December 19 Update from Co-Executive Presbyters
Seattle Presbytery
“All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
John 1: 3-5
Dear friends,
As we draw another year to a close and gather with loved ones to celebrate and remember the birth of our Lord, we are grateful for each of you: for our congregations and worshiping communities who remain committed to the Gospel and its many expressions wherever your church may be planted; for our ordained teaching and ruling elders whose faithfulness to following God’s call has pushed and pulled them into new and different ways of being church; to all those community partners who see us as siblings and collaborators in serving all of God’s people.
As has been often said by other wiser folks, the pandemic was the visible change to highlight the quickly changing church landscape; changes that had been coming for years if not decades. And we are all adapting as best as we can, drawing on the creativity, imagination, energy, and love of all the faithful. This is hard work. But this is also sacred work.
We’ll enter 2023 with 17 churches committed to learning, unlearning, and relearning through the ongoing Thriving Congregations Initiative. We welcome Rev. J.P. Kang as the new presbytery moderator and Crystal Hairston (RE Lake Burien PC) as COM chair. A team of 15 clergy and elders from 7 of our churches will travel in mid-January on the presbytery Colombia partnership trip. Three of our churches expect to call their next installed pastors in the first half of the year. And meantime, we continue – as presbytery, as congregations – to seek how to further serve our communities among many other things.
I love the John verse in the first chapter above. The Christ child brought life for all of us. No guarantees that it would not be challenging or at times difficult to comprehend, but rather that it would a light for all people. So we may see more clearly. So we may find our way.
My Christmas wish for all our churches and members is that we embrace this gift and recognize the opportunity to be light and life. And may we be countercultural in the kindness we extend to one another on this journey.
Blessings of Christmas joy, hope, peace, and love to you and yours.
Eliana Maxim & Scott Lumsden