I was excited to feel how easily the wheels glided as I pulled one of our new carts of Fellowship Hall chairs down the hall to provide additional seats in the Sanctuary. With three baptisms this past Sunday, we knew our attendance would be boosted by extended members of two families. Our number ended up exceeding our previous baptism by 30 people - well beyond the number of family members present. There is a momentum here that goes well beyond this Sunday.
As I looked out over the full room, I found several faces I didn’t recognize or only recognized vaguely. Maybe they were visiting for the first time, or maybe they had only come a few times and I hadn’t gotten to know their faces yet. Maybe they’ve been with us online for a long time and this is the first time they’ve been in our building. Sometimes Pastor Lowell gets to know people who have found us through social media and I don’t meet them until they are in the building for the first time.
Besides making sure they all had comfy chairs (I’m really glad no one has to sit on the folding metal ones anymore), as the music director one of the only other things I can do from my place at the piano is make the music as spiritually fulfilling as possible. I felt good about all of our music selections, and at the end of the Baptism liturgy, we sang “Light of the World” as Lowell introduced our new brother and sisters to the congregation. As Cara wrote in a previous blog, it is a song that reminds us that we’re called to “shine where we are” as we go out into the world each week. Since I knew some of our guests were from the Roman Catholic tradition, as our communion assistants helped welcome everyone to the table for Eucharist, I chose two songs I knew any Catholic would recognize, One Bread, One Body, and Come to the Water, with an additional refrain of “I will run to you.”
As I look into 170 faces on a joyful Sunday morning, I know I’m looking into the face of Jesus. They are here shining their light not just from where they are physically, but also from wherever they are on their spiritual or emotional journey. I want to run to them in greeting, to meet them in their joy, in their grief, in their questioning.
As we live into our call to shine our light in the world, we all have different ways we can run to meet people on the path. We do it when we greet people at church, help them find a seat, pass the peace, bring the scripture and prayers to life by reading them aloud, assist with communion, lead or participate in a Bible study or small group, volunteer during one of our outreach opportunities, or provide a quiet presence that someone else finds to be a safe space.
This weekend at least nine new families will participate in our Discover LOL class to learn a little bit more about the light they’ve seen us shine in the world. In the coming weeks, we’ll have photos and bios of the people who have decided to call Lord of Life their church home, and I hope you’ll run to them in welcome. Soon, our new building will begin to shine a new light in the community, and I expect we’ll see more new faces who are drawn to us either out of curiosity or in need of their own place to call home. I hope you’ll run to meet them, too.
Running to meet you,
John Johns, Music DIrector