One Year

Today marks our one-year anniversary leaving the Lower 48. Friday will be the one-year mark for our arrival here in Petersburg.

An anniversary seems like a good time to take a look back and do some evaluations. But is it really? How do I evaluate a journey where the destination and goals are unknown? Is it possible to measure any sort of progress in such an environment?

Looking at only the numbers, the obvious conclusion is that there has been no progress. Our church attendance remains pretty much the same from a year ago, although a few faces have changed. None of the member families that had stopped attending have yet to return on a regular basis. Although from the start, numerical growth was never an objective (and that's easy to say), the fact is that it is something that is always there in the back of my mind, wondering if there is anything that can be done to cause growth.

What were some of our objectives?

The primary one was simply to live a life of grace and trust in God. What is my own evaluation here? I think I can summarize by saying that this year was one full of extraordinary challenges to my trust in God's grace and faithfulness. There were times when I thought I wouldn't make it without completely breaking down. But I do believe that I have experienced growth and have come out stronger for it. I've spoken about it in some of my sermons and in conversations with individuals.

Another objective was to build relationships with the community, both as individuals and as a church. Elise is much better at the individual relationship building. Through her work and just being herself, we are beginning to know people here. As a representative of our church, I've participated in a number of events this past year. We've also offered a few events of our own. We want to let the community see that we are here to offer positive things and we're not just taking up real estate.

It's hard to know for sure how we've met these objectives. Not only are they ongoing, with no defined endpoints, but there is very little feedback available to measure effectiveness. We make efforts towards an elusive, distant goal and hope that we are on the right track. There are rare occasions when someone says something to us where we get a glimpse behind the scenes to help us realize that, yes, we must still be on the right path.

I think that this coming second year will continue to be much of the same. We'll be holding the previously mentioned meetings at the end of this month, just to see if there is any sort of interest. That's the one change from the past year. Otherwise, it's more of simply being visible in the life of the community, getting to know more people, and living a life of grace and trust.