Feeling Passionate
As we at First Evangelical Lutheran Church seek to more clearly define our place in North Platte, I would suggest the above quote as helpful for moving us to some deeper thinking on the subject. I particularly like this quote because after reminding us that this is not our mission and our work but rather God’s work that we engage in, it presents us with some good news. That news is this: Following God’s call does not require us to drag ourselves out of bed every morning to go and do something that we find burdensome and that we hate every minute of. Following God’s call, rightly done, involves doing something that we enjoy, that indeed, fills us with joy, and in general gives us more life than it takes from us. Then, and this is important, it directs us out into the world where we take that thing that is already life giving to us and we give life to the world through it.
The following shows some of the passions that were named at our visioning day.
To be clear, following our passions is not always easy. You can probably think of some things that give you joy, but there are times when something doesn’t turn out. There are times when you have to increase your skill level and the learning curve is more challenging than you would prefer. There are those times when you just have to set things down, walk away and come back tomorrow. However, you keep coming back, because that thing you come back to fills you up. My hands have quite the collection of scars, they are often bruised, and sometimes swelled from being overworked. I have made some pretty expensive fire wood in my days, my kids probably shouldn’t listen in when I do plumbing, and the front door of my house (which is beautiful and fits perfectly) nearly needed a new window in it as I was tempted on multiple occasions to put a hammer through it while hanging it. BUT, I continue to engage in wood working, and home improvement, and gaining new skills because it’s a passion of mine, something that has always called to me and goes beyond aches and pains and frustrations to give me and those around me a home to live in and not just a house.
As a church, we have passions as well. As shown above, we listed a number of passions at our visioning day. I’d like to invite you to do two things with this list. First, add to it. What other ministries or tasks do you see people being passionate about around First Lutheran? Second, do some work to condense this list into a few broad categories.
For instance, I would add, knitting and crocheting to the list. I would add, Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, and I would say the prayer classes I’ve held recently have been well received. I would add, the harvest dinner, funeral dinners, Lenten meals, and other meals as well. All of these have some passion around them by a good number of people within the church.
I’d also then condense some of these categories so they are a little more general. I’d lump the sewing, knitting, and crocheting into the category of “crafting”. I’d put food pantry and meals into “feeding ministries”, things like building upkeep and classic cars into “restoration work”, and many things into the category of “learning.” The purpose of this not to muddy the waters but to make it a little clearer what drives are at work behind the passions. In the end, this can help us be a little more flexible and a little more open to things we haven’t done before when it comes to looking at how we can use our passions in meeting the needs of the world. We’ll get to that work soon enough but for now, let us know what passions you see active and what broader categories you see, by dropping a comment below.
