Greetings Dear People of Bethlehem,
I was bummed not to get to join you at this year’s annual meeting, but the stomach flu doesn’t seem to care about carefully planned schedules or events that have been months in the making! Since I was able to share much the “thank you” section of my report during worship on the 25th, I thought I would take this opportunity to cover a few other things that I would have said in my oral report. Hopefully the act of reading it won’t result in too much nodding off, but if it does, I won’t hold it against you! I always joke that my report is a good insomnia cure, so why should this year be any different?
I was blessed to get to see worship through a different lens this year during my paternity leave. First of all, I got to sit in the back row, which after years of having to sit up front, was absolutely glorious! I felt like a real Lutheran! One of my biggest takeaways during this time when I wasn’t required to be at worship was just how much planning and effort it took to make it to church every week. Obviously, having a baby added to the level of difficulty, but even without accounting for Zachy’s schedule it would have had its challenges. Apparently, all these years of attending worship as a part of my job caused me to forget! And so, I want to say that it fills my heart with gratitude to see each and every one of you, whenever it is that you are able to come, knowing what it took to make that happen. I mentioned this observation to one member saying that it’s somewhat of a miracle that anyone makes it at all, and she responded that she can’t not come to church, because this is the place that gives her hope in the midst of everything happening in the world right now, and that too was an incredibly humbling and gratifying affirmation of the work that we do as a community.
I was also reminded that worship is not just what we do and what we say. The rituals and carefully crafted verbiage are certainly important and life-giving, but worship also involves the fact that every one of us shows up with all of who we are in tow. Whether we are tired, well-rested, worried, struggling, broken-hearted, content, healing, sick, hopeful, stressed, lonely, full, empty … we bring all of who we are and lay it at the altar, and in turn we are told that we are loved, and that we are enough just as we are. Thank you for bringing all of who you are to Bethlehem week after week.
My other main area of day-to-day focus is property, and we sure were busy this past year! We received our tax rebate which closed the books on our solar project. We finished the columbarium project thanks in no small part to the Herculean efforts of Dennis to deal with every unexpected problem that came up (and there were a lot of them). This meant that we were able to finally place Dee Rothenberger into her niche at the Easter Vigil, which was a beautiful moment. A great deal of Preschool improvements happened as well: the playground deck was repaired, local artist Kevin Anderson painted two beautiful new murals on the Family Center, we installed squishy play area surfacing (which is very fun to bounce on), and the rehabilitation of Dot’s Garden is well under way. We had a new retaining wall built along Melba. We installed a new sign on the corner of our property with our new logo and the RIC logo, and we’ve devised a new method of using that sign to hang temporary banners for things like Christmas and Easter worship services. Thank you to everyone who helped with these projects, but special thanks to Dennis Astroth for all that he does – we are truly lucky to have a steward like him in our midst.
I’ll end this note as I would have ended my in-person report, with a final word of thanks. As I said in my sermon that Sunday, thank you for the ways you are a blessing simply by being who you are, and showing up as you are.
Blessings, Pastor Sam