Dear Friends,

I look forward to seeing you—at least some of you—in all three of your glorious dimensions this Sunday in worship. Our opening plans are listed below in this FYI and will be posted on our website. Being our first day back, we will proceed with caution, but hope to loosen our preventative measures as the numbers continue to decline. We hope to be back to our previous COVID practices soon. And pray that we might return to pre-COVID practices soon thereafter. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

Dear Friends,

Growing up in northwestern Pennsylvania, one gets a distorted view of time and climate. First, growing up in the snow belt south and east of Lake Erie (think: Buffalo), you come to expect a typical winter to include sub-zero temperatures and measuring snow falls by the foot. You also trust that the people forecasting the weather know more about the future than you do so you can plan. But they do not know as much about it as a groundhog in Punxsutauney, about 2 hours due south of my childhood home. Of course, many years and a movie later, Punxsutawney Phil’s fearless prognostications are an international event. So, a happy Groundhog Day to you all. I hope to have our Groundhog Day cards unpacked by next year’s holiday. But for now enjoy, what Phil predicts will be six more weeks of winter.

This Sunday we hold our church’s Annual Business Meeting. For me, this event brings to mind words like polis, polity, and even politics; because our church’s business is about being the people of God. And that takes all of us. Let me explain. Polis is a term that is often translated as “city” but actually referred to the admirative and religious center of a city, and later referred to the people under the authority of the polis. Polity is a term that came much later based on polis, referring to an organization creating the rules of life together. We often refer to a church’s polity as the way it organizes itself or its policies. Politics, before it was a negative term, referred to the way people related to each other within the policies of a community. In the end, it is all about people. People who care for one another and care for their common task.

Dear Friends,

It is already past the midpoint of January; we are well into the year 2021 2022. (It takes me a while to get used to writing or typing the new year!) Yet much of what has defined the past two years seems to be with us at the start of this new one. And of course, that has to do with the ongoing presence of the coronavirus in our world, found both near and far.

Dear Friends,

It is already past the midpoint of January; we are well into the year 2021 2022. (It takes me a while to get used to writing or typing the new year!) Yet much of what has defined the past two years seems to be with us at the start of this new one. And of course, that has to do with the ongoing presence of the coronavirus in our world, found both near and far.