This is an excerpt of an address I made to the Administrative Board last Sunday. Want the full text? E-mail me.

As of last Sunday, John and I have been your pastors for seven weeks. The instant we stepped foot on the place, we began to be asked, “What is your vision for First Church?” The simplest statement I can make about our personal vision is this: Our vision is to increase the vitality of First Church. In order to increase the vitality of First Church, we see two broad goals that will need to be pursued right away. These goals are shaped both by long years of serving as pastors in a variety of settings and by our seven weeks here.

The first goal will be to change the culture of our life together from “We’re fine just the way we are,” to “Who’s missing that we need to be serving through our ministries?” The second will be to deepen and broaden the discipleship of everyone who is part or becomes part of our faith community.

Both the vision and these two goals have been influenced by the observing and listening we’ve done in the last seven weeks. So, what have I learned so far? Here’s my list.

Top Ten List of What I’ve Learned this Summer @ First Church

10. First Church is a national church. Since January, we have had 494 out of town guests in worship. The majority of those guests have come from out of state. When they attend worship, they seem to be aware that they are coming to a significant church in an important city, and some expect us to give them advice about their home church situations.

9. First Church has a LOT of visitors in worship on Sunday mornings. Out of 884 total guests so far this year, about a fourth are locals who give us follow-up information. However, repeat visits from those local first-timers are too rare. This summer we’ve had about a fifty percent rate of return which is encouraging.

8. First Church is an inter-generational church. Pay no attention to those who would say we are a dying church. We may be declining, but we are not dying. A dying church would not have the number of young families and young children we do. (The Honeymooners have given the church 50+ babies in recent years with more on the way.) In membership, about 42% of the folks on the rolls are between 21 and 50. Yes, we also have our share of older adults. Praise God!

7. First Church may have lost its sense of connection and of being a leader in the Austin District and Southwest Texas Annual Conference. In no context have I heard any expression of pride about being part of the connection or any sense of being a church that leads others in the connection, and that has surprised me.

6. First Church has some financial struggles. Have ya’ll heard that?

5. First Church is blessed with amazing generosity. To name a few recent gifts: pledges fulfilled for the Bridge to the Future Campaign which for many families was giving beyond usual giving to the operational expenses; a bequest that will both enlarge the endowment fund and provide some reserves for operational expense; a gift that pays off the church’s pledge of $50,000 to the Conference capital campaign to start new churches. Only about $4,300 had been paid towards this amount which will go directly to benefit the Journey UMC pastored by Rev. Kyle Toomire.

4. First Church has facility issues. Have ya’ll heard this? (I’m threatening to move Administrative Board to Wesley Hall next month.) We need to start looking at our facilities with the eyes of folks who are strangers to the place and don’t love them as dearly as we do. What do they see?

3. First Church may be too focused on minutiae as a way to avoid looking at big issues and big questions. By far the e-mails I have received and the conversations I have had have focused on details about the functioning of our corporate life rather than on our common spiritual life and how it gets played out in mission and ministry. Some weeks I have felt like I was drowning in petty complaints and went to bed wondering if the next day would just bring more. Sometimes, I have wondered if I was serving a small church or a large church.

2. First Church is strong in missions, both in hands-on ministries and in generous giving. Yesterday, in the Resource Management Team, we got a glimpse of figures that represent what is raised outside the budget for missions—a low estimate might be $150,000 not counting gifts in kind which would shoot this figure higher if we had a way to track that. Being strong in missions like this is a sign of generosity, but more importantly represents spiritual health and maturity.

1. First Church is blessed with location, location, location. First Church draws folks from far, far away to our downtown location. We serve not only the city of Austin, but surrounding communities.
With greater Austin’s phenomenal growth in the past few years, this church has continued to widen the boundaries of where our members live. Astounding! The curse paired with this blessing is that it is harder to get folks back after Sunday to ministries that would deepen their discipleship.
First Church now has a huge downtown residential community. We have a neighborhood! However, we aren’t clear yet how to serve it. Case in point: we’re across the street from Westgate, and we don’t even have a strong presence there.

First Church sits across from the state capital, and that’s how a lot of folks find us. Of course, they may think we are a courthouse, a public library, a government building. But our location reminds us that we have a special responsibility to have give voice to matters of social concern. And no matter what our politics, it should be a matter of pride to sit where we sit! Amen?

A Summer Respite

Last week, John and I spent a lot of time walking with our daughter and son-in-law, Rachel and Richard, and their son, Jack, in beautiful forest areas in the Seattle environs. We had been recruited for this week away some time ago when our kids knew they wanted to attend a wedding in the city on the weekend, and they assumed it would help if Jack had some built-in babysitters. Since John was having his 59th birthday that weekend, and our 34th wedding anniversary was the following weekend, we thought it was a good way to celebrate those occasions, too.

To be honest, I had agonized in April about whether or not it was wise to accept this invitation when we knew we would be coming new to this church only six weeks previous to the trip. The SPRC was consulted about this request and generously consented to this week away in the middle of the summer, and I am now very, very grateful for that generosity.

Only when I could breathe mountain air and see the beautiful sights of thick ferns, wild raspberry vines, and huge Sitka spruces, both living and dead, did I realize how intense the past six months have been for me. I am a person who gets in the zone and does what I have to do, tunneling through, and so it has been---through completing the busiest year of my superintendency of the Corpus District, organizing a physical move to Austin, making that move, and transitioning back into local church life in this vital church.

It was nice to breathe. I highly recommend it. Breathe even if it isn’t mountain air.

I truly believe we’ve all lost insight into how harried the lives are that we lead because the pace at which we live is so taken for granted. I don’t know about you, but I catch myself thinking as I’m driving in on Mo-Pac, “Surely, there’s a call I could make while I’m driving so I’m not wasting this time.” Waiting at a restaurant today, I noticed that everyone waiting was either using a phone for a call or the internet to take advantage of the moment.

Does anyone besides me remember that it wasn’t that long ago we didn’t do this? Maybe we even took a few breaths back in the olden days.

Thank you for allowing us this week away. I hope you are having a respite this summer that will enable you to connect to the wonders of creation and your own breath.