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Midweek Message
My wife Tracy and I recently finished watching the first season of the award-winning medical drama “The Pitt,” which is set in an Emergency Department in a Pittsburgh hospital. It stars Noah Wyle, who played an emergency physician in the hit show from long ago “E.R.” It’s a fast-paced, intense show. It’s hard to keep up with all the medicalese. But one thing that I noticed is how the health care providers always have a stethoscope draped around their neck. Amidst all the sophisticated medical equipment like ECMO machines, so often it is this simple tool that they turn to first to diagnose the patients’ conditions and start getting them the help they need.
A stethoscope is a listening device. It is a tool that is used for listening to the heart, the lungs, and the gut for any abnormalities that might indicate what the patient’s problem might be. It strikes me that the first thing a health care provider does is to listen. Before they pronounce a diagnosis or prescribe a cure, they listen.
That’s a good reminder for a preacher like me who talks a lot for a living, and maybe it’s a good reminder for all of us. Before God wants us to speak a word for God, maybe what God wants most from us is to listen to God—to listen to God’s heartbeat, to listen for where God’s Spirit is moving, to listen for who and what God is compassionate about in God’s gut (the New Testament word for compassion comes from the word for bowels). Our first job as disciples is to listen to God.
Thankfully, we have several tools at hand for us to use to listen to God. We have scripture. We have prayer. We have worship. And we have one another in the community of faith. These are our spiritual stethoscopes!
I want us to spend some deliberate time together this year listening to God and where God would like to lead us as a congregation in deepening our discipleship and expanding our witness. Our staff will be gathering next month for a visioning session to gather some of the hopes and dreams God is placing in our hearts. We also have formed a Vision Team here at the church in which a group of members from across our congregation will be discerning together what God might like to do among us and through us. If you have a dream or a vision for what might happen here at Signal Crest that glorifies God and grows disciples, I hope you will let me know. I would love to listen!
Our broader church is in a listening process as well as we seek God’s guidance into our life together. Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett is inviting church members across our denomination to participate in a survey in which you can share what is best about the UMC and what your hopes are for our future ministries together. I’ve completed the survey myself. It will take you about 5-10 minutes, and it will be available until February 15. You can access it at this link or at the QR code below. Our collective input will be shared across the denomination in the months leading up to an October leadership gathering and will inform the future priorities of our denomination’s ministry together.
So let’s all put our spiritual stethoscopes on and listen together for the leadership of God’s Spirit!
