You’re invited

January 11, 2024

Dear Evergreeners,

You’re invited to dinner at church next Wednesday, January 17, at 5:30pm and to our congregational meeting at 6:25pm. The meeting is our annual gathering to reflect on the Lord’s provision in the previous year and to anticipate what he will accomplish for us in the coming months of the present year.

From one angle, this celebration of divine kindness is redundant: every Sunday we gather for a similar purpose, and all of life, really, is meant to be an outpouring of gratitude to our creator. Psalm 104 says, ‘I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.” Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4), and since Paul also tells us that he has learned to be at peace in every situation, we know that “always” is not hyperbole. With Jesus as our king, we have constant reason and ability to celebrate the faithful generosity of God.

 And yet there is still good reason to gather next Wednesday. The German pastor and professor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is helpfully direct:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

We gather in order to continue maturing as beloved children of the King!

Among other things, here’s what to expect:

(1)   We’ll thank the Lord for Jessyca Yang’s sterling leadership for our Children’s Ministry, and, now that she has found full-time service in other work, we’ll look in hope for what the Lord will do through Maggie Gettman, as she onboards this Spring to succeed Jessyca as Children’s Ministry Director.

(2)   We’ll thank the Lord for the bustling activity he enables us to pursue every Sunday—there are more than a dozen moving parts to our Sunday gatherings, and we’ll look in hope for the organizational cohesion that the Lord will accomplish through Daniel Zielke, as he takes on the new-to-us role of Operations Manager.

 (3)   We’ll thank the Lord for abundant financial provision in 2023—and throughout the last decade as our budget has increased almost 400%. We’ll also look in hope for what the Lord will grant in 2024, including contributions from the organizations that currently use our building—Christ Academy and Luz de Vida. Relatedly, we’ll note new opportunities for budgeted generosity, and we’ll talk about how to advance together with energy and joy, seeing both our differences and our commonalities as gifts for Christ’s kingdom.

I look forward to being with you!

Christopher