3 There’s a season for everything
and a time for every matter under the heavens:
2     a time for giving birth and a time for dying,
a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted,
3     a time for killing and a time for healing,
a time for tearing down and a time for building up,
4     a time for crying and a time for laughing,
a time for mourning and a time for dancing,
5     a time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones,
a time for embracing and a time for avoiding embraces,
6     a time for searching and a time for losing,
a time for keeping and a time for throwing away,
7     a time for tearing and a time for repairing,
a time for keeping silent and a time for speaking,
8     a time for loving and a time for hating,
a time for war and a time for peace. 

Romans 1:1-12  

1 From Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for God’s good news. 2-3 God promised this good news about his Son ahead of time through his prophets in the holy scriptures. His Son was descended from David. 4 He was publicly identified as God’s Son with power through his resurrection from the dead, which was based on the Spirit of holiness. This Son is Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him we have received God’s grace and our appointment to be apostles. This was to bring all Gentiles to faithful obedience for his name’s sake. 6 You who are called by Jesus Christ are also included among these Gentiles. 

7 To those in Rome who are dearly loved by God and called to be God’s people. 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

8 First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because the news about your faithfulness is being spread throughout the whole world. 9 I serve God in my spirit by preaching the good news about God’s Son, and God is my witness that I continually mention you 10 in all my prayers. I’m always asking that somehow, by God’s will, I might succeed in visiting you at last. 11 I really want to see you to pass along some spiritual gift to you so that you can be strengthened. 12 What I mean is that we can mutually encourage each other while I am with you. We can be encouraged by the faithfulness we find in each other, both your faithfulness and mine. 

For me, the first Sunday of the new year has become a time of reflection on the previous year and a time to look forward to this year. This Sunday is a time of encouragement, hope, and direction. A time to think about who and whose we are and how we are living that out, if we are. As I think about this past year, I decided I would write you a letter, just as Paul did for those he loved. Because like the Apostle Paul, I thank you and am blessed to be able to come alongside you in ministry. To be in a place where we can be encouraged by the faithfulness we find in each other, both your faithfulness and mine. Let us pray.  

Dear Wintergarden Family- 

I give thanks to my God for you each and every day. I am grateful for your dedication and love of being the church of our Lord and savior! I am honored to walk this journey alongside you as we live out the mission God is constantly calling us on. As I think about your faithfulness to the gospel, I am amazed at your love for the other. You would give the shirt off your back to help people in this room, the people you meet, and the people in need. Sometimes this gets us in a hard place, but we learn from it and continue to trust in God as we love one another.  

As I think about when I first came to live amongst you, things were in a place of chaos, unhealth, and brokenness. As we have journeyed together, the chaos has mostly dissipated, we are healthier in how we are being the church, and our brokenness defines us in ways that enhance the God’s kingdom. Through the chaos, unhealth, and brokenness, we have discovered why we are here in this community and how God is calling us in mission. We have come to understand that the church is the people and the building can truly be in any location. In being the church, we have learned that we are a people of faith called to feed one another. We discovered this mission when we didn’t know if we could continue meeting in this location due to finances. As we began to learn what it meant to feed people, we began to discover more about who we are as a people of God.   

As we started out 2018, finances were still a struggle. But we did the best we could and you, our church, stepped up to bring us out of a financial struggle and brought us into a place of peace and more security. In that place we were able to welcome new friends into our community, we were able to welcome another congregation, we were able to welcome support groups, community groups, those seeking community service, and advocacy groups. We have opened our doors and hearts to those who are hungry in our community in a way that was unimaginable!  With Ebenezer Pentecote, we have partnered together to have one of the only 24-hour food pantries in the United States. We have fed thousands of people a month. There is also an exploration beginning on how can we respond better to the growing food insecurity issues in our county and how we can impact change in a greater way. Part of this exploration led to continuing the dream to have a community garden. A garden where people can have their own beds to grow food for their family. Where people can reconnect with nature and get back to playing in the dirt and growing food to feed their family and friends, instead of having to depend on food pantries. We have partnered with Keep Charlotte Beautiful, Boy Scouts of America, and VISTA to begin the community garden. Prayerfully, we will have a VISTA volunteer who will begin in April and will be with us for 40 hours a week to help us implement a sustainable approach to the community garden and food forest for our community. We have learned to be patient and learn that when we partner with other agencies and people, things don’t always happen on our time. We are learning the importance of God’s time, not our time. And for many, this is a constant struggle. As we have explored these avenues of feeding people, we have learned that there are a lot of folks passionate about this in our community. We have received many financial gifts from people in our community, we have received many volunteers from our community, and we have received complaints from our community. Discussions with a few of our neighbors have been difficult and have brought hard feelings. But we persevere with the belief that God has called us to feed people.  

