All Saints,

You decided. The Redevelopment Team will now be called the New Vision Team.

Here’s the final tally…

New Vision – 20 votes
Renewal – 11
Possibilities – 6
New Song – 4

                Total – 41

In the end, for the largest number of us, New Vision Team named best the purpose of the team and the hope we have for All Saints.

The New Vision Team has the same goal as the Redevelopment Team. All the effort we invested over the summer to define the Redevelopment Team’s role and purpose stands for the New Vision Team too. The New Vision Team’s goal is to help All Saints significantly expand its ministries of evangelism and making disciples.

Better Evangelism

Evangelism simply means telling people about Jesus. Each of us individually has a story to tell about Jesus in our life and in the world. All of us together as the congregation called All Saints have a story to tell too. So, expanding All Saints’ ministry of evangelism has two parts. Better evangelism is about finding our voices and discovering a vision.

1. Finding our voices. As we practice telling our stories about Jesus by telling them to each other, we prepare ourselves to tell others about Jesus too. When the opportunities arise, after we’ve listened to the other, when will know what to say to introduce them to the Jesus we know.
2. Discovering a vision. As we become clearer about All Saints’ God-given purpose, we do many things at once. We inspire and energize ourselves for our work together in Christ’s name. We also inspire and attract others through our boldness, making it easier to invite others to work with us. And finally we become able to measure the effectiveness of our efforts and to decide what we need to change so we might do even better what God wants us to do.

The New Vision Team’s Work

Next month (if the baby hasn’t come yet!), I’ll say more about the second part of the New Vision Team’s goal—making disciples. Now I’ll close by re-introducing the New Vision Team: Katey Krull, Mary Jo Plumadore, Tim Sampiller, Julie Schoville, and Pastor Clark. In addition to coordinating the Good Soil project and restarting the Stewardship Committee, the team is also now planning a trip to Seattle in August for another shot at training that everyone but Katey missed in February. You can read more about the Team and its priorities online—the covenant the congregation approved in October 2011 and a description of the Team’s priorities and timeline. Go to “About” and “Our Leaders.”

Thanks for your help, and thanks be to God!

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith

All Saints,

Last month, I asked, “When has this church been there for you when you needed it?”

And in my sermon on March 18, I said, “Every one of us has a song,” inviting you to tell a “Good Soil story” in worship after Easter—a two-minute story about how you have seen God plant goodness in your life and in the world. What you saw. What scripture verse it reminded you of. What it tells you about God.

This month, I’ll answer my own question from March and tell one of my Good Soil stories.

In high school, I needed a friend after I fell out with my very best friends. We had been inseparable since kindergarten and even earlier. When those best friends stopped talking to me and me to them, I also fell out with a dozen or so others, my whole circle of friends.

It was terrifying to find myself suddenly alone, at a time when fitting in was so important. But just then, the youth group at the Lutheran church in town befriended me.

I hadn’t grown up Lutheran, and by that time my family wasn’t attending any church. I was wary of the group at first, because one of my ex-friends had introduced me to it. But their welcome every other Sunday night was warm, and soon they started inviting me to hang out with them outside the church.

It was like Jesus’ parable about the shepherd finding the lost sheep. Jesus found me through that youth group. I felt so relieved and happy (and nervous!) to have friends again. At a deeper level, I felt peace hearing Jesus say heaven rejoiced over just one person being found. I had felt so rejected and then, to be welcomed again and more, to know heaven itself rejoiced because I had new friends… God wanted me and everyone else to have community. God could be trusted. Jesus is a friend.

Without those kids at church befriending me, those words from the bible probably would have rung false. Instead, because of them, they keep ringing true.

One of my goals as your pastor is to talk about Jesus and to invite you to talk about Jesus. So what’s your Good Soil story? It could be from the recent past or the distant past. About something big or something small. Your honest stories about Jesus are the most powerful ones.

Let me know, and we’ll find a time when you can share your two-minute Good Soil story in worship.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith

All Saints,

If you are reading this, you matter to this congregation.

Your prayers and gifts of time, effort, and money make a difference. People meet Jesus through All Saints’ ministries of worship, education, and service. That would not happen without you. God’s work is done with your hands. You are a blessing.

If you are reading this, this congregation matters to you.

