Pastor Arleigh’s May Currents Article – “May Flowers”

The old “April Showers, May Flowers” thing always seems a little tardy by NW standards.  At my house, January showers bring February crocuses and March Daffodils. This year the whole spring thing is so slow in coming that the April/May sequence was almost accurate. After a rainy/snowy winter, a tardy spring is a little hard to take.   Having Easter two days after the vernal equinox just made the confusion worse. It sounds like I’ve gotten a little impatient through all this weather wackiness.

Even patient people can get negative when events don’t meet the timeline we planned.  So whatever it is you might be waiting for besides spring, think about this: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.”  That, of course, is the last verse of Amazing Grace. What a wonderful way of expressing the eternal perspective that the resurrection provides us. Any waiting we do on this earth – even the seeming eternity of the presidential election process – will seem like the blink of an eye when we mark our 10,000th year spent drinking in and praising the full presence of the Lord.

So if you’re sitting around bemoaning the pace of our congregational transformation, remember this, Rome wasn’t built or rebuilt in a day, the Sistine chapel wasn’t painted in a weekend and even Christians aren’t sanctified over night.

Debi Taylor-Hough is hard at work helping us prepare for the guests and neighbors that our outreach programs will bring. Like building a house, the foundation work can seem slow, but a solid foundation is important. I’ve asked her to focus much of her energy on building relationships in the community and the neighborhood.  She is adding many new aspects to our advertising and publicity efforts, including a weekly column in The Auburn Reporter. She is managing our website now, adding new features every month. She has workshops planned for the community starting this summer. She’ll need all different kinds of help in these efforts. The main focus of Debi’s position is to get many of you involved in ministry. That could look like a lot of different things: classroom set-up, welcoming guests, providing snacks for a seminar, making phone calls or maybe even praying for a certain event.  

Lindsay Delmarter could use your help as well. If you can carry a tune in a bucket, she’d love to see you in a choir robe. If you can play an instrument, she’d love to hear a few notes for an offertory or something. If you can read lyrics and press a button, she could use your help running the projector on Sunday morning. As Stephen Jackson graduates and goes off to college, we will need another Sound Tech.

The Alpha Team is right on schedule in preparations for offering The Alpha Course in September. They’ll soon be looking for helpers and participants. In the mean time, if you want to know more about The Alpha Course, please attend Alpha Express on Sunday mornings at 8:45 in the Fireside room starting Sunday, May 4^th.

Spring really is coming.  WRPC is being transformed. Our transformation will happen and the pews will fill when we go out into the community and love our neighbors in Jesus’ name. My prayer is that an eternal perspective will give each of us courage to move out into the community.

 

Gratefully in Christ,

 

Pastor Arleigh