Where We've Been & Where We're Going | A Ministry Map for Eastertide & Ordinary Time
Greetings Mission Family and Eastertide blessings to you all!
What a JOY it was to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus together last Sunday, both in-person and through our online service! Easter—as the church has celebrated it through history—is not just a day, but actually a SEASON of celebration that lasts 50 days, beginning Easter Sunday and ending on Pentecost. What God has accomplished in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is SO SIGNIFICANT, we can’t possibly celebrate it all in just 1 day!
And so in this season of celebration, as we reflect on all the incredible things God has done and is doing in our midst—whether you are brand new to the Mission or whether you’ve been with us for years—I wanted to invite you to take a moment with me, and look back on where we’ve been so far this year and where we are headed by God’s grace in the next few months.
To frame our reflections, I offer these verses from Ecclesiastes chapter 3:
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build.”
Quohelth, the speaker of Wisdom, and the voice of Ecclesiastes says here what most of us know, that life moves through different SEASONS. And these different seasons which bring with them unique opportunities as well as challenges and constraints make different focuses and activities most appropriate.
During the pandemic, our church like many experienced ministry pivot after pivot, moving worship locations multiple times and starting and stopping many things. In late October 2020, we settled into our new worship home at House of Joy. We’ve welcomed many new people into our church in a new location, even as many folks who’d been with us for a long time have moved away, and our current body has been spread out over in-person and digital gatherings.
With all of this change, God prompted us to spend the first season of 2021 focusing on our internal life as a church, taking stock of who we now were as a congregation, building up our unified vision for discipleship, and laying the groundwork for rebuilding and relaunching ministry teams. To that end, I spent time in January and February meeting with every household in the church to pray with you and to share with you about Mission Pathways, the journey we would undertake as a church family to remission the church and rebuild our unity for future ministry. In February we both elected our first-ever Vestry which greatly strengthened our lay leadership and local governance as a church, and 50 adults began journeying through the Heartbeat class, the first stage of Mission Pathways, as together, we explored the vision and mission of our church as well as the 4 core commitments our members make to Belong, Grow, serve and Go. At the conclusion of the Heartbeat Class, we celebrated a powerful Holy Week together with Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Worship services in which we focused on the events of Jesus’s passion, suffering, death, and resurrection.
Which brings us to this week and the threshold of a new ministry season.
For the next 5 weeks, we will continue our focus on building up the internal life of our church as we begin the second stage of Pathways and journey together through our Anglican 101 Class, growing in our appreciation of the ways in which the distinctives of our Anglican heritage nourish our present mission, discipleship, and church life. During these weeks, we will not be offering in-person worship gatherings as our Sunday In-Person pathways cohorts will meet during our usual worship time. We will however offer weekly online worship services that will feature re-preaches of classic sermons, songs of worship, the reading of Scripture, and spaces of prayer. We will also be doing the bulk of our Heartbeat followup, beginning to gather the folks interested in various groups and teams to discern new vision, empower new leaders, and mobilize new ministry for the months ahead.
Starting Sunday, May 16th we will begin a NEW MINISTRY SEASON. Our focus during Ordinary Time this year will be OUTWARD. Our teaching series will be KINGDOM/CULTURE in which we’ll explore the Sermon on the Mount and other key teachings of Jesus, examining what it looks like to engage our present culture as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, living as missional Christ-followers in a world that does not know Jesus. We will resume regular weekly in-person worship services at House of Joy which we will stream directly online like we did for the annual meeting for those who are not yet ready to rejoin in person. We will also begin to launch the new ministries, groups, teams, and initiatives we will have been forming together over the previous weeks.
This is a truly exciting time to be a part of The Mission. If you are brand new with us or considering visiting, WELCOME! Please take a moment to reach out to us by email us at admin@missioncincinnati.org. A pastor will then reach out to you to start a conversation and help you find ways to get connected. You can also sign up to join one of our Anglican 101 cohorts by filling out the sign up form at missioncincinnati.org/pathways. You are of course also welcome to attend our weekly online services.
For those of you who have been journeying with us these past months, the cohorts you were a part of for Heartbeat will continue for Anglican 101. We will make a few small adjustments to groups based on some changed participation, but all of you will receive specific information related to your cohort this week. Likewise if you filled out a Grow, Serve, or Go info sheet, expect to receive communication in the coming weeks with followup regarding various groups and teams that will be vision casting and launching. Please join us in praying Luke 10:2 prayers in these days because the harvest is indeed plentiful and the workers are indeed few. We need the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers in our midst to send us with power through the Holy Spirit into His harvest fields. Would you join me in asking the Lord for more of His Holy Spirit? For more of the presence power and love of Jesus to be ministered to us daily that we might be able to join Jesus in His Kingdom work in all things.
We will continue to follow CDC guidelines for social-distancing for our gatherings. As vaccinations increase and medical recommendations allow, we hope to begin relaxing some of our restrictions even as we restart some ministries that have been on pause. To that end, if you and your household have been staying away from in-person gatherings for medical reasons, I would encourage you to begin prayerfully making a “return plan” for when and how you will resume in-person connection with our church. Please feel free to discuss your plan with myself or Rev. Kristen so that we can support you in your process. We so value every member of our church. We have so missed everyone’s in-person presence, and we so look forward to making safe space for us to all take measured steps toward being together again in community, worship, and service to our city.
If you have any questions about any of these details, please feel free to reach out to me at william@missioncincinnati.org. Meanwhile, know that you are LOVED and PRAYED FOR! I am so honored to serve as your pastor and we can’t wait to journey with you in the days ahead!
May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you and give you His peace!
Fr. William