Happy 2025 everyone! I hope this article finds you happy, healthy, and well as we move into this brand new year of our life together with God and one another.
As I look back on 2024, I see so many blessings that God has showered onto us all in personal and communal ways. I see all the blessings we have shared with people near and far to tell the Good News of Christ is action and deed. As I hear folks say here often, “I’m blessed to be a blessing.”
As we move into 2025, let’s keep this same energy and focus up on doing Christ’s work. But this year, let’s not just focus on sharing the Good News of Jesus in action…but also in word.
As you’ll see in my Pastoral Vision for 2025, Presbyterians are great at what is known as “deed” ministry: doing, collecting, sending. Where we really fall short is in what is called “word” ministry: sharing the Gospel of Christ with others.
Many feel overwhelmed by this task. Others feel far too unprepared for it. And still some others believe this is a task left only to ministers. All of these things couldn’t be further from the truth.
Sharing the Good News of Jesus is not some succinct sales pitch. You don’t have to get the words right or the theology precisely. Simply: tell your own story of how Christ has impacted you. Show how Christ has made a difference in your life. Explain times you’ve seen a very active Christ at work in the world. Share something personal…and the Gospel will be heard.
To help spur us all on, I’ve asked a small group of anonymous volunteers to share a brief story of their faith with us all each month in the newsletter. They will share their thoughts and reflections on a time or season when they’ve truly been able to share the Good News; when they first heard it; or how they’ve been able to see the Scripture come alive in their own life.
These authors are asked to remain anonymous so that we don’t pat someone on the back and give them adulation. Instead, we should celebrate the action of God the Holy Spirit who has overwhelming been present and active in all of the stories you will read this year.
Use those stories as a launching pad to help you think of how you too can share this Good News with others. You’ll be surprised by the stories…they’re people just like you because they are you. These stories will come from people with whom you worship, sing with, attend Sunday School with, share in fellowship with. They’re nothing extraordinary: they’re just as common as you and me. But the stories they will share will show God at work…and that’s a gift unto itself.
I hope you will read and treasure these words each month and be able to use them to spur on your own faith and confidence to share in God’s Good New