In July we started “Imagining a World with More…” More community, more justice, more hope, more beauty. More of everything God desires for us. When we inhabit these imaginings, the world looks different than it does today. Our community looks different too. Unfortunately, when we look out at what is, what our congregation, wider
community, the whole world looks like at this moment, we can find imagining a world where God’s dreams hold sway very difficult.
Life has changed so much in the last few years. Change was already coming, but the pandemic brought about many changes more quickly than expected. It also brought
changes we never imagined. In some ways this is good. It pushed us as a church, and as a society, to make changes we would have said were impossible or undesirable before. In 2019 would you have ever imagined our congregation putting our worship services online? I certainly wouldn’t have. I would have laughed at anyone who would suggest that in just a year we would have regular worship attenders join us from across the country. Technology has given us this gift. Yet, it has also allowed those of us who do live in the area to get in the habit of luxuriously lazy Sunday mornings. We don’t need to head into church, it’s right there on the TV. We can always watch it later… But worship is meant to be performed not watched. Do we fully engage when worship is on a screen?
So much has changed. How do we change with it? How do we adapt as a community? Many of us now don’t regularly see each other any longer. What does it
mean to be community if we are not face to face? What draws and holds us together? What is our focus, our direction in ministry? These are some of the questions facing us as we look at what the lasting effects of the abrupt changes of the pandemic mean for our community, our church community and our wider community.
The Church does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of doing ministry for the world. As we pray over and seek God’s guidance on these and other questions we look for answers not just for us as part of CCVP but for CCVP as a part of the community around it. What is God imagining for us and can we imagine it too?
Rev. Laura Jennison Reed