Category: Pastor’s Blog

A Word from Pastor Anne
Tutoring and Following Jesus / Being Salt and Light

Our Outreach team led us in thinking about our gifts and talents and how we can share them with one another and serve the community. I really enjoyed my years of teaching math and science. This school year I became a tutor with Compassion Network in their BOOST tutoring program. I offered to tutor junior high and high school math and was willing to serve where needed. I ended up tutoring 1^st through 3^rd graders.

The other tutors were retired and active teachers, recent college graduates and high school students who want to give back to the community. Someone else made nice snacks each week. As we met weekly, I got to know my students. I learned about their families and heard what they did over the weekend. Gifts were given by Compassion Network at Christmas and Easter. I prayed for them and their families. By the end of the school year we were like family.

We just had the end of the year celebration with pizza, certificates, gifts and a raffle. It was so nice to meet parents and celebrate their children together. One single mom told me that she tells her daughter to work hard because she will be alone one day and needs to care for herself. I think this is part of her experience and religious belief. It saddened and surprised me. I pray for them and want to tell them that our Lord Jesus is always with us so we don’t need to ever be alone.

Our new FamilyMatters Ministry team presented in worship in May. Their logo is FamilyMatters ….. “where we celebrate your greatest joys and hold you in your deepest pains.“

I believe our vision statement of Inspiration Incarnation Intersection along with this describes who SAINT PAUL is. Being an intergenerational community is an essential part of our life together and how God has formed us.

Our building is expected to be completed this month of June. What will we do with it? How will it be a resource to tell and show others of God’s love? It is more than a place for us to use together. It is a place for God’s Inspiration Incarnation and Intersection. It is a place where FamilyMatters and that family is God’s family.

Our Preschool Director has been collecting a wait list of students. Part of it is because we thought the Ministry Center would be completed by now and the Preschool expanded. It is also because people are looking for a good place for their children and wanting to secure that place at Precious Time. We have more than 20 children on the wait list currently!

This July I will be leading a class called Forming: Change by Grace. Through scripture and prayer, we will deepen our joy with God and grow in a healing relationship with Him. A group will be offered in the morning and the evening, please let me know if you are interested. Let us go deeper so we can reach out to one another and beyond our walls.

Our current preaching series is “Jesus says I AM” from the book of John. Jesus is the bread of life -our every day most basic of food. Have you been savoring Him throughout your day? Jesus is the light of the world, helping us to see and follow Him. His light shows us the way to His Kingdom love and mercy, not the world’s success, beauty or power. Are you seeing more of what God sees?

Jesus equips us to follow Him. We do not do it ourselves and definitely not alone. What is next in the life of SAINT PAUL as we reach out to tell others of the love of Jesus? I can’t wait to see where God takes us!

A Word from Pastor Anne
Resurrected Living           

Is it already a month after Easter? What a glorious worship we had that morning. And now what, is it life back to normal? What difference does Jesus rising from the dead make in your life?

Many of us have lost loved ones. Imagine going to the cemetery and finding their grave or crypt wide open. You remember the sadness of seeing their body or ashes being placed. The awareness that they are no longer here in this life. I would assume that an open grave means something bad, something creepy. It is like being in a horror movie with scary music is playing in the background.

Seeing your loved one up and moving around like before, or even better, would be a big shock and really confusing. I might say, “Hey, aren’t you dead?” I would want to check and see if it really is them. Do they know things only they could know? Do they do things they used to do? Can I touch them?

We may want our loved ones to live longer with us in this life but we will all physically die one day. What Jesus’ resurrection tells us is that there is more to life than this physical world. Our final resting place is not some cemetery. Instead our final home can be with Jesus in His Father’s house, a heavenly home.

I believe this to be true not just from what we read in the Bible and the witness of the disciples. I believe this because of the ongoing witness of the church and billions of Jesus’ followers worldwide more than 2000 years later. I believe this because I have experienced hope and peace in Jesus and living among his followers. I have experienced God’s supernatural presence leading, loving and guiding.

