Dear Friends in Christ,

When my children were young, I started off the school year with infinite optimism. This would be the year that lunch boxes were cleaned every night. This would be the year that we would leave early enough for church that even my dawdling kids wouldn’t be late. I put my faith in schedules and checklists and my own willpower.

And every year—almost like clockwork—my aspirations disintegrated. By the beginning of October, we were as stressed and messy as ever.

Not all of you have children, and not all of you are bound by the school year, but I think we all struggle with the failure of our optimism. We rely on our own agency, and that agency is inevitably limited. As the world bustles around us—and it moves faster than ever in the fall, doesn’t it?—we can’t keep up.

Nor should we.

I write to remind you that Grace Church is not an extension from the world of social expectations and lifestyle optimization. It is an escape from it.

One of the priorities from last year’s visioning process—a “golden thread”—was community and belonging. When we live into that priority, this church becomes a haven, a refuge. We come here not because we are put together or successful. We come here because we want to be known as we actually are—limited, fallible, flawed, and yet still hopeful.

My hope for each of you is that you will come to worship and find it not another place to measure up but instead a place to know one another authentically. Our connection to one another stems from and reinforces our connection to God.

I love the programmatic life of Grace Church—all of the rich and fun and exciting [things we do together. And yet the really essential thing is being the body of Christ. When we simply sit in the pews, when we love one another and God, when we let ourselves be loved—those moments are what matter. Many other things are the husk, but time in the true community of worship is the kernel, the heart.

I look forward to being close to God and being close to one another next Sunday.

Yours in Christ,
Anne+