presbytery :: blog

One of the things that I am proud to claim this early in my tenure as an ep–is that in my first three weeks, I’ve visited three congregations for Sunday worship (I’m 3 for 3!). Here’s a sketch of those visits. 

May 4 :: Wedgwood
Visiting congregations as an ep is so different from my previous Sunday plan as a pastor. The first question now is “Is my family coming?” Let me explain. The previous Sunday plan was always that I would leave early in the morning (5 or 6am) for the church to prepare and my family would come along in time for the service–now we all head out together. This was the pattern for my first two visits. Ok, now on to Wedgwood.

Having emailed Karen about coming to visit, we arrived at about 9:15 to get acquainted with the church. My two daughters (Sophia, 5 and Cosette, 3) adapted to the new environment quickly and decided that they would like to attend kid’s worship after the children’s message in church. Karen’s message (Ascension of our Lord) prodded the depth of meaning regarding Christ’s ascension to be with God and what that means for our lives and the life of God as Trinity. A highlight of the service was when we were waved an “Alleluia” pom (my word) every time we sung or said alleluia. After the service, I was warmly greeted by many current and former servants of the larger church (presbytery). 

May 11 :: Calvary Presbyterian Church 
Pentecost and Mother’s Day. Don’t know when that’s happened before in the life of the church (in the USA), but it was an interesting combination. Calvary’s associate pastor, Dan Oliva preached a fine message that highlighted the Spirit’s work in the lives of the “cloud of witnesses” who happened to be women. 

May 18 :: Seattle First Presbyterian Church
Don’t know when you last visited Seattle First, but if you haven’t been in a while, I’d definitely put this on your list of churches to visit. There is much that could and should be said about the challenge of being a mainline church in an urban context (especially a Northwest urban context) but what this congregation is endeavoring to do is nothing less than miraculous. The changes to the sanctuary illustrate the changes going on in the hearts and minds of some very dedicated followers of Christ. If I had to describe in a sentence what I witnessed I would sum it up this way: Seattle First, It’s not what it used to be, it’s what God is calling it to be. 

Endnote: I’m noticing already that the weeks have a tendency to get away from my a bit by about Wednesday. Whatever plan I have going in (Mon) seems to take a bit of a turn as something “urgent” begins to take more and more of the time I had planned for other tasks. Thus, the idea that I had coming into this position–that I would select a church to visit, have a little dialogue with the pastor(s), plan some meaningful interaction with the church with the leadership, is being challenged. There are a number of things that play into this: some of this is to be expected given the “newness” of everything, some of it is the nature of the position, but some of it may be due to other factors. In the future, we’d do well to review our priorities as a presbytery and then review our staffing model to ensure that the priorities we’ve established actually happen. This little observation about my work week is rather a minor point, but it may hold insights as to the need for us to review our work together to make sure we’re really serving our congregations the way we want to. 

Peace. Scott