Faithfully Present

Rev. Caitlin Childers Brown

Pastor and Minister of Service & Community

The summer I started my first full-time ministry job was like diving into the deep end of a pool. I was handed the keys to a fifty-year-old collegiate ministry building with no AC and poor WiFi, and told “Good luck.” It was hard not to be overwhelmed as I tried to make heads or tails of a new city and a college ministry with all of the students on summer break. As I tried to tackle a crumbling space and a new ministry, one Bible verse kept me grounded: Psalm 37:3. “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.” This verse calmed the fear of responding to the never-ending to-do list and reminded me that my call wasn’t to fix the AC, the WiFi, or find new students all at once, my call was to cultivate faithfulness by trusting in God and doing what good I could do. I liked the verse so much that I ended up writing it out and framing it for my office, where it has stayed as a reminder everywhere I go.

As we think about the season of life that our church is in—prayerfully making our way in an ever-changing world and neighborhood—I go back to that favorite verse of mine. It’s tempting to try to tackle every issue in the church or in Macon as a whole. But, our communal call is the same now as it was 70 years ago when the church was founded—to trust in the Lord, do the most good we can, to be present here in East Macon, and grow in our faithfulness to Christ.

In that spirit of hope and prayerful planning, we are holding a church-wide retreat this Friday through Sunday focused on being Faithfully Present. The call of the church of the future isn’t radically different from that of the past, but it does require us to return to our roots of faith and remember the goodness of the love of Christ. This weekend we will be talking about things that mark a faithful church and its members and my hope is that those who attend will be encouraged, ponder things anew, or even be challenged a little.

Whether you are able to attend or not, I hope you will consider praying Psalm 37:3, so that we as a people communal and individually might be a people who embody this verse. May we be a people known for being “faithfully present.”