Sterling Wesley United Methodist Church

 

Last summer Megan & I have served as chaplains for AIR Camp at Little Grassy UMC Campground, as we had for several prior summers. Near the end of the week, our nightly worship at the “tabernacle” (aka the shelter) ended and people were leaving. Staying last to turn out the lights, I began to follow after Megan & a friend who’d gone ahead. I hadn’t given my eyes enough time to adjust from the light to the dark, so for a few moments my vision failed me. That failure resulted in me tripping over and falling onto a heavy wood bench, which let to several scrapes, bruises and feeling pretty darn miserable! When we don’t have our vision (literally or figuratively) things can go very wrong in a hurry!

 

I share this story of my clumsiness as an illustration. Just as a person needs their vision and or other senses to safely navigate in the dark, so a church, a congregation of people following Jesus Christ needs vision from God’s Holy Spirit to move forward into the ministries God calls them too. If we don’t have a vision from God, we’ll most likely trip and fall. It is a vital and a very good thing for a church to prayerfully seek God’s vision for our growth as followers of Jesus Christ and how share love in Christ’s Name in our community and the wider world.

 

We had a visioning day last January as a congregation, two of our goals for 2018 were aimed at serving & growing our youth and families, and to form more small study groups. Both goals have happened in 2018!  WYG (Wesley Youth Group) formed along with the continuation and expansion of our small group ministry. The questions for us now being “Where is Christ calling on us to go in 2019?”  “How might we move from strength to strength, and what new ministries at Sterling Wesley UMC might bear fruit for the “Kingdom of God?”

Our visioning day for 2019 will be Saturday, January 26, from 9 AM to Noon in the Fellowship Hall. All are welcome and invited regardless of age, or if you are a member of the church or not! We will gather for prayer and conversation seeking the Holy Spirit to guide us. In particular, we’ll talk about how we as a church are made up of people from 6 different generations! How we might uniquely live into the great blessing and find strength from that dynamic! Please mark your calendars for this important and fun day; I believe it will help us all grow in faith! If you cannot attend  please respond via email prior to January 26th, castiger1@gmail.com, where you prayerfully believe God is calling Wesley to go in 2019.

Either way, please be in prayer for this day, January 26th, 2019, that the Spirit may guide us into God’s future for Sterling Wesley UMC in 2019, Amen!

 

Pastor Jeremiah