In a way, it’s backwards to speak first of how you are a blessing, because this congregation exists not to be blessed but to be a blessing. I fear that, during this time of renewal, the message you hear is all about how you can help All Saints, and not at all about how All Saints can help you.

What are you hearing? I very much would like to know. Really. Drop me a line.

At redevelopment training in Houston, one of the presenters asked a question and invited us to talk about it in groups of two or three. The question relates to all of this—to All Saints mattering to you, and you to All Saints. When it was asked, it immediately struck me as a question I wanted to ask you:

When has this church been there for you when you needed it?

“This is about our heart,” the presenter said. He meant that in two ways: this question is about our heart and renewal in our congregations are about our hearts too. When has this church been there for you when you needed it?

We have been together almost a year. April 1, 2011—no joke—was my first official day as your pastor. And over these months, I tried to listen beneath your words and stories to your hearts. I’ve heard faith and conviction, doubt and fear, hope, disappointment, love, and pain. It’s been a turbulent year for our hearts—a turbulent year after many turbulent years.

It’s worth pausing to note that. Even as I hope and believe the worst is behind us, it’s worth remembering where we have been. In the psalms, lament gives way to hope. But without lament? Without recognizing what has been hard, what is hard now? Without lament, we get stuck. Our lament has to go all the way to the bottom. The deepest of the dark stories must be told and heard before it can be healed.

And, in psalm upon psalm, there are seeds of hope mixed in with the lament. It sounds like this: “God, it’s hard now, sometimes very hard, but we remember the wonders you worked in the past. Do new wonders now. Save us.” Even in a very short one, like Psalm 13, we can see this pattern.

The question is: Who is at work in this time and place? This congregation? Is it humans alone, or is it God? The question is: What do we remember? What memory of what God done already will sustain us until God does a new thing?

When has this church been there for you when you needed it?

If you are reading this, you matter to this congregation, and this congregation matters to you. Don’t forget why and especially don’t forget Who matters most.

Thank you, and thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith

All Saints,

My Good Soil group grew the other week. My friend and I invited a third friend to join us, because he was talking about wanting to be more intentional in his faith and friendships. We prayed about it one week, “God, is this who you’re inviting us to invite?” and a few days later, that very friend invited us both over on the very same night we had already planned to meet for Good Soil group. “Um, God, is that you?”

As of our January 9 kick-off, 35 people were reading Luke: eight confirmation students reading along in class, and 27 people in 11 Good Soil groups. Now it’s at least 38. Has your Good Soil group grown too? Are you reading along on your own?

Of course, the point of our Good Soil project is to focus on God, which means, paying attention to things we cannot measure. Sure, we will celebrate the stuff we can count. But there’s so much more God is doing—stuff that can’t be show in spreadsheets but only told in stories. Stories, like the ones we’re reading in Luke. Part of the joy and wonder of our Good Soil project is sharing those stories and inviting them.

Here are a few other Good Soil stories.

Tim is glad for the opportunity to read Luke and Acts. He said he’s always thought about reading the Bible and never did. But now, he’s reading along even though he doesn’t have a group yet.

Mary Jo noticed something going on in Luke, since the man, Zachariah, was silenced while the women, Mary and Elizabeth, spoke. “Luke must’ve been a woman,” she said.

The waitress at Village Inn called Anne, Barb, and Trista’s Good Soil group, “Chatty Cathy’s” because they spent so much time getting to know each other and telling their faith journeys.

Telling a story invites other stories. Before worship, tell a story from the past week, when your Good Soil group met. During coffee hour, ask, “How’s your Good Soil group going?” or “Any surprises in Luke this week?”  Tell a story, invite a story.

Our stories don’t have to be flashy, cute, or even particularly “spiritual.” God works in small and unassuming ways, and we may only realize it and what it means when we start sharing and inviting stories. When share and invite, the story changes. It becomes our story, not just my story. As we hear our story grow, we’ll discover connections, themes, surprises—experiences common and uncommon that point the way to God: what God is saying to us, what God is doing among us and in the world.

That’s where this Good Soil project is going. Immersing us in a common story—Luke and Act’s story, yes, but also All Saints’ story.  Unifying and catalyzing us around God’s story with us—who God is for us, what God’s purpose is for us, how we’re going to live it out together.

So I’m excited! I can’t wait to hear your Good Soil stories.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith