FLC Vision 2025

This past June we unveiled the report from our Vision Team. It was the product of hard work over the past 14 months by a dedicated group of people. It is a stellar vision for our congregation that challenges us to live up to the call of our God. The report teaches us:

Discernment is a gift of God and revolves around our practice of faith in our individual and communal lives. It is a call that comes again and again, most probably in different forms, but always in a way that is both renewing and transformative. That is our hope for First Lutheran Church.

Vision 2025 is a faithful document that builds on our 133 years of faithful ministry here in Bothell. It acknowledges all the good work that has been accomplished in the past while at the same time reminding us that God is calling us into the future.

First Lutheran Church approaches its mission from a position of great strength. We have lived in God’s immense grace for well over a hundred years, and have a strong desire to continue in that service. We have received God’s love, lived God’s love, and wish to share God’s love.  

As you spend time in recreation this summer I encourage you to reflect on who you are and whose you are and how the answer to this question might call you into a deeper relationship with your faith community. First Lutheran Church cannot live faithfully without you and the gifts God has placed in your care.

God has indeed called us into an amazing ministry. Will you faithfully consider how you might be a part of it? You have received God's love, it is poured out over you like a waterfall of grace. Now you are called to live into that love and grace so that you can share it with the world.

Thanks be to God for our call as a faith filled community ready to live in grace.

Anniversaries

Twenty-Five years ago Susan and I drove out to Lake Stevens to see what the community was like. I was about to interview for a position as an associate pastor. This would be my first call. We both remember driving down Lundeen Parkway surrounded by trees and passing a little gas station across from a park with the same name as the street. We drove up and over the hill and into a quiet little town with a church with a strange name, Ebenezer.

The interview must have gone well because a few weeks later we waited for the news of the congregational vote sitting on a picnic table at Lundeen Park with the sun dappled on us from the trees overhead. I joined Richard Edmonds, who just at that time celebrated his own 25th anniversary of his ordination, that July as his associate. It was a good call and he was a good mentor.

Now we are both here at First, 25 years later, me about to celebrate my anniversary and RIchard his 50th. Much has changed during this time. We no longer bog up the phone lines dialing in to the internet, in fact we carry the internet around with us on our phones! Incredible!

What has changed the most for me during this time is my understanding of what God is calling the church to be in the world. I was trained to be a curator of tradition and developer of programs and I was good at those things. But tradition without mission does not proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. And a "build it and they will come" mentality does not lead to raise up disciples of Christ.

What God is calling us to is to develop healthy relationships with our community around us. Family relationships need to go deeper, neighbor relationships need to be pursued, social work relationships need to be developed and more importantly our spiritual relationship needs to be disciplined.

I am excited for our Vision 2025 to be applied because it addressed all these changes and challenges us to become more intentional in our work together. I give thanks to God for my 25 years in ministry, but I give thanks to God more for our shared work together.