May 3, 2009

Dear Friends and Members:

As we look back over the last year, we can see that we have remained committed to our mission to preach the gospel, celebrate the sacraments, and to minister with and among the poor. Our work in this world finds – and must find --its end in God. Our mission arises from the depth of the historic witness of the church catholic, grounded in God’s own revelation in Christ as witnessed to in the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit. We are a pilgrim people, moving through this world from God, through God, and to God.

God has continued to surprise us, to stretch us, to see if God may make us adequate to our task amid the “Great Recession” that has struck the world. Who could have anticipated that God would call upon us to distribute 60-70 tons of food and supplies a month to persons and families in need, up to over 1700 a week? Who could have imagined that tent cities would form outside the Salvation Army downtown, and that we would find new friends there? Who could have expected that a Swahili language congregation would emerge among us from the violence of the Congo? Who could have guessed that donated fiberglass reinforced concrete would emerge amid the parking lot, broken from the weight of the trucks moving across it?
Of course, such work has not “just happened” nor has it left any of us who have become immersed in the work unchanged. It reminds me that some Christian leaders have argued that the future of the church amid a progressively secularizing world – and church – will be found in “creative minorities”. Creativity has become a necessity – how else can one unload two ton containers without a working lift on the truck? The church board has not only overseen and supported the mission of the church, but has been personally involved in its hands on work. Bryan Poole, followed by Samantha From, as graduate interns have overseen the food distributions with grace, resolve, and wisdom without any compensation and at personal cost. Cody Ellis has overseen our Thursday distribution as a student intern with stature and wisdom. Jon Manning has taken over the San Diego Coalition for the Homeless’s “First Friday” distribution, working with and through and past government bureaucracy to change the tone and witness of this gathering of the neighborhood. Pastor Deron has become the “mortar” of the bricks of the work that has taken place in and through this place; the figurative air in the tires of the refrigerated truck as it loads and unloads the goods for distribution. We all owe Deron our thanks and support for his work with all the other congregational and multicongregation responsibilities that he bears. Pastor Kathy has remained profoundly faithful in her work, often unseen except in cyber communications that provide the organizational basis for our life together. Pastor Shawn, amid an at times grueling educational process, remains a blessing and uplift to us all merely by his presence. Eric Dorris has tracked our finances with integrity as God takes our loaves and fishes and multiplies them in ways that we often cannot understand.

This is not to say that challenges do not await us, or that we don’t need to exercise deeper care in certain areas of our mission. If we are creative, we are also very much a minority, not merely as Christians, but even among Christians in the focus of our task. We must remember that we are a minority, and continue to develop the creativity that comes with such status and sustain our unity. We cannot forget to call persons to join us through repentance and faith in God through Christ. As a pilgrim people, persons move continually through us at multiple levels of involvement. We cannot discount the importance that our fundamental existence and practices are institutional -- instituted by Jesus Christ through his institution of the church. We remain in an institutional flux that has often characterized our life as people move in, through, and beyond the congregation, both with greater demands upon us. We live in a culture that distrusts the church as an institution without thinking through the implications of that distrust for particular congregations. We need to encourage each other to move from exposure to our worship and practices to active participation to ownership of the way-station as part of our vowed community of care. Too often too much falls back upon Pastor Deron to ensure that we sustain our credibility to the neighborhood and others who have come to trust us. Reliability and constancy are necessary to sustain our witness to the world. We count on each other.
We need to renew our commitment to bible studies for our continual formation in the faith and mutual support, prayer, and love for each other – and to keep our end in God and life everlasting in God. Within a culture that exalts “personal freedom of choice and expression,” it seems demanding for commitment to both works of devotion and works of mercy – but we cannot have one without the other, nor can individuals decide which one they think most important for their own lives. Both are necessary to sustain our commitment as a pilgrim people vowed to care for this pilgrimage way-station over time, and to have God make us holy as individuals and a people in the process.

Finally financial constraints weigh at us. Perhaps I am not very good at begging, and you join me in the lack of this skill. After three months we have only begun to approach $3000 of the $9000 we need to replace the broken lift on the truck with one more adequate to the loads our work demands. We have somehow functioned this year with income nearly 25% below our budget – a budget that was based on the previous year’s income. Again we have learned to be creative to compensate for our lack of funding. God has blessed us in our poverty, and perhaps God will always keep us poor. The board has consistently committed our common good to the common mission of the church. The more that we have, the more we can give away to the poor in our congregation, in our multicongregation, in our neighborhood, and in our world.
What does the future hold? God knows. Perhaps it is deeper, more sustained presence downtown with the destitute, those that Dorothy Day called “the unworthy poor.” Perhaps it is with Pastor Anthony of the French-Speaking congregation finding ways to celebrate our unity with our sister congregations in Haiti. Perhaps it is in the formation of a vital multicongregational youth group that reaches into the teenagers of the neighborhood. Perhaps it is working across too long divided Reformation lines, finding a shared faith in Jesus Christ and practices with others that we had too long dismissed. Perhaps it is in finding ways to oversee the sick more effectively, both within our own congregation and others deprived of such care. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be a surprise, for we have seen recently that God is a God of surprises – joyfully consistent with God’s revelation in times past!

Let us not grow weary of doing good. Let us continue and deepen our faith, hope, and love to God in Christ in our work in the congregation. Let us let the God of peace sanctify us holy that we might be found blameless in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is the One who calls us – He will do it!

Respectfully Submitted,

Rev. Dr. John W. Wright
Senior Pastor, English-Speaking Congregation
The Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City