By: Pastor Dana O’Brien
Thanks so much to all of you for the wonderful installation service on January 22. The music was terrific, the food was great, and the beach balls were just the perfect touch. Thank you also for the donations on my behalf to the Lockport Resource Center, SOS and the FISH Food Pantry. I am humbled and blessed by such a welcome.
And now that I’m here for good (yes, that would be “forever”), it’s time to get down to business – to start discerning what God is calling us to do in this community. We’ll start out by focusing on who we are as church in this place and then get to know our neighbors, all the time looking for God working around us and jumping in to help. This is such an exciting time to be church and I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be!!!
2017 Commitment Cards
If you made a financial contribution to Cross of Glory in 2016, you should have already received your year-end statement. Along with that statement came a letter from me and a Commitment Card for 2017. (If you didn’t get one in the mail, there are copies on the table in the welcome area.) Maybe you’ll be a bit surprised to see that the commitment cards only include one line about your financial commitment. That’s not because financial commitments aren’t all that important – they are very important, particularly this year as COG’s financial obligations have increased and we anticipate more money going out than coming in. But the commitment cards reflect the many different ways God calls us to live as God’s people – with our money yes, but also with our time and passions and skills and heart — and not just in this place on Sunday morning, but all the time, 24/7.
Please prayerfully consider how God is inviting you to be closer to him this coming year, and how God is calling you to live as church in 2017. I thank you all for all that you do in and through Cross of Glory. I thank you for the joy and blessing of being your pastor here. And I thank you, in advance, for all the exciting things that God will do through all of us this coming year.
Welcoming – The Whys, Wheres and Hows
One of the things I really love about Cross of Glory is our welcome statement over the door as you enter the worship space. We say we welcome everyone – which is a very cool thing! Because a place where people can feel welcome and affirmed for who they are is really important in our world.
So during the month of February, we’ll look at what it means to be welcomed and to welcome others, both on Sunday morning, and every day as we go about our daily lives. We’ll see how God welcomes us and how Jesus models what welcoming looks like. Finally, we’ll look at how welcome literally changes lives, and learn a couple of really easy things we can do to be more welcoming wherever we are.