Dear Friends in Christ,
Sunday is the Grace Church Annual Meeting. During the meeting, we’ll listen to reports and
elect a new vestry. The tasks together are what’s known as “church governance.” It’s not the
most exciting of terms.
So I want to suggest a different one.
Our annual meeting is not simply a time of decision making. It is a time of identity formation.
When we gather together on Sunday, we will be discerning collectively where the Holy Spirit is
working among us and making choices about who we want to be in response.
These may sound like lofty aspirations for sitting in front of a Zoom screen with a hundred little
squares in front of you. And yet this is how our collective identity is made and chosen: showing
up for and with one another, often in very mundane ways.
As the staff prepared for the annual report and annual meeting, we talked about what theme
might help us focus on the year. Picking up on the gospel reading of last Sunday, we worked
with “Good News: Release, Recovery, and Liberty.” It sounds, again, aspirational for this
moment when we are still seeking all of those things.
But part of our hope as Christians is that we can choose the kind of people we want to be. We
believe that God promises us the recovery of community and the freedom of the future.
All the information about the meeting is found in the Good News@Grace. Be sure and register
ahead of time to vote at http://bit.ly/gracevoter. I hope you will show up on Sunday, and help
us together become the people God is calling us to be.
Yours in Christ,
Anne+