Dear Siblings in Christ,

   During my sermon on the third Sunday of Advent, we pondered call stories—those times in our lives when we sense God inviting and calling us forward to live out our faith in some way. We recognized that our responses to God’s call are varied and that at times we may be  resistant to what God is inviting us to do. We considered stories from scripture, including God’s call to Jeremiah to serve as a prophet for God’s people and when God called Mary to become the mother of God’s Son, Jesus. I also shared a bit of my own call story and the long journey I took in answering God’s call to serve as a pastor. (If you were unable to worship with us that day in Advent, you can still experience the service on Grace’s You Tube channel).

   Certainly, God calls all the baptized into a life of faithful discipleship in all kinds of places and all kinds of ways. While many times these calls come to us individually, we also know that God actively calls and invites whole communities to collectively live out God’s vision in concrete ways for the sake of the world God loves. As I mentioned in my sermon, “Sometimes these moments of call are subtle and gentle, and sometimes they can be life-altering and move us into places and tasks we might not have been able to imagine ourselves doing.” So, how do we know if, when, and how God may be calling us?

   Spiritual discernment is a practice of listening intentionally for what God may be speaking or revealing to us. We might practice spiritual discernment through the act of prayer, journaling, meditation, or reading scripture and pausing to reflect what God may be saying to us through the text. We might discern that God is speaking to us through another person or an experience, or that God is nudging us to act in some way. We might even work with a trained spiritual director to guide us through practices that support active listening as we watch for the movement and wonder at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. An important component to spiritual discernment is to remember that it is almost always both an internal and an external practice. That is, we listen for how God may be speaking to us and then we engage other trusted person(s) in conversation to test out what we think we may be hearing or sensing.

   As I have completed my first year serving as your pastor here at Grace, and as we enter into this new calendar year, I sense that our congregation is quite ready to engage a formal visioning process. A visioning process is aspirational and helps a congregation to envision and name specific ministry goals toward which we will commit ourselves. It is my hope and intent that our visioning process would also actively engage the practice of communal spiritual discernment to intentionally invoke the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Such a process would guide our faith community to thoughtfully consider together: How might God be calling and inviting Grace Lutheran Church, as a whole congregation, to live out God’s intentions and hopes for this congregation and in our surrounding community? How might God be calling Grace to deepen our relationship among our membership and with our neighbors? What new ministries might God be calling us to consider? What lay leadership may need to be raised up and equipped to live out that sense of call? We might imagine that the possibilities are endless for how God may choose to speak or what God may reveal to us through such an intentional process.

   Over this year and next, I look forward to working with our Council to engage in the leadership task of visioning while tapping into the benefits of doing this visioning work alongside the practice of communal spiritual discernment. There will be so much more to come as we develop our process for doing this important work within our congregation. I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us at Grace Lutheran Church as we faithfully seek to discern and then live out God’s call here in this place!

Graces Good Garden – Decommissioned

Greetings,

    After our 11th season, on May 13, 2025, the garden was decommissioned!  All of the raised beds built by the boy scouts in 2013 had severely rotted.  The fence was a mess after a huge branch fell on it last year.  We would have faced a major rebuild to make the garden look good again.  The future of this space is yet to be determined, but for 11 years it served the community by providing more than a couple thousand pounds of fresh produce to Open Door for distribution.

    We have had more than 30 congregants who participated in this ministry over the years.

Look at the pictures.  In what was a fitting end today, Bill Kilcoyne, the young boy who built the garden as his Eagle Badge project, was on campus to repair an air conditioning unit.  Where he helped build the raised beds and gate as a youngster, he carried the last boards to the dumpster as a young man.

     With gratitude for your contributions to the success of this ministry.

Kurt Meyers

   If you love digging deep into historical facts and want to better understand why racism is so embedded in our current culture, read “When Affirmative Action was White” by Ira Katznelson.  Or you could try reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ award-winning book “Between the World and Me.”  

   Also, you could watch the powerful & thought-provoking true story “Just Mercy” about systemic racism and the battle for justice.  You can currently watch this move for FREE on all digital networks.

   Another excellent book is White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.   Other informative, challenging, and well-done resources include Selma  (movie),  Dear White People (movie and Netflix series), andThirteenth   (Netflix documentary).

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me…. Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”  – Matthew 25:40-45.

Mental Health Resources:   For you or someone you love…

NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness)  HelpLine can be reached Mon.-Fri., 10am–6pm, ET.  1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or info@nami.org

Montgomery County Mobile Crisis  Immediate support for crisis

situations available 24/7 at 1-855-634-HOPE (4673).

Mont. County Children’s Crisis Support Program  Immediate

support for crisis situations available 24/7 at 1-888-HELP-414.

Mont. County’s teen talk line  If you’re a teen feeling overwhelmed & need another teen to talk to, please call at (866) 825-5856 or text (215) 703-8411. It is available, free of charge, Mon.-Fri., 3 to 7pm.

PA Department of Drug & Alcohol Program (DDAP). To find

addiction treatment or a treatment provider, call the 24/7 toll-free

1-800-662-HELP hotline.

Laurel House  (domestic violence)  24/7 hotline: 800-642-3150,

Women’s Center of Montgomery County’s  (domestic violence)

hotline: 800-773-2424.

Alcoholics Anonymous   www.aa.org for help with a drinking problem