Pastor’s Pen: May 2025
In the fall of last year, guided by the Holy Spirit, New Journey’s council articulated a question for our community to consider, settle into, and wrestle with:
How is God guiding us, New Journey Lutheran Church, to navigate tension and polarization in our communities without being co-opted into bitter division, but to build a more trustworthy and loving society?
To be sure: this question does not permit easy answers, quick fixes or can be solved with a 5 year stratetic plan. It’s a question that requires deep self-reflection on our identities as followers of Jesus. It’s a question that asks us to be learners and listeners for the Spirit’s activity in and around us through spiritual practices, study, and communal discernment. It’s a question that takes seriously Jesus’ call to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute.” (Matthew 5:44) Even when we really don’t want to.
Our community has lived into this question in a number of ways this year. In February, we read and discussed the book I Think You’re Wrong, But I’m Listening: A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations. The season of Lent invited us to engage supposed dichotomies like stranger & neighbor, faith & works, mercy & righteousness, and release dualistic thinking in favor of nuanced theological perspectives. Our Sunday Prayer of Discernment invites us to put God at the center of our lives while asking God to “ Guide us continually, make our bones strong, and help us become repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in…”
As a preacher of the gospel, the politics of division deeply impact me, too. The weight of division and bitterness in our communities and in churches is heavy. To support my development as a preacher responsive to the culture around us and to support our community in responding to our articulated question, I am traveling to Altanta, Georgia May 12-15 to attend the Festival of Homiletics, a conference centered on preaching, worship and culture.
Thousands of preachers from across denominations, ages, races, genders, and sexual orientations will gather at this preaching conference under the theme: “Preaching to Heal the Divide.” Pretty timely, huh? The aim of the festival is to offer preachers practical tools, theological frameworks, and spiritual nourishment for proclaiming the Gospel and supporting the communities we are called to serve as we all navigate deeply divided times.
Together, in the good company of the Holy Spirit, fellow preachers, and premier theologians and speakers, I am eager to go to this conference and listen for the ways God is calling me to speak into our cultural moment with the truth and love of the Gospel.
Beloved servants of the Gospel, I invite your prayers for traveling mercies, saturation of wisdom and learning, and the courage to bring this wisdom and learning home to share with you from the pulpit.
Thank you, church, for your prayers and support. Together, by God’s grace, we are building a more loving and trustworthy society.
In fervent hope for a healed and whole world,
Pastor Beth