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Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your
young men shall see visions.
-Joel 2:28
In the Church (note the capital ‘c’) calendar the Sunday after Epiphany is the Sunday we celebrate Jesus’ baptism. Well, Epiphany is on January 6 and we are celebrating Epiphany Sunday on January 8. Since we have displaced Baptism of the Lord with Epiphany on Sunday, I figured it was okay to talk about Baptism in the newsletter that will go out on Epiphany. Sound good?
We have all heard a call to follow Jesus, and each of us has in some way responded by following. I believe a call to discipleship moves deeper than that. We often, in the church, speak of a call to ministry, specifically ordained ministry. However, it is the call to discipleship that I think is THE most important call. I have received no ‘higher’ calling than the one I received on the day of my baptism. Each of us has gifts that we have been given by God to use in service to Christ.
When we gather together as a community of faith, we gather at the call of Jesus. Each church, including ours, has different gifts as a community of faith. It is in our gifts as individuals and as a congregation that we find our particular calling, our particular mission. A particularly good way of
understanding calling is: “where your greatest passion meets the greatest need of the world. The question to find calling becomes, “What am I passionate about? What gifts do I have? What brings me life? What do I do well? And where are those things needed in the world?”
This type of examination can be offered in a more general way to the church. In our next worship series we are going to explore the dreams God has for our congregation. We are going to do that by…dreaming together. It is very easy for churches to fall into the trap of living in the past or thinking about the things that have been lost over time. The pandemic has made that challenge more acute these past couple years. Yet, we still remember that our congregation has been blessed with many gifts right here and now! We have passions and abilities as a community of faith…and the world certainly has need of them. So let’s dream together and explore our calling as a community of faith!
Shalom,
Pastor Owen
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