To the congregation of First Baptist Church of Pasadena,
Greetings on the eve of a new year! I want to take a few minutes to share with you what to expect in the coming weeks and months, as well as reflect on all we have endured and nurtured in this impossible year.
But first, I want to extend an invitation to consider any year end financial gifts to your church community. If you want to end your 2020 giving with a special gift or a gift to balance your planned giving, now is the time. You can give by going to fbcpasadena.com/giving and filling the form in on that page. You can also give by texting any amount to (626) 427-0098 and following the steps there. You can also postmark a paper check in the mail by December 31 to have it included on your charitable gifts for 2020. This invitation to give is also an opportunity to practice trust and hope in the face of difficult circumstances. Like my friend Mark Wingfield said in an aptly named recent column, “The best way to finish this dreadful year is with lavish generosity.”
For the next two Sundays, we will be shifting our worship to online only with our Liturgy For the Living Room. As we have shared in previous communications, we need to catch our breath as leaders. We have been pushing hard for a long time, with a final burst of energy for the Advent and Christmas season. Now that we are safely on the other side of this high holy holiday, we want to honor our own limits and create a rhythm of rest and reflection. So we will be sharing audio liturgies for January 3 and January 10, and plan on regathering in the garage for outdoor worship on January 17, 2021. This break from in-person worship also gives our community time to adjust to the ongoing virus surge and any exposure from possible travel and visits. I ask that you pray for the staff and pastors as we take a small step back and gather our strength for the next push toward Easter and summer. If you have lost a practice of joining us for Sunday worship, I want to encourage you to find a way to participate each week. If Sunday mornings do not work for your schedule at this time, then make a plan to listen to the liturgy during the week. A consistent pattern of worship is essential at all times, but especially in a season of such profound disruption and uncertainty, it is crucial to stay connected to God and one another.
As we move into the beginning of a new year, there are some new shifts and changes that we anticipate. The biggest change for which we are planning: the return to indoor worship in our Sanctuary! We do not have a date in mind at this time, but we want to be ready when the time arrives. So we will be doing some work to the sanctuary space behind the scenes as we approach that day. In the meantime, we will continue with our various ways to engage in worship: outdoor garage worship on Sundays, livestream liturgy online, and ] a version of the recorded liturgy shared for you to engage when you are able. We also plan on maintaining a monthly rhythm of the Family Liturgy in the Park for our families with kids. For the time being, the outdoor garage worship will focus on our drive-in model, where we encourage as many people as possible to stay in their vehicles and participate through your radio and requisite horn honking! We will scale up the outdoor seating area as the virus surge levels off and we can do so with lowered risk. This set of practices and liturgical forms allows us to scale up or down as necessary without significant disruption to our worship life.
As I have had a few extra hours of sleep, I am reminded of a favorite blessing of mine from John O’Donohue, “For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing.” He says:
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
I feel that deep in my bones, as I know many of you do, too. All of our parents who have been holding up their families and kids while holding down work and their own sanity, we see you. All of our professional leaders and managers who have found creative ways to keep the bottom line from collapsing while keeping as many people employed as possible, we see you. All of our seniors who have been living with heightened risk and watched from a distance as their friends suffer fragile health and intense loneliness, we see you. All of our black and brown friends who have endured a steady uptick in violent rhetoric and brutal news cycles of racism and reopened wounds, we see you. For all of our friends experiencing job loss and the uncertainty of where they will find new work, we see you. We belong to one another, even as this last year has made it difficult to experience that reality. This is where our faith comes into practice, faith that God holds us across great distance, and faith that your church family is holding space for you during our physical absence.
The next year will be critical for our long term health and vitality. I believe that our perseverance will be honored on the other side of this wilderness, and we will find ourselves in a good land with the bounty of God laid out before us. We already see hints of this with new folks joining our community, with new babies growing up, with emerging opportunities to love our neighbors and with a renewed sense of vision and mission in a post-plague world. We just have to maintain our trust and generosity toward God, one another and our pastoral leadership.
There is more to say, and thankfully there is plenty of time for the speaking in the days and months ahead. I hope you will join us in the sharing of the Good News as we experience it. We need your eyes and ears to show us all that we would miss without your presence.
Less without you,
Pastor John Jay
