A quick glance at the calendar tells me that by the time I write this article next month, the kids will be back in school! My first thought: good grief! It’s going to be hot those first few days/weeks of school. Pray for those kids—and their teachers!

My subsequent thoughts turned to different ways those kids and we, their parents, grandparents, etc., will experience the beginning of the school year. For the kids, the experience will be mostly new: new classrooms, new subjects, new teachers, and for some, even new schools. There will be some familiar things, too: old friends, old rhythms of getting up, going to school, doing homework, going to bed. But for those of us who are long past our school days and even, in some instances, long past our children’s school days, the focus will be on the familiar: the inexorable changing of the year, summer giving way to fall giving way to winter, and so on.

That, in turn, got me thinking about the rhythms and states of things at St. Andrew’s. You have a new pastor; I have a new flock. There have already been and will continue to be changes for us all in how we do things: how many Scripture passages do we read, when do we say the Lord’s Prayer (and is it “trespassers” or “debtors”), what’s the format of the online service? Together, we’ll explore what works best for all of us. What new things seem right? What old things seem a little stale? What can we learn from each other?

There will be other changes, too. I’ve learned that our friends at Get Healthy DeSoto intend to move their office from our building to their own. That shouldn’t change our support of them, it just means we will need to find new ways to express that support. And it opens up a room in our building. Do we go back to having a two-room library? Does that room become yet another storage closet? (I hope not.) Do we invite another small non-profit in to benefit from low or no rent? Do we incubate a new ministry of our own in that space?

These choices, these questions, are just the tip of the iceberg for St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church as we move forward. I have so many questions for you all about the history of our church, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and what hopes, dreams, and visions God has given you all for the future of God’s work in this place. I look forward very much to finding times with groups, couples, and individuals to prayerfully consider what we can accomplish here together. God has a mission for us – let’s go to work on discovering what it is!