Dear Friends of Second Church,

I look forward to seeing you at church this Sunday, and then afterwards for our Annual Meeting, at which all members will be asked to vote on the 2025 Council and Deacons, as well as the budget.  

You’ll also hear from me, Barbara Z., and a few others about the state of the congregation, much of which will be celebratory.  

Do come.  It’s a particularly deflating comment on our prospects for vitality when people don’t.  

You may feel like we don’t need you for any number of reasons, or that it isn’t right to hazard an opinion when you don’t know all the facts. (It doesn’t take much to get you up to speed!)

Of course, thanks for your trust. But please don’t let it be the fig leaf covering a more fundamental indifference.

It is also true that a great deal of the love and dedication required to keep things running on Sundays, much less all the other days, remain largely invisible unless you particularly look for them.  

And it’s worth knowing a little bit about that.

Most people don’t see Jenny arriving no later that 7:45 to set up Children’s Chapel and the Nursery; Bob Willett turning on the coffee pot and preparing communion no later than 8; Alexander rehearsing soloists by 8:45; or the deacons looking for the bulletins and muscling the big flower arrangement into position by 9:30, just as the first little people for the Nursery are arriving.  

After church, there are choir rehearsals, counseling appointments, Council working groups meeting, shelter meals to prepare, and flowers to deliver; then later, setting the chapel up for Confirmation class, then breaking it down at 8 p.m. and resetting it for AA at 7 a.m. on Monday morning.  

And then another week begins.  

If you think about it, our life together is sustained by so many quiet acts of faith.  

Similarly, your presence and careful attention at the Annual Meeting are another such act, quiet perhaps (or not so much), but also utterly vital, as we join together as a congregation to decide what we hope to offer our community and the world in the coming year.  

Our neighbors may never see just what it takes for us to make God’s love for them real.

But we can’t do it any other way.

We need your questions as well as your commitment, and we know you will be eager to express your thanks for so much of what we accomplished in 2024…especially now that you may see it a little more clearly.

There’s a lot to share, and always a lot to learn.  

It will be good to have you there.  

See you in church