Dear Church friends and family,
If you are interested, I would love to pull back the curtain on some of the things that are happening behind the scenes at First Baptist Church of Pasadena. This letter will cover our summer preaching focus on Sunday mornings, our staff transitions and their ministry impacts, and especially our plans for more Small Groups to launch in the Fall, the state of our culture, and the calling to nurture sanity in chaotic times.
PREACHING
Last year I (Pastor John Jay) worked with the Deacons to revamp our internal Guiding Principles. One of the sections in which I was most involved related to our Ministry Outcomes. The old version was out of date, having been written by a different set of leaders before my time as pastor. So I dove in with the Deacons and we rewrote the entire set of guidelines. We retained values and principles that continued to resonate, but we also added entirely new core principles that reflect an honest expression of who we are today and the values we actively embrace. On June 2, we began reflecting on these ministry outcome statements for our preaching focus. We made the decision to focus on our Guiding Principles in preparation for what is proving to be a challenging year culturally. We live in uneasy times, with anxiety and fear being the most obvious symptoms (at times spilling over in outright violence). It is within this storm that we discover the power and promise of our core values as a community. We speak often of being curious and generous, and those continue to be great first principles. Our Guiding Principles direct our attention deeper as a community, allow us language and practices to re-form our imaginations, and provide antidotes to the toxic effects of our cultural sickness. Our summer preaching focus will bring us back to these core foundations. You can find the full list of Ministry Outcomes at fbcpasadena.com/principles. We will shift our preaching in August and focus on “Sabbath” as a set of practices to ground us in God’s goodness through the month.
STAFF TRANSITIONS
This summer Lindsay will officially transition to her new role as Formation Pastor. She has been in her current role as Family Pastor since joining the staff full time six years ago. Lindsay will be focusing on church-wide spiritual formation, leading Sunday School and Small Group ministries, as well as other smaller gatherings related to formation. She will continue to oversee the youth ministry as a subset of formation work, and she will supervise the reconfigured Family Ministry staff. She will also increase her preaching practice, which is a huge gift to our church. Family Ministry under Lindsay’s leadership (assisted by Mary Winchell) has thrived, grown, and (most crucially) become deeply integrated with the larger church as an intergenerational place to give and receive. Lindsay is splitting her time between wrapping up her time as Family Pastor (including planning for the transition in Family Ministry leadership) and building a cohesive Small Group ministry we plan to launch in the Fall. Mary Winchell has offered to remain on staff until we hire a new Family Pastor, at which time her current role will conclude. We are currently interviewing candidates for the Family Pastor position, and hope to have more to share soon! The ideal candidate will be values-driven and less focused on program building. We believe that kids thrive best when their family systems are healthy. Our next Family Pastor will be someone skilled in ministering to both kids and their adult caretakers.
We also have had a change in our Sound Technician as Kenny finished up his time on staff last Sunday. He will be moving back home to Hong Kong, and we are less for it. However, we have the fortune of welcoming Stephanie Wong to the staff as our new Sound Technician on Sunday mornings. Steph has a background in church sound and has been attending our church for the last several months. Please make sure to stop by the sound booth and say hi!
HEALTH OF CHURCH
I continue to be delighted at the overall health of our church community. We have kept up with our budget commitments, with giving outpacing spending halfway through the year! Thank you all for your faithful generosity. While we have missed many of you as summer vacations and travel pull people away from Sunday morning worship more regularly, we continue to feel a sense of vibrancy in the pews on Sunday mornings. I encourage you to listen back to the Sundays you missed here. We celebrated the conclusion of our huge building project to climate control the kid spaces (and a couple of all-church spaces). Now those of you who serve in Family Ministry have the added bonus of being in the most comfortable part of the church! The Parking Garage continues to generate more revenue than we budgeted, so a huge thanks to Perfect Parking and Rich Laski for their leadership. The Deacons have a special Sunday they are planning in September, so stay tuned for more info. You won’t want to miss it.
FINAL THOUGHTS
First Baptist Church of Pasadena is in a unique position. We continue to experience signs of new life, vitality and generosity. Our community remains non-anxious despite the chaos of the news cycle. Our gatherings are little “islands of sanity” (to borrow a phrase from Margaret Wheatley), and we believe that God is honoring our commitment to full presence and sincere faithfulness. The next few months will present us with lots of cultural anxiety, and we will once again meet those moments with the deeper calling to be God’s people practicing God’s love in God’s good creation. As always, in this work we would be…
Less without you,
Pastor John Jay
