Wednesday, July 23, 2025

New Beginnings

When my father turned sixty, he told me, “Well, here goes my trip into my seventh 
decade.” I said, “Pop, you’re sixty, not seventy.” He said, “I’ve completed six decades. I’m STARTING my seventh. Correct?” I had to agree, though I thought it put a damper on his birthday. He found it humorous.

 

Now that I am traveling into my seventh decade, it’s given me time to reflect on who I am, what God created me to be, and what I am called to do in this season. The only way to arrive at any answer to these questions is to pray. Not just a one- or two-time prayer full of wants and desires and things that we want God to give us, but constant prayer.


Believing that the best definition of prayer is “communicating with God,” that means

listening a lot more than talking. We shouldn’t want to interrupt the Almighty. In the midst of listening to God, I have become very aware that my clock is running. In this season of my life, it seems to be that God wants me to finish well. While God is never done with us – even in our last breath – I know that my best years are fewer in number than ever before, and I want to be useful.

 

Sixty years, nearly forty of it in pastoral ministry, has taught me that listening is also a

tool for the work of the Church. As I have begun listening and asking the occasional

question or two, this much I know: Covington First UMC is a great church with great people, who loves its God and its community. I also know that the past ten or so years have been tough. Death, tragedy, sadness, and upheaval have been challenging to our psyches and our souls. As I listen to you and to God, my work here seems clear: to be a healer, a shepherd, and an encourager.

 

I read several of the late Eugene Peterson’s books when I graduated from seminary. In one of them, he repeated the words of John Calvin regarding the human heart: left to our own motives, we allow our hearts to produce idols, not faith… and that allows congregations to make pastors a “quality-control engineer” of their church.

 

That’s not me.

 

So, I want to take seriously the roles of being a healer, a shepherd, and an encourager.

My hope is that by getting to know you, living among you, and learning and listening more about Covington and its people I may do those things, and do them well! Feel free to contact me if you’d like to meet sometime, whether it be about church or faith matters, or simply to get to know me better. That will help me do my work better. You can call the church office to get my phone number so you can call or text me.


May the peace and love of Jesus Christ be with us all!


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