Good morning and God bless you, Wayland UMC. Our shared ministry begins in July and I offer some introductory reflections.
First of all, thank you for your welcoming contacts by Facebook and email, and for Lee's photography at Annual Conference that documents our transition. Keith's contacts with Beverly and me regarding the parsonage kept us up to date on their work and the decisions we could make. Time with Pastor Gary and Kimberly was informative and energizing. I look forward to good ministry together.
When it comes to a big picture of our life with God, the best thing I can say is GRACE in all the Wesleyan ways we understand it...God loving us before we know it, opening doors by preparing hearts and minds for new relationships; reconciling, forgiving and restoring us to right relationship through Jesus Christ; and giving us a future with hope as we go on toward perfection in love in this life.
Grace challenges, confounds and comforts me, and is the orienting power in my life and ministry.
Grace was extended to me in the hospitality of Three Oaks UMC, my home church. Grace was at work when I joined my life with Christ the end of my freshman year at River Valley High School.
The best people in my life are Beverly (my wife), daughter Lindsey and Callan (her husband), and daughters, Sarah and Amanda. Lindsey and Callan live in Nebraska. Sarah will be a senior at Western Michigan University and Amanda will be a sophomore at DePaul University in Chicago. So, Beverly and I unload boxes into an empty nest.
I know that we enter as guests in the Wayland UMC family and I will become your pastor in time. But for now, I praise God and thank you for being the Body of Christ. I change "country" to "church" in this concluding quote from Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of the Morning":
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
And in to your brother's face,
Your (church),
And say simply
Very simply
With hope--
Good morning.
