As I prepare for Lent this year, even though I am not regularly pastoring any particular church, I am planning on keeping with my annual Lenten discipline of reading though a book of the Bible and sharing some of my thoughts on it.
The church is certainly in a different place today. We are in the middle of a cultural shift in the United States where regular worship attendance is waning. While we were already experiencing that in 2013, the interruptions in worship due to Covid have accelerated the gaps we were already seeing in younger generations.
The isolation has also helped speed up the polarization we are seeing in the United States as well as around the world.
This has made being a pastor more difficult as we've seen people migrate to other places of worship as well as stop altogether. And just as we've seen church goers rethink their faith, we are also seeing more pastors consider other professions.
Within The United Methodist Church, we have seen turmoil over the inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons somewhat on hold as we await the postponed 2020 General Conference where legislation is adopted. We are seeing the likelihood of the Global Methodist Church emerging as a more conservative alternative to the UMC.
Some churches will leave to this denomination, but I believe most will remain within the UMC. The difficulty is that most of our churches have people on both sides of this issue. In rural areas, there are not options but rather single United Methodist churches that try to remain home to a variety of faithful believers.
With all of this going on, the season of Lent where we adopt spiritual disciplines may be a welcome relief to the stress of our "regular" lives.
If you want to spend some time with me in reading through Luke, I invite you to do so. You are welcome to comment your own thoughts and reactions which makes it more of an online study. Of course, you are also welcome to share these via social media or direct emailing the link. The new devotions will show up daily in the wee hours of the morning for those who are early risers at this site (follow this blog by clicking the tab at the right). I'll post them to Facebook and Twitter each day a little later in the morning.
Regardless of whether you join in with reading Luke, I would invite you to adopt some kind of spiritual discipline for the forty days leading up to Easter. With all of the changes going on in the world today, the renewal of spiritual strengths allows us to meet these changes with a greater sense of God's peace in our lives. And I think the world could use more peace right now!
In Christ,
Sam
Photo by Roy via Flickr.com. Used under the Creative Commons license.
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