Each year at Easter we get to remember and reflect on what Jesus’ death and resurrection means in our lives. One of our favorite quotes at SAINT PAUL is “the worst thing is not the last thing.” This has power because we often feel as if the worst thing means life and hope for the future is all over.

When we stand at the death of a loved one, face the loss of relationship, endure illness, grapple with broken dreams, we can say to one another and ourselves that “the worst thing is not the last thing.” What was the worst thing that happened to you this year, this month or this week? “The worst thing is not the last thing.”

What does this mean for our life now? It gives me hope and courage that God is in the midst of things. It reminds me to open the eyes of my heart to watch for Jesus now. It encourages me like the words of angels to Fear Not. I will not be crushed or destroyed by this. We have hope because God has more ahead for us.

When I was in college I thought doing well in school would make me a good employee and lead to a good job. That was my basic focus. Once I had a job, I began to wonder what else there was to life. I wanted to get married and was discouraged by the many broken or unsatisfying marriages around me. I had not really thought about the meaning or purpose of life.

If we focus on just this world and physical life, our goals will be around making the most of this physical body, worldly resources and time on earth. We may seek to leave some legacy after us. Yet, we know that all physical things have a limited life. Our worldly values tell us to guard ourselves and our things. Our physical death is the end of it all.

If we focus on a future heavenly home, it changes our worldly values to kingdom values and perspective. Following Jesus can include suffering and that is not the end. We will die physically and that is not the end. Do we spend our lives focused on the things of this world (money, comforts, status, power) or God’s kingdom (humility, service, reaching the lost, welcoming the outcast)?

Who is this Jesus, the resurrected one, that we follow? In May, we will start a preaching series, Jesus Says, I Am. John, Jesus’ cousin, writes of Jesus saying “I am…” as he teaches his followers. We will focus on who Jesus says he is and what that means for us today. Who are we because of who Jesus is?

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

A Word from Pastor Sun Hee
FAITHWORKS: REFLECTIONS FROM OPENCIRCLE’S SPRING RETREAT

On April 24 to 26, seven of us from SAINT PAUL joined three other churches for OpenCircle’s annual young adult spring retreat at Mount Hermon Conference Center. As usual, the weekend was filled with deep moments of faith as well as light-hearted moments of hilarity! Passionate worship was led by our own SAINT PAUL worship team (Brian, Boots, Meesh and Deborah), and Rev. Theon Johnson III, Associate Pastor from Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, powerfully delivered the messages.

We gathered under the theme of “FAITHWORKS”, exploring the need to intentionally bridge faith and works together in our daily lives. Rev. Theon preached on Parable of the Good Samaritan, the healing of the paralytic brought to Jesus by the four friends, and on the ever famous Micah 6:8 passage. We learned that we should not underestimate the power of the faith of our friends and were challenged to go above and beyond to meet the needs of struggling people in the world. Clearly, Rev. Theon’s words resonated deeply with the young adults that gathered for the weekend. And we, as young adults of SAINT PAUL, were reminded of our blessed connection with our friends in OpenCircle.

On Saturday evening, after a day filled with singing, volleyball playing, challenge rope course engaging, we ended in an intimate candle lit circle where people were invited to share a prayer, a praise or a push (God’s nudging or call). It was incredibly moving as individuals shared from the depths of their hearts – tears, laughter, and love were all intermingled as we gave praise to God for all that God was doing in our lives. One thing was clear: OpenCircle has come to mean so much to so many. And this was certainly true of our young adults as well.

On Sunday morning, after an inspiring communion service led by Pastor Sam of Los Altos, we put ourselves to the task of having our “faith express itself in love” and spent time to package 100 hygiene kits that will be distributed to the clients at Hope’s Corner in Mountain View (a feeding ministry for the poor and homeless that is reaching over 200 people each Saturday). Truly God was moving in our midst and moving in our hearts.

My prayer is that the revival we felt this weekend will continue in the hearts of those who were able to participate in this weekend, and also spill over into the rest of the community and life of SAINT PAUL! Thanks be to God for faith that really works!

Experiencing Mountain High,

Pastor Sun Hee