Pastor's Comments

There is so much to share from our Synod Assembly, it’s hard to know where to even begin.  Our speaker was Diana Butler Bass, who described for us what congregations that are thriving in the midst of a challenging world and

culture have discovered – that our friends, far from being uninterested in God, are looking for him desperately, but they want an authentic encounter with the living, breathing heart of God.  And if Church can’t show them the heart, they will (out of necessity!) go off and find it for themselves.  People are looking for a spirituality that gives them actual

practices, things to know and do to be closer to God.

She asked provocative questions like “What do we do here at Holy Trinity that transforms your life?  What do you do here that has changed your life in the past 5-10 years?”  And again, “What practices shape you?  What do we do to allow people to

experience Christ, and then act out goodness in the world?”  And again, “We’re not creating a church for a niche group we’ve targeted.  Who is in our neighborhood?  How can we be an authentic and faithful church where people will find community and nurture here?”

There is much to ponder, but for now I want to share with you a conversation with a friend.  Zach is a roommate from college, who has never to my knowledge had any interest in God.  We stayed with him for a few days this summer, and it took awhile for our conversation to get around to church.  When it finally did, he asked a question: “So do you think the church can reach people our age?

I think he was a bit surprised when I said “No.”  But then I went on: “I’m coming to realize you can’t ‘program’ to reach people our age.  Because other places with bigger resources can always ‘program’ bigger and better.  The truth is, the Church has failed our generation, and ‘programming’ is part.”

So I went on and described us here at Holy Trinity: “What we need is to have our attention where it should have been all along – on the living, breathing, challenging, profound experience of God and how he transforms our lives.  [We call that faith, by the way.]  We need to look to how we grow together – training ourselves to live faithfully.  We need to look to intentionally growing our selves, our community, our care, serving, helping, mentoring, souls.

“But that’s not all.  That’s UP and IN, but it also has to go OUT.  God is in the world to redeem it and transform it from this broken, evil-infested form into his dream.  If we want to really know God, we must be OUT there.  He is ready to help us stop hunger.  We are the ones to save the environment.  We are the ones to fight for justice for others, stop AIDS, save children, right wrongs, be the voice for the powerless.  We must, because that’s what God is doing, that’s where God is, that’s what God has blessed us for, that’s God’s great work in the world and we are people in passionate search for him, to know and be known, to be loved and transformed.

“People our age still have that hunger for meaning, for relevance, for truth, for wisdom, for being connected to something greater, for a life that matters and is worth living.  And when we are the people of God plugged in to his mission, growing in his love, practicing our way into transformed lives of personal and spiritual growth, then people will discover this is a place where they can find it, that this is where they can experience God and a new life that matters.”

And my friend, who has never had any experience or interest in God that I’ve ever seen in over 20 years, said: “I wish we lived closer so we can come to that kind of church.”

-Pastor Tim