May 2024 Pastor’s Letter

Dear Friends,

Let’s talk about liminality.

Liminality means “threshold.” Carmen Joy Imez writes in the Christian Century, “Imagine yourself standing in the entryway to a building, neither inside nor outside. That’s liminal space. An airport is a liminal space. Nobody lives there. We’re all passing through on our way to somewhere else. Few people actually enjoy liminality. We have an inborn desire to seek order and belonging and predictability”. We struggle with waiting. We want to know the ending even though we are in the middle of the story. In politics, in the economy, perhaps in your personal life, and definitely in the church we are in a time of liminality. We are standing on the threshold of passing through what is, on our way to what will be.

During the time when you receive this message the General Conference of the United  Methodist church has been meeting in Charlotte North Carolina. Due to COVID 19, this international governing body of the denomination has not met since 2016.

“No person or organization except the General Conference, which convenes every four years, has authority to speak officially for the denomination. General Conference, the denomination’s top policy-making body, has a maximum of 1,000 delegates half clergy, half lay, from around the world. The conference revises church law and the ‘Social Principles’ and adopts resolutions on various current moral, social, public policy and economic issues. It also approves plans and budgets for church-wide programs for the next four years.” (umc.org) The United Methodist Church will change, as it always does in this process.

We are already experiencing the process of change in Northern Illinois. The Northern Illinois Conference is going to share a bishop with Wisconsin Conference in September. The Prairie Central District (AKA Elgin and Aurora Districts) will be receiving a new District Superintendent, Reverend Wendy Hardin Hermann in July. There is a new Conference Treasurer, Elain Moy.

We are in a liminal time. Few people enjoy liminality.

When the Israelites were liberated from slavery and entered the wilderness they were vulnerable, unsure and afraid. All that they had known had changed when they ran from Egypt. They want security. But God is not in a hurry to lead them out of liminal space and into the land promised to them. They’re not ready yet. Sinai was a liminal space.

Into their situation of need, God speaks. He gives them the guidance they need to love God and love neighbor. God invites them to begin walking in a new direction by trusting him. As we journey may we trust in our God to guide us into the future. Jesus put it like this, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” John 14:1

One thing isn’t changing, I will be reappointed to serve as your pastor for another year.

We’ll talk again soon,

Pastor Melissa