A Message from the Pastor

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January, 2010 - Pastor Phil Heinze

I’ve started 2010 with two new things that promise to make it a very good year; an empty inbox in Outlook and a 1 Terabyte hard drive that will be a challenge to fill. The empty inbox took some doing and while it could never be technically “full” it was stuffed. So I spent the better part of a day responding, filing, and deleting my way to a blissful blank space in my inbox. I’ve kept it that way for all of 2010 and no I don’t just automatically delete every email I get.

The 1 Terabyte drive was my Christmas present to me because I have more CDs than I could ever listen to and I wanted to store them in a way where if I wanted to try I might have a fighting chance. It has taken me a week of evenings to get a little more than halfway through my collection (so far 8.2 days of music) and I haven’t even scratched the surface of the 1 TB drive which can store more music than I can afford to own.

Of course I’ve played this musical score before. In the 70’s I sold my 8 tracks to buy cassettes and in the 90’s I traded in a large vinyl collection for CDs. Of course each time I paid the piper new electronics were required which I didn’t mind so much except now the antique cabinet that looked so cool with turntable, receiver, pre amp, tape deck, CD player, and surround sound equalizer looks pretty silly with just an iPod Touch.

Sing a new song unto the Lord all the earth! Psalm 96:1a
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

It is true that while many things change many things remain the same. Of course I wouldn’t trade my Nokia XpressMusic with wireless Motorola S9 Bluetooth headphones for my old Sony Walkman CD player because the Walkman skipped when I ran, but in the end they both play the same song.

So it is with the church. Change is inevitable but need not be feared. For while we cannot continue to be a Walkman in an iPod world the music never changes. And I don’t mean that as a Mighty Fortress mentality. It may be that the church that speaks to my children’s children will look as different to what I know as that console stereo is to an MP3 player or whatever comes next.

Truth is even with a liturgy I’ve been singing for over thirty years the church of my childhood is different from the church of my middle age and at 53 years I use that term hopefully. We are always reformatting the way the Gospel is presented – like a daily blog – but the message never changes.

And the message of the church is this: from the cross Jesus Christ sang the song of our sin and death so that we might sing the song of God’s hopes and dreams for all of creation. That is a Good Song no matter how you play it.

Peace be with you all,
Pastor Phil

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