Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey

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Pastor's Pulse

by Paul Leggett, Pastor

2010: A Year of Change and Transition

January 2010

“Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut.” – Revelation 3:8

Every year I try to suggest a theme verse for us as a congregation.  For 2010 I’d like to propose the above text.  We are going through a number of transitions and that will continue into this new year.  Our former Associate Pastor, the Rev. Brandi Wolf Drake, left last summer and we are in the stages of finding God’s replacement for her.  Soon we will have the opportunity to elect a pastoral nominating committee to begin the formal search for a new associate pastor.  Our Youth Director, Tim Osborne, is preparing for ordination as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  He will be looking for a pastoral call in this new year.

I have been attending a once-a-month seminar on “Re-Tooling Ministry” as part of my study leave.  During the course of these sessions, each led by a different leader, we have been continually reminded of the many changes in our culture, each of which impacts us as individual Christians and as a church in different ways.  Change is not easy, but too often it is inevitable.  One distinction we learned was the difference between change and transition.  Change refers to an external set of circumstances.  We often have little control over changes in our lives which can affect health, family, jobs and so forth.  Transition, however, refers to our internal response to change.  When we embrace change and seek to come to terms with it we are in transition.  When Christ says to the church of Philadelphia (not Pennsylvania), “I have set before you an open door,” he is acknowledging that the church will be facing change.  This is the image of going through a door.  However it is Christ who is bringing them to an open door.  The clear inference here is that this is not only change but opportunity.  He acknowledges that the church has “little power, but they have kept God’s Word.”  He calls them to “patient endurance.”  I believe the Lord is calling us to the same thing.

In the context of change there are always things that are different but, at the same time, there are values and priorities that remain the same.  The Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton has defined what they call “shifts in attendance.”  This is something that many churches, including ourselves, have seen.  Recently, our Seminary Intern, Candace Whitman, did a study of our 8:30 Sunday worship service.  She looked at attendance patterns over a ten-week period from the end of September to the end of November.  She found that the highest attendance was 57, the lowest was 32.  This came out to an average of 44.  However, then we together looked at the sign-in sheets to see how many individuals had signed in.  We know that not everyone chooses to sign in, since the Deacon’s total count is invariably higher than the number of signatures.  There were 102 different signatures over that ten week period.  Very conservatively there would then probably be at least 120 different people attending the service yet there was never more than 57 at any one service.  Given these kinds of fluctuations we are putting more emphasis on our web site.  We had fifteen new adult members last year and several others who expressed interest in joining the church.  Several of these first found our church on the website.  At the same time we acknowledge the need for face-to-face encounters in ministry and worship.

As we face both change and transition we need to remember that Jesus is the Lord who opens doors for us.  We remain committed to worship, to Bible study, to missions and to providing effective leadership for our youth.  As we start a new year we need to remember that we worship the One who declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).  Therefore we should be not only confident but joyful.