Dear Friends,
I’m writing this from the Pacific Mountain and Chinook Winds Regional Council Staff Retreat, at Loon Lake Lodge in Maple Ridge, BC. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to here – I highly recommend it if you haven’t. It’s a place of great beauty, stillness and hospitality.
I am reminded of the previous experiences I’ve had in this place which, as it happens, have all been as a participant in various LeaderSHIFT events over the last decade – including the Sowing Promise, Growing Leaders program with Peter Short, the Holistic Engagement for Missional Leadership with Tim Keel, and the Holy Ground: Sowing the Seeds of Wild Church just this February with Victoria Loorz. I’m so grateful for the intentional and careful work of my predecessors in LeaderSHIFT – Keith Howard, Treena Duncan, and Allison Rennie, for the many excellent learning and growth opportunities they shaped and provided.
Some of the gathered regional staff, with Winter Retreat facilitator Caitlin Frost, Loon Lake Lodge, December 2023.
During our time here at Loon Lake, I have been thinking about all the leaders that LeaderSHIFT seeks to serve. I’m especially mindful of you who are leading congregational and community of faith life during the season of Advent. This season can include greater pressure and expectations of ministry personnel – carol sings and cantatas, pageants and Christmas lunches, poinsettias for the homebound and Advent book studies, pastoral letters and Advent wreath candle-lighting liturgies, Messy Church and caroling, and so much more. I’m tired just from typing it all out!
Whether your faith community began Advent two Sundays ago, or just celebrated Advent 1 in yesterday's Sunday worship, I am praying for you – that you will be blessed by the Holy Spirit moving within you and the community of faith that you lead and serve. I hope you will make take for yourself, to savour this season as a traveler on the way to Bethlehem, as you lead your community of faith along the same road. In fact, why not start or end each day with a short Advent devotional to feed your own spirit? I’m going to use Kate Bowler's Bless this Advent devotional. Why don’t you join me?
I pray that you will be fed, strengthened, encouraged and blessed, even as you seek to provide the same to the people of your congregation and wider community. May God bless you richly in this season of anticipation, and may your longings be, somehow, miraculously, surprisingly, be fulfilled in the coming of the Christ Child.
an advent blessing when you need a little hope
We are saying Merry Christmas
but these are heavy days—
for our struggling earth,
for our countries and their leaders,
our friends and families,
and for ourselves.
Blessed are we with eyes open to see
the world as it really is,
who say: where are you God? and
where are your people?
the smart and sensible ones
who fight for good
and have the power to make it stick?
This Advent, we wait
for the world to be made right.
Oh God, help us
in our fear and confusion,
in our uncertainty and grief
in our despair and longing.
Infuse us with a hope that doesn’t make sense,
with a love that doesn’t add up,
and with joy enough
to endure the long, long nights,
as we wait in hope for thy kingdom come.
- Kate Bowler
May it be so, for you and me, and all of creation.
Blessings,
(Rev.) Michelle Slater
