Grace, Actually

TMC Digging A Deeper Well

Colossians is a guide for every church board in every season, but perhaps in no season more than this one at the end of 2020. At the beginning of the letter, we read:

In our prayers for you we always thank God, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints,  because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.

 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to God, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.

 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to God, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

 Digging a Deeper Well has sought, in this extraordinary year, to encourage, prod and support church boards to slow down (and speed up!), to over-react (please!), to ask bigger questions and better questions, to listen more carefully, and to care for staff, congregation and community with passion and integrity.  As 2020 ends, we want to shift from the how of this hard work to the why.  While smarter strategies and deeper conversations matter, what is most essential is to remember why we are on church boards in the first place.  As reflected in the opening verses of Colossians, the root of this work is the grace of God in which we live and by which we understand all our being.

Every time we talk about what “the new normal” may look like, it is because the grace of God is moving all of us to new places.

When we encourage board members to look around at how other sectors, industries, and professions are working in this year of crisis, it is because we share your conviction that God’s grace knows no boundaries and no limits.

As we lift up the struggle for racial equity that every church board needs to engage, it is because there is no grace, no joy, no peace, without justice for all.

Boards often treat “efficiency” as a standard with which to measure their work.  When we introduce the word “risk” alongside the word “efficiency,” it is in the hope that we can begin to understand the implications of “being filled with the knowledge of God” in a world of great need.

What a year we have all had – and what a year, particularly, your church board has experienced!  Probing, risking, rethinking, and hoping are all fine, but they will ultimately come to naught unless we trust the grace of God to guide us and work in us to bear fruit in our actions and in our interactions – fruit that shows the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let’s give Colossians the last word, then, as we close out 2020:

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to God, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.

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