Well Lakeview UMC, here we are.  2025 is off and running (maybe faster than some of us might like), and we are already over halfway through the first month of the year.  It’s hard to believe that the holiday season is officially over, and we are back to our regularly scheduled programming for the most part already.  The beginning of a new year is always interesting to me, because I find myself being filled with both excitement and also a little bit of sadness at the same time.  There’s the excitement of a fresh start, and yet there is also the sadness of seeing another year pass, as well as watching the Christmas lights come down and the longer darkness of January and February begin to take hold without the excitement of the holiday festivities to illuminate the night.  I wonder if you might experience the same sort of emotional roller-coaster as me this time of year.

I think that this cohabitation of both excitement and sadness within us is important to recognize, especially as we push ourselves in the new year.  There is this societal pressure to improve ourselves each new year.  We feel the pressure to create New Year’s Resolutions, ways that we are going to “fix” our issues this year.  For many years, my resolutions were exactly the same year after year because I never achieved them.  And the thing about resolutions is they are typically good things- lose weight, spend less time on our phones and more time with the people actually present with us, spend more time reading the Bible or in prayer, call our friends and family on the phone more….

We want to become better human beings, and so we make these resolutions at the beginning of the year, but then what happens?  I can’t necessarily speak for you, but for me, typically, as soon as I break my resolution one time, I lose motivation and eventually stop trying all together.  It only takes one unhealthy meal, one day of not going to the gym, one day of not doing my morning devotion, one week of not calling my friend from college, and then I just let the resolution fall by the wayside and act like I never even made the resolution in the first place.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.  And I believe that cohabitation of both excitement and sadness plays a large role in why we fail in our New Year’s Resolutions each year.  We are well into the season of Winter, the season of darkness and cold.  A season where God has designed nature and our bodies to rest, and yet we try to push ourselves to our limits, both physically and mentally.  And when we struggle, we end up losing that motivation and giving up, which just leads to more frustration, more self-doubt or self-criticism, and those things certainly aren’t helpful.

For that reason, the last couple years, I have chosen not to make any hard and fast resolutions.  Instead, I’ve tried to focus more on a word, or a phrase that I want to define my upcoming year.  By doing this, it took the pressure off me to perform perfectly.  There wasn’t anything to break.  There was no deadline or set goal, it was about moving toward something rather than becoming something. 

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say in this first article, I began to wonder how this same type of thinking might be beneficial for us as Lakeview UMC.  Even as a church, we often will fall into the same type of trap- we set goals for ourselves, trying to become something, and when things don’t go as smoothly or as easily as we would like, we get frustrated and give up.  Especially when those goals are something that we can’t even really control.  We might set goals like, we want to grow the church in 2025, gaining new members.  We want to see more people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  We want to see our children’s and youth programs grow, or whatever it might be.  And just like so many New Year’s Resolutions, these are good things.  But they are ultimately out of our control.

No matter how good we are at evangelism or how great our programs are, we can’t make anyone come to our church.  We can’t make anyone accept Jesus Christ into their life.  We can’t make children and teens show up.  Only God can do that.

So what if we began to focus on the journey rather than the destination?  What word or phrase do you wish might define and guide our 2025 together as a church?  Maybe a word like loving might be an appropriate word- helping us to love God, each other, and our neighbor even better this year.  Or a word like hospitable, where we make space for the stranger among us in our church family.  Maybe the word holy should be our guiding word and thought this year, as we grow closer to God and to each other, better reflecting Jesus Christ to those that we encounter as individuals and as a church. 

I don’t know what our word or phrase should be, but I would like for us to spend these first few weeks of 2025 thinking and praying about it.  That God would give us something to guide our imagination and our thoughts and our actions throughout this year as we continue to do the work of God in Saint Albans, WV.  I want us, this year, to focus more on ourselves and becoming the people and the church that God desires for us to be, and then trust God to take care of the rest, especially the growth.  I believe that God is up to something, and that God is inviting us into the work that God has already begun and will continue to completion.  And no matter what challenges or excitements may come in 2025, I am looking forward to going on this journey with you, Lakeview UMC, this year!