INSIDE EVERGREEN—January 30, 2025
A CONVERGENCE
After last Wednesday’s congregational meeting, momentum continues to build for the transition to two morning services on March 16. Thank you for leaning in and for responding so willingly to the call for volunteers!
I want to support the energy and joy of our collective effort by now offering another encouragement.
Have you noticed the convergence?
(1) When you offer your strengths on behalf of another, you give someone “service.”
(2) When you go to church in order to worship God, you enter the “service.”
At Evergreen, without naming it, we’ve been living in this convergence, and we need it all the more as we both add a second service and stir one another into more service.
When Paul instructs a church about gathering for a corporate worship, he says, “let all things be done for building up” (1 Cor 14). His larger point is that corporate worship is the engine of Christian community. In this verse, more narrowly, he’s saying that worship and mutual care go hand-in-hand.
· It doesn’t make sense to worship God, if we neglect one another…because God loves the others more than we can.
· And yet it doesn’t make sense to serve one another, unless we also worship God…because we need God to guide and shape us in that service.
As we add a second service of worship, I urge you to see it as an opportunity to grow in service for one another.
· It may be for the friend or family member whom you can now invite to join you without wondering if you’ll be able to find a seat, especially when you’re running behind.
· It may be for the person in your home who needs to see you setting an example of offering your strengths at church—reading, praying, greeting, playing (music), cleaning up communion, caring for children, tidying pews, and so on.
· It may even be for that colleague or neighbor who, though not a church attender, needs to see Christ in you…and will as you grow through the practice of Christlike service.
At the same time, as we add more opportunities to serve at Evergreen, I urge you to see the central role of worship: it connects us to God in Christ, the ultimate expert in service: he “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2).
This bears tattooing on our hearts: our service to one another flows out of our conscious gratitude for God’s service to us in Christ. The more you worship God from your heart, the more you will model your life on his.
And there is no better way! Living like Jesus is the path to your flourishing. He said: “I am the Way…and the Life” (Jn 14).
A CELEBRATION
In the summer of 2017, Leslie Gagosian joined the Evergreen staff. She was a godsend. Evergreen was at critical juncture, and Leslie brought the skill and personality that wonderfully filled our needs.
Over the years since, she has shaped nearly every feature of congregational life, if not by direct contact, then through wisdom and kindness in formative relationships. Speaking personally, I have drawn deeply on Leslie, and can hardly imagine the last three-quarters of a decade without her on staff at Evergreen. I am so thankful for her insight and faithfulness and humor and godliness, to say nothing of her attention to more details of church operations and ministry than I even know.
As she now transitions out of a staff role at Evergreen, Leslie deserves our immense gratitude, and I look forward to a public celebration of her service on an upcoming Sunday!
I am grateful for what God is doing at Evergreen, what he has done through Leslie, and I look forward to being with you, however you serve, whichever service you attend.
— Pastor Christopher