Today marks 100 Sundays since my first service with you on June 9, 2024. Just short of two years — a small number in the long life of a 281-year-old congregation, but a meaningful mile marker for your pastor, and a good moment to pause and look back in gratitude.
It must be noted: Gratitude is a spiritual practice, and one we sometimes neglect. The day-to-day work of a church can crowd it out. Council stuff, meetings, and the ordinary friction of being human together. It’s easy to lose sight of what God is quietly accomplishing in the middle of all the work. And yet: the Lord is most certainly working through us, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, often in ways we don’t fully see until we stop and reflect. So allow me to do just that.
On my second day on the job, I forgot the key to the study and I took a detour, walking the cemetery, getting acquainted with the Saints of St. John’s — the founders, the soldiers, the families — your families! Paul’s words to the Corinthians were on my heart that day: “We look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen.” One hundred Sundays later, those words still frame how I see this place. What can be seen has been a joy: a thriving and growing preschool that fills our property with the laughter of small children; an upgraded livestream that welcomes the homebound and the curious; a congregation that turned out 200+ strong for our first-ever Christmas Market; new pickleball courts and playground; a pastor-occupied parsonage; a pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey; Daily Cycle of Prayer emails; and soon, cemetery mapping software so that others can “get acquainted with the Saints” the way I did that first week on the job.
What cannot be seen is even more remarkable. Average Sunday attendance is up nearly 40% since that first service together. But the numbers are only hints of the real work — the quiet faithfulness, the prayers prayed, the gifts shared, and the grace extended. A grace that, as Paul says, “extends to more and more people” to the glory of God.
Thanks be to God for all of it — the visible and the invisible, the smooth and the hard. Thank you for 100 Sundays of welcome, patience, and partnership. I am honored — still — to be your pastor. Here I am, Lord.
I remain, as always,
Yours in Christ,
Matt
