Pastor Kathi McShane

Happy Easter! All the major holidays of the Church year—Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost—are multiple-week observances. We’re meant to drink them in slowly, to savor them, so that we can absorb their full meaning. So we’ll be basking in the good news of Easter for several weeks to come.

It was a glorious Easter. So many people worked to make it feel that way—from extra setting up forthe Deep Well service, to decorating the sanctuary,cooking, singing or ushering in one of our special Holy Week services, supporting our children through their rehearsals for Wake Up, Jerusalem!... Find someone you don’t usually talk with, and ask them how they were involved in Easter this week. And then don’t forget to thank them—no matter what they did, every person in this community of faith contributed in some way to the spirit of joy and fullness that we all experienced.

I hope gratitude to one another, and to God, is one of the ways this community is recognizable to everyone who walks through the church’s doors.There are other descriptions I hope for as well: generosity,hospitality, honesty, kindness. How are these characteristics demonstrated in the ways we work together, talk to one another, carry on all the worship and teaching and business of the church?

These are the things we’ll be thinking about for the next few weeks and months, as we work together on articulating a Rule of Life that we will all hope to live by in this community of faith. This will be something that we use when we talk about behavioral issues with children and youth, so it’s important that we agree that it will be applicable to all of us, regardless of our age, so that we can speak with authenticity when we teach it to the church’s children.

What would you like to see included in this Rule of Life for First Church? Send me your thoughts, by providing comments, by note dropped in the office or the offering plate, by mail, or by phone: (916) 446-5025. I’ll collect them all, and then when we gather for a whole church day-long retreat on May 29 (note that the date has changed from May 1),we’ll shape our thoughts into something manageable.

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I’d also like to hear your thoughts if you attended one of the six Deep Well services on Friday evenings during Lent, or if you talked with anyone who did. This was intended to be a pilot project that would give us an idea of whether a second worship service, of a very different style and at a different time from our Sunday morning service, is an important and needed addition to what the church offers. If you didn’t have a chance to get to any of the services, you can get a little bit of feel for the service by visiting its website at www.deepwellfridays.com.

Attendance at the services was 50-75 each week, which was remarkably successful for a new service.To continue will require that we raise some funds for additional staffing, to supplement the foundation grant that we have already applied for and that wew ill hear a response to in May.

Please let me hear your thoughts—again, by any form!—within the next few weeks. You’re also welcome to send me questions, if any aspect of this service’s intent or planning is not clear to you.

In this season of renewed life, let’s also make this a season of talking honestly with one another about the things that are important to us. I’m very glad to be in ministry right alongside of you, and to be in our ongoing conversation.

Love and blessings,

Kathi