There are have been other struggles for us as a congregation. We have been working through cultural differences with our Haitian friends. There have been issues with the food pantry and these issues are always time consuming. But we have powered through and learned a great deal. We have lost dear friends to the congregation this past year. Eleanor Long, Barb Gilbert, and Denny DeGroot. We have had friends move back home and aren’t able to be with us as much-Ralph Gilbert, Jane Simser, and Brian Ellsworth. Personally, many in this room have lost loved ones, battled various health issues, had to let go of dreams and hopes, have been forced to explore life in new ways, have had personal financial issues, have concerns about their loved ones, and many are trying to figure out what is next for their lives. Heartbreak. Disappointment. Fear. Uncertainty. Confusion. Hurt. Pain. It was hard. 2018 was a hard year.  

And church, we have some areas that we need to work on too. We need to become more involved and active in our walk with Christ. If we haven’t spent time growing in our understanding of scripture and how it impacts our lives and beliefs, we aren’t growing as disciples. We need to be willing to grow and learn more. We need to become more faithful and active disciples, and not just Sunday Christians. Faith without works is dead…and the balance of faith and works is really important. All of us need to look at how we are giving back with our time, our gifts, and our finances. Many of us are in need of investing ourselves more into living out our faith. Friends, Paul might say to us, you can’t just look pretty for Jesus, you need to do more, give more, so you can live more fully with and for God.   

And friends, we will always have things we need to work on, struggle through, and improve upon. That is life. And walking along with one another in community and with God make all of it a little easier. I want to encourage us to be strong in the Lord through all of these challenges. It is our faith that brings us through all of the difficult times. It is our mission and purpose in life that guides us. When we keep God at the center of all we do, God can help us persevere and achieve great and mighty things in our lives individually and as a congregation. We all go through various seasons in our lives. These seasons can shape us in many different ways. It is my prayer for all of us that the seasons we have experienced this past year will shape us in ways that God can use our stories and help us to share God’s love with others in our community.  

And we also had some joyous celebrations. The sign guy and the music lady started courting, shall we say, in January. And over the summer, we celebrated their marriage and are blessed to walk this journey with them. We get to celebrate again in February with more family and friends. With Bob and Joy, we baptized their great-grandson _____ and celebrated with Courtney and Anthony’s family. We welcomed Daniel, Heather, and Lamont as official members of our congregation and are looking forward to officially welcoming more at the end of January.   

As I look towards 2019, we get to continue this journey forward. As we continue to live into our mission to feed people physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, we have more adventures ahead. We will continue to enhance our feeding of people physically through the food pantry and serving at the Homeless Coalition. We will prayerfully work on ways to make this ministry more impactful for our community. We will continue our work with the community garden and food forest and build ways to engage more people in these opportunities. We will continue to see how God is calling us to various issues of injustice around food insecurity and how we can impact our county in a larger way. We will develop the ways we feed people at Murdock Middle School. Our partnership with Murdock Middle is just beginning…the relationships are being built, the trust is being established, and the ideas are starting to be implemented. Through Murdock Middle, we will invest in providing support to the teachers and staff, we will help young people change their financial future through Foundations with Dave Ramsey, we will help grow faithful disciples through FCA, and we will help the school create a peer support group for young people who are cutting and vaping. As the Mr. Jenkins, the assistant principal said, let’s change the culture of the school and impact a positive change in the families as we move forward together. As we look at impacting families, we are going to feed our families in ways that will empower them as parents. We will begin a monthly family night with a meal, conversation, and fellowship. This will be a time to talk through difficult topics like bullying, cutting, vaping, electronic usage, boundaries, and more. Feed people will take many different forms for us in our corporate lives and in our individual lives. And for that, I am thankful.  

As I close this letter, I want to say thank you. Thank you for being you. Thank you for loving. Thank you for trusting. Thank you for giving. Thank you for following. Thank you for leading. Thank you for growing. Thank you for believing. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for persevering. Thank you for caring. But most importantly, thank you for following the mission that Jesus has called us to venture on. Your belief and faith are vital to being the church Jesus is calling us to be. As we begin 2019, I know there were be more struggles, concerns, heartbreak. But I also know there will be more peace, hope, joy, and love…more adventures, more failures, more experiments, and more of us learning what it means to embody being the church that Jesus calls us to be. God is still working in and through us, and for that reason, I thank you for being open to how the Spirit moves in and through all of us and look forward to seeing what God does through us this year. Amen.