Pastor Brian's Ruminations

Week 11: April 12, 2007

Dear Fellow Pilgrims on the Journey,

Whew!  I’m still recovering from Holy Week and Easter!  What wonderful services with a whole range of creativity and, I trust, the call of the Crucified and Risen One to each of us to costly discipleship and new life.

I’m excited about new possibilities here at Centennial as the church council decides about the proposal from our program staff (me, Melanie, Donna, Bob, and Kelly) to change the second service starting in the fall, and to change the Sunday morning schedule.  (For more details, or to refresh your memory, click here for the congregational letter we sent out a couple of weeks ago.)

We have a strong, fruitful, loving congregation, and I believe that these changes will help us continue to be vibrant far into the future.  Church researchers have noticed a pattern for the life-cycle of churches.  Churches move from birth (think of the wonderful stories of Centennial’s birth as people went door to door and organized themselves back in the mid-fifties, and then built amid the then-cornfields of Roseville), to vitality (which Centennial has in spades!), to equilibrium (thank God for our stability and being a place where people know that they can lean on each other!).

But then, if a church doesn’t keep asking “What is God’s mission for us?  Who is God leading us to reach today?” then, say researchers, the life-cycle of a church can move into decline and then into death. 

We are in the vitality/equilibrium stage here, friends.  And now we have a great opportunity—and the responsibility--to give birth to reaching more people in new ways through the proposed change in the second service.  And so the life cycle begins again, by the grace of God.  But now, you see, it is all the richer than it was before, because there is a spiritually mature congregation that is already in place, and we intend to build up the whole church here at Centennial.  Granted, giving birth is not easy and there will be adjustments we will all have to make.  But there is great joy in it!  It is my deep prayer that we will be able to reach more children, youth, young adults, and adults of every generation as we consider these changes—and as we continue to offer our traditional worship, which we feel we do very well, at the first service.

One of the great learnings of the Protestant Reformation was that the church of Jesus Christ always needs to be reforming by the grace of God.  We always need to be in the process of reformation as the Spirit leads us to minister within the time, the culture, the community and world God has placed us now.  (The book of Acts portrays this very well as the earliest church was always facing new challenges and opportunities!)

I hope you will share your questions, concerns, insights and delights with me or any of our program staff.  The Church Council plans to make a decision on Tuesday night, and before that, there are Worship Informational Meetings tonight (Thursday) at 7 pm and Sunday at 11:45 am for our members and friends to share their thoughts.

Thank you for being a great place to be open to the Spirit!

In the risen Christ,

Brian