Dear friends,
I hope you are well. This week we live in the space between Christ’s new reality and the unknown of the new year. Every year on December 26, Nicole and I take down the tree and put away all of the decorations so we can be ready and fully present for what the new year will bring. But this doesn’t mean that we leave Christmas behind. In fact, Christmas is the very thing we need as we get ready to enter a new year––the mystery and wonder of Emmanuel, God with us.
I hope your sense of the mystery and wonder of Christmas is in full bloom. Mystery and wonder can be both scary and hopeful, so it may be that you find your spirit conflicted about this. We’ve had lots of reasons to be timid about being hopeful. But I believe God desires to renew our imagination and sense of wonder as we enter 2023.
I am in a season of Christ’s restorative wonder and mystery as I leave one season of ministry and enter into something new Jesus is doing in me. I believe he wants me to be mindful of his dwelling in and with me as I enter the unknown. The scripture above from the Apostle John invites us to consider Jesus, the word that has become flesh and made his dwelling among us. Dwelling refers to the tabernacle in the Old Testament where God dwelled. Now God has come to dwell with us in the flesh. God on earth is an extraordinary reality to consider.
Growing out of the past five years of ministry and a covenant relationship with the American Baptist Church, in the new year I will work with pastors and leaders in our region who are ready for a fresh expression of faith in Christ for their churches and for themselves. Our New Again website is now live and I hope you will take a look to learn more and to consider supporting this new ministry in prayer and giving.
Many of you have been a part of the new things God has called me to, from the new Ravenswood Education Foundation or multi-site campuses to New Community Church. I want you to know that I am so grateful for your partnership in ministry and friendship over the years. I’ve never been more aware of how God loves us through the friends he puts in our lives.
May your heart (and mine, too) be filled with Christ’s mystery, wonder, and hope. I pray that Jesus’s dwelling in your heart will renew and restore you in 2023. What a wonderful and mysterious invitation to say yes to as we enter the new year!
Blessings,
Charley
p.s. If you are in town on MLK weekend, I’d love to see you at New Life Community Church in Burlingame where I’ll be guest preaching.
