Zion Calendar

Thursday 13 February 2014

General Secretary's Weekly Letter


February 12, 2014


 




Dear Friends,

I always get excited when the Olympics are on. It’s really the only time when I am an avid sports fan. Like many Canadians, I particularly enjoy the winter Olympics. These mornings when I’m out for a quick cross-country ski before work, I think of those incredible skiers I saw on TV, powering uphill at the end of their 30-kilometre race—even though I’ll never be competitive in skiing or any other sport!

In the media coverage, you hear some wonderful stories about the journeys the athletes have taken to get to the point of competing in the Olympics. They have trained day after day when they felt like it and when they didn’t, setting aside other parts of their young lives, pushing themselves to extreme physical limits. There are stories of family support and sacrifice, of injuries overcome, of rivalries and friendships.

We watch these athletes with fascination as they push beyond their limits, risking doing their best, in a very public way.

Like most people with jobs and busy lives, I have been watching the Olympics this week at night or very early in the morning. In between, I spent a couple of days with the Comprehensive Review Task Group. Talk about people who set aside their own lives and work hard for a greater good.

Members have the sense of having risked in a most public way, too, with the release last week of Fishing on the Other Side , a discussion paper that contains some preliminary structural concepts for the church that is going to presbyteries and others for comment and advice. Members of the task group have toiled over the ideas in the discussion paper, and now they are offering it to the church to work with.

The facilitated conversations with communities of faith that the task group initiated between April 2013 and January 2014 showed there is a lot of openness to change in the United Church. Just what those changes should be, though, is a discussion that is far from over!

Those Olympic athletes have cheering sections back home that support their efforts. I heard from Yellowknife friends about a gathering at 4 a.m. at the field house where local speed skaters train, so supporters could watch together the preliminary heat of their local Olympian, Michael Gilday. I’m sure this week there have been hometown gatherings like that in many arenas and village halls and basement rec rooms across Canada.

Towards the end of this week’s meeting of the Comprehensive Review Task Group, one of the members shared a note of encouragement he had received from a friend. It wasn’t a message of support for all the ideas offered – it wasn’t about that. Rather, it was a recognition of the effort, dedication, and vision the task group and people across our church are offering as we look together to the future.

Excellence, exceptional effort, commitment, and risk… may God bless all who offer these gifts.

Nora