From the Pastor

The Good Neighbor, the Good Shepherd,
and the Good Future

Pastor Dave This is the year of ‘The Good Neighbor’ at First Lutheran. It’s a year to remind ourselves that we don’t live in a vacuum, and it’s a year to practice what we preach about being ‘evangelists’ of the good news of Jesus. But we’re a bit rusty aren’t we?

For most of us, church has meant the familiar: familiar people, familiar setting, even family. But now, church is about taking that experience and inviting others into it. It’s about making the unfamiliar….familiar.

For the rest of the year, the first Sunday of every month is ‘Good Neighbor Day.’ Starting on March 7, we encourage you to seek out a neighbor, someone you might already know. Invite them to come to worship with you. Tell them it’s your assignment for the month; your job for the year to bring someone to sit with you in the pew once a month. Tell them you’ll pick them up and buy them a coffee on the way home. When we simply ask our neighbor to join us, we begin acting the way the Good Shepherd acted with us.

Jesus brings us to faith by inviting us to follow Him. It’s not a pressure tactic. It’s an invitation. He leads and people follow. It means He believes in what He’s saying. It also means we should feel confident that being a good neighbor means you and I are pretty good company and worth an hour of your neighbor’s time. It means we should feel good about our future as a ministry. When we invite someone new into our lives, it means we have something good to share. And we certainly do have something good to share!

Be a good neighbor. Show a neighbor part of your life. Invite them to come and join you in church. Only God knows what the future holds, but I’m pretty sure the future you reveal as a good neighbor will in deed be a good one.

Peace,
Pastor Folkerts

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