Dear Glen Mar friends,

“I don’t know why MORE isn’t always BETTER.” He leaned forward over the coffee cups earnestly. “After all, God always wants us to do more for Him . . .”

This was one of my earliest conversations when I arrived here as your pastor 5+ years ago. The Leadership Board had asked me for my input as a new set of eyes after I had sat in on about 20 listening sessions with various wonderful small groups, and got to meet and also in many cases, reconnect with, people at the great place called Glen Mar. I was not denigrating the concept of more, but I was asking if the church would be open to other measures of growth and vitality other than just numbers. I was asking how the church ever “stopped” doing something to make room for other things, for rest, for the Holy Spirit,  versus just adding more things.  Glen Mar doesn’t have a great process for this, but neither does any church I know.

I get that Jesus said, “Go, make disciples of all nations” and that he calls us to have a big vision, but it’s also true that it’s notoriously hard to stop doing anything, whether in our lives or in our church, once we have started. Sometimes I think the hardest part of tending our life’s garden, or our church’s garden,  is pruning it.  It is hard to clip the branches and clear weeds in our flowerbeds of life and activity. But the season of Lent is an invitation to pruning and clearing, and is a different measure of time and worth than just “more and better.” Maybe this Lent could be a time of embracing God’s rhythms of grace: work and rest, pruning and clearing, lying fallow and planting, repenting and new life. What would it look like to take the time to connect with each other, and look one another in the eye, and smile, and laugh, rather than running off to the next busy thing?

This Sunday, we’ll look at how God’s Garden is meant to function by studying the Parable of the Unfruitful Fig Tree. Where does God call us to put our efforts and what do those efforts look like? You can bet if it’s Jesus talking, it’s something unexpected, and both easy and difficult at the same time.  We’ll also partake of the bread and wine of Communion together, a harvest of healing and hope. Y’all come!

See you in Church,

Pastor Mandy

PS Though not required (at all), in person attendees will have the chance to wear a name tag (we’ll have sharpies and name tags outside the Spirit Center). This is so we can be reminded of each other’s names and chat with confidence after so many pandemic months apart.

For more information on what’s going on at Glen Mar, check out our blog “This Just In.”