Pastors’ Ponderings
Kimberly P Chastain, Pastor
Another New Beginning
It’s a funny thing to realize how often we declare a new beginning in Christian life. Somehow in our church life, it feels like we are always starting over again. There’s the start of a new program year, which roughly corresponds to the start of the school year, and the start of the Christian liturgical year, which happens around the end of November or the beginning of December. There’s the start of the new calendar year, and the start of the Lenten season, culminating in the great celebration of Easter, and then the Pentecost season, which begins with a celebration of the Holy Spirit.
In a church that worships in a strictly liturgical tradition, it is announced every week that, “Anyone in Christ is a new creation! The old has passed away — behold, the new has come!” And from time to time, it seems useful to wonder what it means to have so many new beginnings.
There are things that stay the same: the seasons come and go, the buildings look familiar, the routes we take from one place to another… It is easy to miss the changes that are happening all around us when we can follow the path of the familiar. But it is important to pause and take our bearings from time to time and to start again, to orient ourselves in the present and make choices about the future.
I was at a retreat last week where many Presbyterian pastors from all over the country were talking about what we have seen since March 2020, when we went through the global change of trying to respond to a pandemic. Most of us agreed that we are just beginning to understand its impact, in our lives and in our congregations. We shared together and prayed together about what it will mean to respond faithfully when “normal” has been disrupted and everyone is thinking differently about what we are called to do and be. We all thought that we “should” be adapting better and faster, that it was somehow a failure in our witness or our work that things were not settling into traditional patterns and familiar routines.
It was comforting, in a way, to find out that this experience seems to be universal. It was also faintly disturbing to realize that there is no blueprint for how we move forward into the next season of church life. After what feels like three years of improvising, it would be nice to find a script or perhaps a list of what to do next.
What do you notice in your own life and in the life of our congregation? Where do you feel connected? What brings you joy, and what tires you out? As we do the work of regrouping and working toward our future together, what are the things you want to honor and to work toward? What are the things that you feel are screaming for attention, or at least in need of more attention? And what are you willing to let go of, to leave behind so that we can, together, take the next steps toward accepting God’s gracious abundance and sharing it forward?
This fall we hope that we can find ways to gather for deeper conversations about our lives as individuals and our life as a church. We will be providing focus topics and activities for coffee hour, hosting another potluck with conversation prompts, and gathering information with a consultant from the Presbyterian Foundation. Then starting in November, we will be asking the whole community to join together in a year of prayer and reflection called “Project Regeneration.”
In the meantime, if you have a story to tell, a passion to share, a vision that is close to your heart, we invite you to speak up and speak out, so that as we listen to each other we can learn more about what God is calling us to do and be in the future.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Kimberly
Becky Kindig, Associate Pastor
Greetings friends!
Welcome to September! There is always something surprising, daunting, and exciting about setting up the computer file for the next program year. Getting to the end of August a couple weeks ago as I was getting my coloring sheets saved for the prayer ground was surprising. It seemed like summer had just started and here we are needing to create a whole new year. And as I created the folders for September and the next year for the coloring sheets, the Sunday school lessons, and the Binghamton University Interfaith Council events, all those empty folders looked daunting. But there is also something exciting about it. There is possibility for all kinds of fun and learning and faith formation. And this coming year seems even better because we are finally able to plan to be together.
This summer Kimberly and I took some intentional planning time, like we used to before Covid, and laid out themes for the upcoming year. We have heard many of you saying that you miss being together. We have also heard some of you saying, oh, I don’t really know that person, they are new — but they have been with us for three years. Covid had us in ultra-safety mode, for very good reasons! But now that we have tools and strategies to keep everyone healthy, it’s time to plan on things to strengthen our community. Learning together, doing projects together, eating together, hanging out together. It is really important as a church to build in ways people can build those relationships so that God can work among us. And it is really important for people to find ways to connect and feel a part of the community. So much in the Bible shows us that God really believes in doing things as a community.
This is true not just for the adults, but also for the children. They need to feel that they belong and have a role to play as well. They need to get to know other people and have those relationships. We have a great base to work from. Many of you have received pictures colored or drawn by some of our little ones on Sunday. What a joy! We have had wonderful feedback from the couple of group projects we had last year like decorating ornaments, making Easter eggs, and coloring the map and Easter banner. It was great to see people of all ages in this congregation working together and getting to know each other. So we are going to intentionally have a different group project that relates to worship each month. We had a “soft entry” in August with the folding of the paper cranes.
In September we will be introducing the Corner of Hope from Dave Ruston. He has been dreaming of a space to remember the migrants who didn’t make it during their journey. So we will be creating together a corner with information on immigration issues but also inviting everyone to decorate butterflies together to hang in the corner as a sign of hope. And for the younger ones, we will send home Sunday school packets at the end of each month with some coloring pages, lessons, puzzles, and crafts for the worship themes the coming month. But all ages are welcome to do the monthly worship project in the sanctuary!
Now we realize that some of you in our community are at a distance, and that is okay! There are ways for you to interact with people and take part in these activities from where you are. People Zoom into Bible study, Sewing Group lunch, and our Friday evening Happy hour. Some people call others to keep them connected. Just let us know that you want to be a part of it and we can help you find a way to get involved.
But for those of you who can come on Sunday and haven’t been in a while, know that you are missed and we would love to worship and sing and pray and talk with you again.
Kimberly and I have some other things that we are dreaming about doing as a congregation and are in the planning stages, but what are you dreaming about doing together? We would love to hear what the Holy Spirit is stirring in you!
I hope to see you soon!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Becky
