Something happened yesterday that I don’t want to let pass without naming it.
Following worship — worship where we sat together in the upper room with Jesus and his disciples, in that charged space between Ascension and Pentecost, between what has been and what is coming — a group of Emmanuel members stayed. They gathered around a table. And we began something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time:
We held our first meeting of Emmanuel’s strategic visioning process.
If this is the first you’re hearing about it, I owe you a small apology — and a promise. Our Congregation Council set out to begin this work at the end of 2025, and it’s simply taken longer than we anticipated to get started. They took care in selecting ten people from across our ministry to serve on this task force — eleven, including me — and yesterday, we finally gathered. We’re excited to share more specifically in the coming week, and you’ll be hearing from us regularly over the next several months. But I didn’t want another day to pass without saying: it has begun, and it is good.
Maybe the wait was okay. Because around that table yesterday, there was both excitement and truth-telling. We shared honestly about the realities facing our congregation, the greater church, and our society. We weren’t complaining — we were just being honest with ourselves. And there’s something clarifying about that kind of honesty among people who care.
Emmanuel Lutheran Church has been here for 118 years — since 1908. The world is different than it was then. High Point is different. We are different. But what remains the same is our God, God’s love, and the calling to be the church right here, in this place, at this time. That is the goal of this process — not to preserve the past for its own sake, but to faithfully discern what it means to be Emmanuel now, and in the years ahead.
And if yesterday’s meeting is any indicator, I think it’s going to be an exciting process. Uncertain, yes — but as I reflected in yesterday’s sermon, the church itself was not born in certainty. It was born in the gap, held in prayer, before the disciples even knew what was coming. Faithfulness doesn’t wait for resolution. Discipleship happens in the meantime.
We are already there. And we are not alone.
Watch for more from the Congregation Council soon — we’ll be sharing more about the process itself and the many ways there may be to participate.