meeting we typically have annually. Joe and I will not be in the room when you are discussing us or our jobs. But please pray for cool heads and warm hearts – but especially listening ears as we as a church live with integrity about what the right thing to do and be maybe. May we come to decisions based on our integrity and upheld by our other distinctives of simplicity, peace, community, stewardship and equality. Those distinctives could help us to pare down much of what is superfluous in our lives. May you have a discerning week as you look at your life with meaning and hope.
Hope to see you on Sunday,
Leigh
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