PASTOR’S  LETTER  FOR  2008

Dear Friends,

Life is like... a series of Super Bowls, World Series, Stanley Cups – you get the idea.  There are many little, but important games to play on your way to the Big Game – whatever that game might be for you.  As you play in these various games, you win some, but you lose a lot.  If all there is for you is the prospect of winning, if winning is everything, then life is one very long, anxiety-producing, grief-causing free-for-all.  Losing means months of second-guessing what might have been.  Winning means parades and endorsements.  Sooner or later though, that all-too-familiar emptiness, that need for more and more and more, begins to surface.  And then it is time to begin to look for the next game.

While annual meetings are seen by some as necessary evils – one more in that series of games –  nevertheless, a little reflection is good at a time like this.  We are always so busy, doing this and that, running here and there, that stopping to take stock of where we really are and what God may be saying to us – why, we don’t have time for that!

But let’s stop a moment and look at where we are today, and let’s use where we were one year ago as our point of reference.  When we met for our annual meeting last year, one page of the Annual Report listed goals for our church for 2007.  Of the measurable goals on that list, here is what has transpired over the course of the last year:

As we began 2007, my part time job as a paralegal came to an end.  I asked our church’s Leadership Team to consider the possibility of increasing my salary in order to make a full time ministry possible for me.  To my delight, our leadership agreed.  To everyone’s further delight, we were subsequently blessed by a Christian foundation with a one-time grant of $10,000.00 to assist with paying my salary.  It was the Lord blessing our steps of faithful obedience, when we did not know how we could ever bring that decision to fruition with enough dollars.

God has blessed our church. 

Adults and young people made personal decisions this year to trust and follow Jesus for the rest of their lives.  Nine people were baptized during the year: Linda Valente, Meredith Howard, Julia Gagnon, Charles Gagnon, Jerry Omi, Julia Maressa, Devyn Killion, Jacob Maxim, and Jacob Broadhurst.

I know that, as the pastor, some may think I am supposed to say things like this, but I would  say nothing if I thought otherwise: Sunday worship in this fellowship has been a great encouragement to our whole church family.  I believe that God is blessed when He sees His children singing and worshiping wholeheartedly, praying for and laying hands on their friends, and ministering the love of God freely.

Because of a major gift given to our church during 2006, we were able to pay attention to some of the very real needs of our physical plant we had not been able to address previously.

We repaired and painted the church steeple.  There is still a little more work to be done there, but the serious damage has been repaired.

We purchased a video projection system, a new soundboard, and a laptop computer.  This new equipment has provided welcome innovation to our worship ministry, along with slides of Cape Cod scenes photographed by Judy Plante. 

A new heating system has been installed in the Teasdale Mission House.  We are now in the process of building a handicap accessible rest room.  That last item has been on my heart for more than a decade.  I am really encouraged to see this dream becoming a reality.

Our church has also been blessed by God’s Spirit in that he has given us a fresh and deep sense of purpose.  You believe, along with me, that God really has called us to be a Safe Harbor. That thought has become the yardstick by which all of our decisions are measured: is this going to further that calling? Is that going to make it possible for people to find a place of refuge here? Early on, we came to know that there’s no way this is just some game.  But it is a Super Bowl of sorts.  It is a contest to see how many can be won and released from the prison of certain judgment.  Winning in this game is very important, because losing means lost forever.

My prayer for our church in this year 2008, is that God might grant that we would become more fully devoted to seeing people find a real and a new life in God’s Kingdom and His purpose found in Jesus Christ.

Walking with you and Jesus,

Pastor Edmund C. de la Cour, Jr.