" Keep changing. When you?re through changing, you?re through. " These are the words of Bruce Fairchild Barton who was an advertising executive, author, and a United States Representative. I think them to be wise words. I also think them to be some of the most difficult words. Change is a hard friend to make, especially in the church.

You realize, of course, that change is the course we have chosen to run through the Touch the Future program. Every single item brought forward in the discussion of the task force and the work of the sub - committees is an agent of change. We are beginning a journey of faith that will cause us to look differently, both in the composite picture of our congregation and the physical plant we use to serve God and the community. Then, as we take a look at what we look like, chances are that our attitudes and actions toward each other will change.

This kind of change is not new to this congregation. I have carried on conversations with many of you about how this building used to be here, or this was built in 19 whenever, or this family has been members here since before Moses while this family is relatively new. And, I didn?t know until just this past week that our name has not always been the same. The history of the Elliottsville congregation is rich with change. Changes made not just for the sake of changing but for the sake of increasing awareness in the community and enabling more ministry.

I believe we are about to embark on another era of change in our history. I, for one, am excited about what God is calling us to do. Maybe it is that God continues to faithfully bless and embrace with change the people who aren?t afraid of that kind of relationship with God. We should never forget that at the heart of what Jesus called people to do was to embrace, not a new faith or a new religion, but a new way of bringing to completion and fulfillment what God had begun.

We are disciples of that new covenant in which love leads, hope grows, disciples are nurtured and taught that the way of God is to accept, forgive, and minister with compassion and concern. And, I don?t know how you can do all of that, be all of that, without being open to, submitting yourself to the activity of God?s Spirit which is an agent of change.

God is not through revealing God?s plan to us. We are not through discerning God?s desire and God?s activity. When those two facts are put together, safe to say, we aren?t through being changed and changing into who God will have us be.

Grace and peace,