I've been thinking about...

...Last Sunday’s Order of Worship.

Last Sunday I filled this space with an extended quote from Temporary Shepherds (the handbook for interim times). I liked it so much, I decided to do it again! So here is more from contributor Linda Lea Snyder on the theological significance of identity work in the interim time:

One of the firmest foundations of our Christian faith is that we worship a God who, in Christ, is continually “doing a new thing.” We think of Paul’s central teaching on this act of God’s continual regeneration. He sets it forth to the Corinthians: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17) Day by day and year by year, in seed-like fashion, this new realm Jesus talked about is coming into existence before our very eyes. Paul writes to the church at Rome that the whole creation longs for this new thing like a woman longing for the birth of her child. We are being made new as individual believers and as communities of faith . We are dying to the old and being born to the new. As this newness breaks forth, we are invited by God to be co-creators and midwives with God and to recognize and name these new things. By doing so, we receive and claim a new identity.

Today is the third of a four-part sermon series based on this church's mission statement – Caring Christians Joined in Faith. We'll dedicate a worship service a week to each one of those words and today we'll talk about “Joined”, in the hope that that word continues to define the character and quality (the identity) of this gathered community.

Yours in the journey, Rev. Brian