Among the greatest lines from Tennessee Williams is this one: 'The future is called perhaps.'
What lies ahead for Holy Trinity? What is God calling us as a congregation to be about? The answers are at the heart of what the Vision Committee is about. But its not the Vision Committee that provides the answers to those questions. Ifs the congregation, you the people of Holy Trinity that together need to discern what we believe God would have us be about as we seek to carry on Christ's work in this community.
Some of us think about Holy Trinity's future the way we think about marketing---living in the conviction that if we advertise, have a good product (i.e. the right pastor) and invest our energy in recruitment, we can continue to grow and Holy Trinity's place in the future will be assured.
Still others of us think about Holy Trinity's future the way my old neighbor thought about investments---don't taken any risks, because you might end up losing. (Sadly, he didn't end up winning either, and when he died, his once considerable nest egg was pretty depleted.)
We can learn another way to think about Holy Trinity's future from Abraham, who heard those fateful words from God: "Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you." Abraham went, he overcame his fears, and he was willing to make a new beginning even at his advanced age." "Give us faith to go out with good courage", we pray, "not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us." Every time I pray that prayer, I think of Abraham. It's one of my favorite prayers and can be found at the close of the service of Evening Prayer in our Lutheran Book of Worship. Holy Trinity's future is clear in the mind of God, but none of us knows it yet. And like Abraham, we can only move out in faith that God is leading us. The process the Vision Committee is leading us into is based on the premise that all of us are in a relationship with a God who is ever more ready to communicate with us than we are to listen.
It is a process that seeks to discern God's will for our parish. At the very heart of the Christian faith lies one fundamental question: How can we understand and live the will of God? This desire, this longing to seek to do God's will, is what will be our focus as a parish this summer as we prepare to call a pastor. We can never be sure that we have truly and fully comprehended God will, but we can make it our prayer and then trust that the Holy Spirit will lead.
PTL (Paul Lindstrom)