Thoughts from Pastor John

It wasn’t planned that way, but the Christmas Eve Service began early in 2008. A small group of us joined Rebecca, Don Long’s daughter at his bedside at the Kaiser Rehab Center in San Leandro. We knew that Don was on the edge of life and had come back from near death several times in the proceeding weeks. We sang Christmas Carols together. Don joined in with gusto. It seems as though that set the tone for 2009 
Just as he had done, in defiance of doctors’ predictions that he might not make to Thanksgiving, Don made it through Christmas and New Year’s Day. He left us on January 23rd.  That mix of joy and loss, of resilience and resignation, woven together in laughter and tears reflected the coming year. 

We were overjoyed in spring that Amy Rickard stepped in to take on the position of Director of Christian Ed and Program Development. We also came to realize very quickly that the position depended on congregational commitment to change. This has been a challenge. It has meant coming to terms with moving out of the box of doing what we’ve always done, expecting folks to join US. It has meant seeing the limitations of living on a legacy and made clear the need to be driven by a vision. Most glaringly we are beginning to realize the importance of sharing with people who we are, what we stand for, and even what we believe, and realizing that our future depends on the disruption of their arrival. 

Most of the new programs are aimed at empowering the congregation to do just that. The new midweek “The Message” worship service is geared for informal and creative expressions of worship and interactive participation that sparks conversation and discovery about faith and how it impacts the issues in our lives. The Thursday evening Study Group at Betty’s house has fluctuated in numbers. A core group has evolved. DVDs and readings inspire discussions on developing understandings of the Old Testament, the development of the New Testament, the origins of monotheism and sacred texts. These discussions have been intense and enlightening..  

These study groups and discussions, including Interlog have deepened because of the inquiring minds of folks who have found their way to Westminster Hills in the last year. That they found their own way here begs the question, are we committed to supporting and promoting the change and new programming in ways that will result in the growth that we so desperately need? 

Of great significance in the past year was Karen Fokken becoming a member of the Committee on Preparation for Ministry and Karen Merris joining the Presbytery Committee on Ministry. I will be joining her on COM this year. This congregation is now represented and present in the life and workings of our Presbytery. Now the struggles within our Denomination to be a people of God’s grace, compassion, and justice has landed at our doorstep and the challenge to be more proactive in, and I’m going to use the word here, evangelizing is magnified.  

I have accepted the position of Board Secretary of the Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association. I write this having just returned from the annual PHEWA Board meeting and Leadership Event. I return even more convinced that a major reason for accepting the position was my growing sense of urgency that the story of  faith expressed in commitment to community and justice over the past years at Westminster Hills needs to be told.

And Westminster Hills needs to be rejuvenated, challenged and galvanized by understanding its place in mix of the larger Church, or risk becoming an isolated relic. 

The preciousness of the concept of being a part of a Family of Faith beyond the confines of a defined congregation or the walls of our church building touched us in the deepest ways when our brother Rev. Lee Williamson died in July. We lost a prophet, a teacher, an activist for God’s inclusive love and justice. It felt as if a piece of the body had died. And it did. Amy and I felt his absence and the growing newness of a deeper presence as we journeyed with two members of the South Hayward Parish to the vigil and protest at the School of the Americas in Georgia. We felt it as we began realizing how many of our annual activities had depended and been defined by his presence. Sister and brother clergy feel it every time we need a wise and compassionate elder brother. And I feel it every time I hear a good joke that begs his laughter. The congregations of the South Hayward Parish, the community, God’s Church, and people of Peace workers for justice are still recovering from the loss. I/we will, and we must regenerate with a new found strength that expresses gratitude for having grown in faith and understanding because of how God so clearly touched us through Lee. 

The urgency of rejuvenation, the growing importance of understanding the significance of being a body of people who bring a concept of resurrection out of the stifling confines of theological requirement into the reality of life clarifies. We realize that the windfall of proceeds from the sale of one of our lots a couple of years ago will run out before the end of this year. We see a graying congregation reaching out for new life and new lives. We rise from grieving the loss of significant people and look around at who has arrived among us and those who seem to have always been. And we remember Annie Dillard’s, poem introduced to us by Lee, and used often in our vigils and worship services:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in
this holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send,
nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in
the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the
notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent
fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our
children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed,
yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and
grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and
involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been.   
(No One But Us—Annie Dillard )

We can be empowered by a faith tradition going back to a small group of women who gathered at an empty tomb, an anxious group of disciples disrupted by an unwanted trip to Jerusalem, an exiled people forced to come to terms with who they were in the absence of familiar symbols, wandering refugees becoming community of liberation in an encounter with a Just God. Now let us join them, claiming once again, crisis gives birth to renewed faith and clear vision and rejuvenated engagement in
discipleship. 
 
We are blessed...
John