salt and light

I am feeling a whole lot of different things right now.  Today was communion Sunday at FUMC and the sermon was a reminder that  we are a community there, as in all of us.  We worship together often and do good things for the community through ministries like the food pantry, Upward Bound sports and many other areas of outreach.  There was an exceptionally large crowd today and following Mary Beth's sermon I remembered what she said about this being the last time we would take communion together prior to the big vote on disaffiliation.  Except for Ash Wednesday, of course.  Which is the day before the vote.  The future of our church will be different.  Some will leave and others will stay according to which way it goes.  It has been a long period of soul searching for we as a congregation and I agree with the way the process has been handled.  There was no knee jerk reaction to leave the conference as with other UMC congregations.  The discernment team has met often and decided that the time to vote is now after surveying the members and praying over the whole thing for many months.  A lot of members left because they were antsy for a yay or nay vote.  Others will leave afterwards.  A church split, no matter what the denomination, is always hard.  The main thing, in my opinion, is to keep God at the center of it.  It's a hard WWJD moment for all of us.

Jesus met people where they were, warts and all.  He did not judge them and performed a lot of miracles when all hope was lost.  And that, my friends, is what it's all about.  Unconditional love ^j^