A Letter from Pastor Derek - February

Following and Leading

It’s February.  Nothing quite special about that usually.  After the run of celebrations from Thanksgiving, Christmas and then New Years, February is kinda blah.  Kind of just there.  Cold and gray and just there.  Oh sure, there’s a Super Bowl now.  And they try to make President’s Day a thing (and who decided we celebrate great presidents by buying a new mattress?).  But really, it’s just there.  Yeah, I was born in February, and so I had a chip on my shoulder about February’s reputation.  But what is there to get excited about in February?

Well, everything!  Life, faith, church, community, discipleship, you name it.  We live in excitement.  Really.  Or we could.  Better than living in fear, or despair, or anger.  There’s a lot of that these days.  Maybe you’ve noticed.  Or maybe you’ve sworn off social media because it’s become too toxic. 

I’ve been tempted to quit reading posts online.  Especially the pages about my church.  Our church.  The United Methodist Church.  February is the month where our special called General Conference is happening.  February 23 through 26, delegates will be gathering in St. Louis to help determine a way forward as a denomination.  I’m calling for prayers for this whole event.  For the delegates, for wisdom from God, for the proceedings, everything.  If you don’t know what is going on with this ask me.  I don’t want to run over it all again here.  The short response is we’re trying to decide if we can still live together with differences of opinion.

People ask me what is going to happen.  The truthful answer is I have no idea.  Could be major shifts, could be nothing of substance.  We could be asked to make some significant decisions about who we are and how we practice our faith, or we might be just the same after this meeting as we were before.  I don’t really know and won’t hazard a guess at this point.

 What I do know is that we will still be following Jesus on February 27th and beyond.  We will still be the church seeking to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  We will worship and we will study, we will fellowship and we will love our God and love our neighbor as ourselves.  That is what we have always been about and what we will be about going forward. 

And we need to follow and we need to lead to make this happen.  Just like sometimes I will lead and sometimes I will follow.  We are all followers and we are all leaders.  That’s what Ministry Discovery is about, discerning where God wants you to lead, and following that call each and every day.  Southport is blessed with leaders in lots of different ministries and activities in the church.  I hope over time to give them all a voice and a platform to invite others to join with them in mission and service. 

There is one group that I want to bring to the attention of all the church, and that is the Leadership Team.  We have a pretty simple organizational structure here at SUMC.  Besides the staff and volunteer leaders of various ministries, the Leadership Team is charged with oversight over the whole organizational structure and mission of the church.  A lot of what they do is behind the scenes, so many don’t even know them.  I want to change that.  And one way of doing that is by giving them a regular slot in our monthly newsletter.  (We’ll come up with a catchy title for this soon!  Any ideas?) 

But let me start with a word from the new chairperson of the Leadership Team, Peggy Boyll.  Here is her word to you, the members and friends of Southport UMC.  I am blessed to work with them in leading this church, and invite you to share in the blessing!  And invite you to keep them in prayer as they seek to do God’s will among us.  Shalom, Pastor Derek.