Thursday, August 27, 2015

A Church Dares to Change

As I walked the dog this evening, I thought of a congregation that is making an amazing witness as they step out with faith and courage. Burnt Factory UMC was my first appointment as pastor. I was so naïve. I can’t stress that enough. When I was asked by a reporter from my hometown about whether the people would accept me as a woman to be their pastor, I said that I just planned on loving the people, and that love would prevail. In so many ways, I was so naïve that I did not truly realize how opposed some of the people were to me as pastor. Thanks be to God for that shield.

At BFUMC the people truly loved God and wanted to serve. When something needed doing, they worked together to make it happen. Part of that grew somewhat of being a “family” church, with one particular family being dominant by sheer numbers. That could have been an invitation to be inwardly focused, but as I keep up with the congregation on Facebook, and in other ways, I marvel at how thirty-one years after I moved from there, they are showing their love for God and God’s people in such a way that they are in the process of demolishing parts of their building in order to expand it so they can reach new people for Christ. And in usual BF fashion, they are carefully taking down parts so they can be reused, doing as much of the work as they can themselves. They are daring to take a risk, to step out in faith in order to reach people who need God’s love.


This raises a question for me: how williing am I to be bold, to dare to step out in faith when I cannot see where two steps more of the path will take me. That requires trust; it also requires courage.

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