[Tidings] First Look At Trinity Camp

Dear Trinity Church, A week ago today my family was marveling at the majesty of the Pacific Ocean, where giant waves battled giant trees for supremacy of Rialto Beach.  I sat comfortably against an old growth stump, my feet in the sand, enjoying a blazing fire already built by campers who left us the best spot on the beach.  There couldn’t be a more beautiful site.  Which made the question plaguing my heart all the more troubling.  “How can I be on vacation in such a beautiful place, surrounded by people I love, and not be at rest?  What is wrong with me?” The answer to my troubled thoughts would not come for three more days, and you’ll have to wait for the answer till Saturday night’s Evensong service.  Between now and then, please read Hebrews 3:19 – 4:11.  As you do, wonder about the P L A C E  God describes as the geographical key to being at rest. 

RSVP 6:30pm Sat Evensong

RSVP 7:30pm Sat Evensong

I will have 7 minutes on Saturday night to tell the rest of the story, about how “God with something is everything, but something without God is nothing.”  Something I’ve been been wrestling with is how to gather as a church come August, and how to hold this year’s Trinity Camp.  Today’s staff meeting provided a breakthrough.  You know that feeling you get at camps or conferences of being too full?  You love all the good teaching, (like last year’s with Iain Provan), but by the end you can barely remember the last lecture, let alone the first?  This year we are going to spread out the teaching all month on Thursday nights, and let Sunday mornings give us time to process what we’re learning, and practice what we’ve heard preached.  I believe that this leisurely pace could make this year’s Trinity Camp one of the most profound and transforming of all.  Please put into your calendars: 

Thursday Nights   Live Teaching + Sunday Mornings   Backyard Church = 2020 Trinity Camp

Details will follow next week, aided by our Trinity Camp co-leaders Amanda Brack and Sarah Duffey, but here is the goal:  We want to find a way to gather safely, in each other’s backyards, for a short service combining two things:

1. Liturgy, Prayer, & Communion with children (15 minutes) followed by 

2. Leisurely time (while children play) for teenagers & adults to talk about all the things that are happening in each other’s lives.  

Unless you are either ill or traveling, please dedicate these 5 weeks to reconnecting as the Body of Christ.  If you are sick, or know your travel dates, please contact us at hello@trinitywenatchee.org before July 20 when we finalize the Backyard Church Groups. As your pastor, I am asking you to start praying that the Holy Spirit will use these outside-of-the-box Sundays to help us reconnect.  Pray that the questions we ask, stories we tell, laughter we share and tears we shed will be Christ himself ministering to each one of us, through each one of us.  That’s the miracle of church.  God’s Holy Spirit taking people asking: “What’s wrong with me?” and using us to help each other make things right in Christ.  Children . . . look out for older folks who need your wonder & good questions.  Single folk . . . look out for married couples who need encouragement.  Older folk . . . look out for children who are weary of being cooped up with their parents. And may God himself, our Father, find us in Christ in our own backyards, by the power of the Holy Spirit. With growing hope, Pastor Matt

[Tidings] Saturday Evensong Services

Dear Trinity,

Last Saturday night we invited the most vulnerable members of our congregation to pioneer an outdoor evening service called Evensong.  Each family or individual wore masks, sat in their reserved seats, and did their best to make the most of a challenging but beautiful night.  Pastor Carson led worship from his guitar, and I preached a short sermon on how the Spirit is guiding us into all truth, and how Jesus is inviting us to stay humble, to keep learning, and to keep on creating.

This Saturday night we are expanding to two services and inviting anyone to join us by signing up HERE, bringing masks (or using ones we provide), and giving us your name and number of people coming in advance so we can set up accordingly. Like everything else these days, the conditions under which we meet are not ideal, but let’s pray we do more than “grin and bear it” (especially since we can’t see each other’s grins).  Let’s pray the Holy Spirit moves in & through & despite us on Saturday night at Evensong, and on Sunday morning at drive-thru church.  In fact, my prayer is that the virus will make us more aware of how dependent we are upon the Holy Spirit, now that many things we took for granted are no longer possible.  Simple things, and powerful things like seeing each other’s faces, passing Christ’s peace with a touch, and hearing the sound of someone beside you sing.  I can tell you it was hard preaching last Saturday because I couldn’t tell what people were thinking.  I didn’t know if people were smiling, crying, or falling asleep.  I couldn’t tell what Joel Barger was thinking as he prepared to fly to Baltimore for his second surgery, or how fresh-from-Texas Valarie Johnson felt as a second-time visitor, or how Joyce Callsvik felt sitting alone in a single chair. 

What I do know is that when God’s Word goes out, it does not return empty.  I know that I am praying the virus does not have the final word on how, whether, or why we worship.  In fact, I am praying that the virus will somehow draw us c l o s e r to seeing God, our neighbors, and ourselves in Christ.  Please join me in this prayer, and may the meditation of your hearts be pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ, even if our faces cannot yet fully show it.

Through a glass darkly,

Father Matt

[Tidings] Father's Day

Dear Trinity,

This Sunday is Father’s Day, and this year I am both joyfully and painfully aware of the great gift I received by being raised, not only by two parents, but by a father who loved me.  Working at a restaurant can be a notoriously time-consuming job with family-unfriendly hours, but my Dad made sure he was always home three nights a week, and it thrilled me whenever he walked in the door.  Not only was my Dad not absent, he was present to me in ways that comforted me as a child, and inspired me to become a man.

This week I am proud to highlight something our youth group is doing to invest in the mentoring relationships every child (and adult!) needs.  Please watch the video some of our teenagers put together, and read the brief mission statement below to understand more about M.U.S.T.  If you like what you see, consider bringing a donation this Sunday to Pilgrimage Church, or press HERE to give online.  Whether or not you chose to support M.U.S.T., do take a moment to thank God for the inspiring fathers, grandfathers, and mentors who shaped you. 

Father Matt