Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

It has been a long time since I have written to you here. I have no excuse except to say I am sorry, and I will strive to make this a monthly article, like it was supposed to be when I first came.

There is a lot I could write about, and I suppose the topic will change each month. It will depend on what is going on in the life of the church and my own life, as well. I hope that through it, we will stay in good communication and you will have a deeper understanding of who I am as a pastor and what our dreams are for the church, both Holy Trinity and the larger Church (with a capital “C”).

To start off with, I would like to reiterate some of the things I said at the closing of the Annual Meeting from this past Sunday. I began by explaining why Joan Bauer was stepping down from council. Simply put, there was so much in life going on that she had to say “no” to something in order to be able to breathe a little easier.

As I said on Sunday, that is important advice for all of us, both individually and collectively. You (We) don’t have to say “yes” to everything, even if it is a good thing. Sometimes we have to be able to say “no” in order to be able to say “yes” later on. Those are difficult decisions. We have a lot of opportunities in our life to do a lot of good things, but time is not limitless and neither is our energy. As I always preface anytime that I ask someone to do something at church, “No is an acceptable answer.”

As we move forward into the future of Holy Trinity, we will have some decisions to make. The world is changing around us and we will have to change accordingly. We will have to try some new things and say goodbye and thanks to some ministries that we have done in the past. We will get excited about the possibilities that we want to try but we will have to say, “No, this isn’t the right time for us.”

As we do this as a church and as you do it in your personal life, please know that I give thanks for you and the Church (both the capital “C” church and Holy Trinity).

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Tim