For we live by faith, not by sight.
-2 Corinthians 5:7
There was a time when for a lot of reasons, I ended up alone running down a dark road in Northern Michigan. When I saw it was dark, I mean dark. I couldn’t anything ahead of me. All the while I kept hoping I would see the lights of the campground where my group was staying. I kept imagining of those lights, even though I couldn’t yet see them. I had to live by faith that I would see those lights even though right at that moment I could not see it.
Our faith walk is just that, faith. You can’t see faith. Instead, you believe that God is there with us, even if we can’t see God. We trust God will see us through because we imagine God doing this.
First Christian Church of St. Paul walks by faith in God. We can’t see God, but we can imagine what God is doing and seek to join God in where God is doing great work in the world.
What would happen if we imagine? What if we could imagine what God could do in our lives and in the life of our congregation?
The clergyman Henry Ward Beecher has said faith is “spiritualized imagination.” Faith is imagining what is possible, even if we can’t see that possibility. But faith isn’t just speculation, it’s about entering the mind of God to dream dreams that don’t seem possible, except though God. As Martin Luther King has said. “Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
As First Christian enters 2025 and our 143rd year of ministry, we will take a step of faith.
Imagine is the theme for our 2025 Stewardship. Our budget for 2025 is $70,000 which will cover salaries for staff, office supplies and worship supplies. But it also includes some items that are a step of faith. The first step of faith is the hiring of a second part-time clergy position that will assist me in preaching and teaching, but will also help us connect with the wider community. The second step of faith is to use five percent of our budget for mission. That’s not a large amount of the budget and it’s below the common ten percent tithe, but it’s important that focusing outward to help others is built into our budget and it’s about being faithful to God because God is faithful.
What do you imagine for First Christian? What do you imagine in your walk with God?
Below is a link to the Giving Form. Please prayerfully consider what you would like to give in 2025. Remember you can give regularly by check or cash and by giving online at fccsaintpaul.org/give. Physical forms will also be available on December 15 at church. Giving Sunday, the day to receive the pledges, will be Sunday, December 22, but you can turn in your Giving Form by January 31.
Are you interested in being a worship leader? Would you like to help with communion preparation? What about helping with the livestream? Please also pray how you can serve both in and outside of the church.
I want to share a story. When I was the Associate Pastor of First Christian Minneapolis, we were looking to move into a new partnership with two other churches. One of the churches, a Lutheran congregation, used a prayer that became the prayer we all used to end our meetings together. It’s called the Holden Prayer and it goes like this:
O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In 2025 and beyond, God calls us to take a step of faith and imagine what God can do. Let’s take that step together.
Dennis Sanders,
Pastor