Our Annual Meeting is off and running regarding the budget. Thank you all for the patience and feedback in making this process as transparent and painless as we could. A big thanks to Kelly for her leadership and skill with our financials. To our Finance and Stewardship Teams. For Pete Metzloff for running the OneCall voting system. For Cindy and Cathy for getting the reports ready and all things organized. And for anyone I missed, you are wrapped in gratitude, yet my pandemic brain is malfunctioning.

Founders Day is on Valentine’s Day! A fitting day to celebrate 202 years of ministry of our intrepid church. The Endowment is a gift from the past to ensure our future. We save, invest, and then innovate to shape the future. Because we love God, our neighbors in Medina, and the witness of this church on the Square. We will also be adding New Members to our congregation! It’s going to be quite the celebration!

Then on 2/16, we’ll celebrate the end of our Epiphany season and the transition to Lent with a Mardi Gras Zoom Dance Party! We’ll dance for the Lord, maybe not quite as enthusiastically as King David, but enough so we shake the stress off our bodies, and we can be in community in a fun and social way. All ages invited! We’ll post the Zoom link the Family Facebook Group and the office will have it upon request.

Ash Wednesday will be the next day. We’ll have a drive-through ash service, administered by yours truly. I’ll be masked and gloved and will give the imposition of ashes with a q-tip on head or hands from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the church. A pre-recorded worship service will then be live streamed at 7 p.m. on Facebook and the church website, uccmedina.org/live

Our Lenten Theme is “Everything Old Is New Again.” We enter into Lent 2021 feeling like we never got out of Lent 2020. We will use this time to get intentional with our life of faith. The Worship Team has developed the 4 R’s. We’ll Read. Reflect. Receive. And Respond throughout our 40 day Lenten season.

We’ll have a Zoom call each Wednesday where we will read the upcoming scripture. We’ll reflect together in community on the scripture. On Sunday, we’ll receive the sermon. Then we’ll respond as a community by putting our faith into action in some way. To aid us on this journey, we have partnered with a new local Medina business called My Sunday. They produce a Sunday Journal to help us process what we heard in the sermon. We’ll have 100 of these on hand and in the New Library at church for everyone to pick up.

In this way, it shall be like the song suggests, “Dreams can come true again, when everything old is new again.”

Church, you are a dream come true! What we are building. The work we are doing. The community that we are. I believe our ancestors would be so proud. Our future is bright!

Yours in Christ,

-Pastor Luke