What Will It Take?

By / October 26, 2016
Congratulations to member Debbie Lord (middle), here with her daughter Emily and husband John, who passed the last step toward her PhD. today.
Congratulations to member Debbie Lord (middle), here with her daughter Emily and husband John, who passed the last step toward her PhD. today.

Oct. 26, 2016

Dear Caldwell,

There is, perhaps, no time when we as a nation and as a people feel more divided than in the final weeks before a presidential election. In the context of history, this isn’t really a new phenomenon. Our nation has been bitterly divided before. Yet, it all seems so raw, so real, so immediate.

When the “third rail” topic of politics comes up in the office or elsehere with co-workers, friends and families – so many have developed strategies to just simply avoid the disharmony the subject seems to invite. The one thing all Americans seem to be able to agree on, as it was recently joked, is that we all want this election to be over. In a sense, we are all like CNN and we have a clock running in the corner of our heads, counting down the days, hours and minutes.

As people of faith, as Christians, we walk a particular path in all of this. We are formed and informed by our call to witness to an alternative way to be in the world. So were the first followers of Christ, challenged every day to carve out their identity as people of the Jesus movement, as children of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Congrats also to Worship Leader Gwen Pearson, who yesterday was approved to enter the last phase of her preparation for becoming an ordained minister in our denomination. Here she is speaking to Tuesday's Presbytery meeting.
Congrats also to Worship Leader Gwen Pearson, who yesterday was approved to enter the last phase of her preparation for becoming an ordained minister in our denomination. Here she is speaking to Tuesday’s Presbytery meeting.

As we travel from Sunday to Sunday this week, how is that working for you? How does your faith – and your community of faith – help define you?  What will it take for us to become the “beloved community” God wants.

Those are some of the questions on my mind this week as I think about my sermon Sunday, when we take up Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Let me know if you have any thoughts.

In the meantime, please take note:

  • All are invited to join the youth and their adult leaders Sunday after worship in the Caldwell garden to prepare it for winter. There is lots of work to be done and it’s a good chance to get dirty with an excuse and use your body over your mind. Bring some jeans and a sweat shirt and help plow the ground to feed the hungry.
  • A week from today, Caldwell hosts a showing of an important film in The Third Place. It’s an Emmy Award-winning piece called Color Blind: Rethinking Race 6:30 p.m. It’s a great conversation-starter on how our God has made us uniquely, each with a particular witness and experience and, yet, with a common soul. Come and enjoy Enderly Coffee, baked goods from Friendship Trays and the company of other seekers and believers, while helping our partners in West Charlotte.
  • Along with so many prayer concerns we lift up, we’re grateful that Zoraida Stewart is home tonight after three days in the hospital following breathing problems. We also lift up Dee Blackburn, engaging in her physical therapy after spinal surgery and wife Betsy West and her family (mom is in the hospital) as well as Donna Willis, recovering from CDIF, and Richard Campbell with eye trouble.

In Christ,

John