I started a new Parables class at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary this week. Theoretically I’m done with seminary—I do have my M.Div.—but I miss that particular challenge. Plus it was a chance to take another class with a favorite professor, even if I’m auditing this one in order to make sure that it only adds to and doesn’t take time from my primary focus on McKnight, where we’re starting to see some new things come together!
My office is in good order, and we’ve been quietly working on making the upstairs even more welcoming to families, because I heard your interest in including new families in our outreach efforts. We’re looking for a changing table for the bathroom down the hall from the sanctuary, for that visible sign of welcome and for ease of inclusion. We’ve had a congregation member volunteer to put some children’s church lessons together so that we’re already ready when young children come to the service, and we’ll be working on updating people’s Safe Sanctuary clearances for the same reason.
There are other changes as well, some quite small, but hopefully all adding up to a message of welcome and receptivity. And you’ve been calling previously active members, to invite them to come back and try church again post-Covid, so we hope to see more people soon. In the meantime, we can pray—pray for our church, pray that people who need a church can find one, pray that we learn how to make ourselves welcoming, and pray that we continue to grow and study together. People will be most interested if they see good things happening in us—not just activities, but that our faith matters to us, that God is at work at McKnight.
In the meantime, God bless you, and I’ll see you in church!
Prayer
Lord, we would follow you
wherever you might lead.
Lord, we would follow you.
Forgive us when we stumble
and when we stray.
Forgive us when, distracted
we lose our way.
Be the one to whom we turn,
whose hand we hold,
the Shepherd who leads us
safely to the fold.
Lord, we would follow you
wherever you might lead.
Lord, we would follow you.[1]
[1] https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/having-words-with-jesus/fourteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-lectionary-planning-notes/fourteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-liturgical-resources