Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Remember this?! I felt downright nostalgic when one of my kids shared this blast from the past photo of a pay phone in a western Nevada town. My kids have never used a pay phone. But when I was in college, it was the only way to call home. All the dormitory halls had central pay phones, and you also had to wait your turn. You needed a supply of quarters to call home, and I may have even called collect a few times when my quarter supply ran short. That’s language my kids wouldn’t understand as well as long distance and dialing the operator. These are all things of yesterday that changed for today and tomorrow’s world.

Innovation replaced pay phones with the cell phones of today. The method of communication may have changed, but we are still talking in lots of new ways! It’s like that for the church, too. We are facing changing times that call for innovation. We will still be sharing the good news, but we will be doing that in new ways. We will hang on to many of our traditions, but we will be open to new ways of being church for today and tomorrow, and we will seek partners in our neighbors.

Desert Cross is forming Faithful Innovation groups that will follow a process of “Listen – Act – Share” which came out of our Christ Care Retreat, “Tomorrow’s Church Today.” It’s a faithful process that listens for God’s leading and the Spirit’s guidance in how we can best adapt our practices to share the good news in new ways. We have groups at each campus who will start this process and share what they learn with all of us. We will do experiments and see how we connect with our neighbors.

We will be open moment by moment to how this will look knowing God is with us. The good news is that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow even when everything around us is changing. His presence, his love, his support, strength, his guidance, and his call to share peace and love will never change. We will still share the good news just in different ways! Keep watching for more on this and how you can be involved in the grass roots effort to be God’s church in new ways by going out to see what is happening in our neighborhoods, and how we can create partners to share kindness with each other.

Keep talking, Pastor Andrea