By the Rev. Jon Rieley-Goddard

Dear friends,

    I’ve been living inside the crisis at our church for so long now, that it is beginning to feel like home. It is good for me to remember that many of you don’t share this experience, and that these letters that come to you monthly are a main way in which you receive information concerning the church and its problems.

    First, the bad news:

    – Finances continue to be a scary part of the picture. If you can catch up, or increase your giving, that would be a good thing to do.

    – It is looking like August will be the time to decide what to do concerning my salary, which the church will not be able to pay at its current level for much longer than August.

    And the good news:

    – The Mission Study is finished, and we held a Town Hall-style meeting with our consultant, the Rev. Jerry Paul, on Sunday, May 23. Out of the Mission Study, three goals have emerged:

    * Developing a Cooperative Parish with sister churches. A first meeting, called by our Session, was a success, and additional meetings will occur. Other Presbyterian churches are interested in talking about ways to cooperate.

    * Hospitality: Opening our building for use, both for rents and for programs.

    * Developing a mission program such as a homework club. The persons who attended the Mission Study meetings have agreed to rename themselves the Vision/Action meeting and continue to meet twice a month to extend and continue the study effort. This group will develop the mission program idea.

    The web of relationships that our congregation and its pastor have will continue to yield fresh leads and ideas and support. Meetings to bring church-based community organizing to our city continue to attract new attention and commitments. The relationships that are forming and deepening because of this effort will spill over into the new effort to bring Niagara Presbyterians together to talk about, and to begin, cooperating in new and powerful ways.

***

    The order of the day is to decide the nature of your sacrifice, if you believe in the future of our church. I know what my sacrifices will look like, and I am determined that I not be the only one who is making sacrifices. My call to be your pastor has not changed other than to become more interesting and demanding. My continuing in your midst is my desire, and from what I can discern, God’s, too, if I may be so bold. What is not yet clear is how I will secure additional income. I am trying to be content with dealing with what is in front of me and not running ahead into territory for which God has not yet given me a map.

    Home is where the heart is, and my heart is for doing mission and ministry with you. When Jerry cycled out of the process as our consultant, he was strong in his appreciation of and praise for you. He was pleased with the spirit that emerged during the study process and appreciative of your sweet and accepting spirit. Having worked with conflicted and cold congregations, he could sense and enjoy the difference.

    When I came here four years ago and a little more, I was in need of healing. After several years of doing interim ministry in the Presbytery, I felt that I had come to a point of needing to change to a more settled form of ministry. In the years that I have been here, I have identified goals for myself and worked with you to identify goals for the congregation, particularly in answering God’s call to action and witness in the name of Jesus Christ. We are reaping that harvest, and I intend to be right there with you on the threshing floor to do the work of winnowing. If God had called me to sow and then called another to help you reap, I would have been content, and I would have known that was God’s will.

    What I am seeing, however, is an explosion of new possibilities based on the relationships that I have developed in the community as well as in the congregation and with colleagues.

***

    Last month I wrote to you that if you weren’t yet worried, that it was time to start. Today, I encourage you to continue in deep and abiding concern for the church and to begin again to hope, too. God has been faithful, is faithful, and will be faithful. We have done the same. Our continued common efforts, done in both joy and in fear and trembling, will bear fruits for the harvest.

    This is what grace looks like, and what home feels like.

Blessings and peace

Pastor Jon