View From the Manse 2.0 - Feb 2025

 

In Mark 10, Jesus asks on two separate occasions, “What do you want me to do for you?” The first time, Jesus asks this of James and John. They want to sit on his right hand and his left in glory; they want seats of honor in the coming kingdom. The second time, Jesus asks this question, he asks it of a blind man. Bartimaeus, the blind man, replies, “Rabbi, let me recover my sight.” The blind man wants to see Jesus.

          We meditated on this passage in early January at our session retreat. The elders of APC spend a Friday evening and Saturday morning together at the beginning of each year. We pray over the joys and sorrows of the previous year in the life of the church. Then, we begin to look ahead to the next year.

          I encouraged each elder to imagine that Jesus was asking them, “What do you want me to do for you?” We took some quiet time with the Lord and thought about this question in 3 spheres: What do I want God to do in my life? What do I want God to do in  our church? What do I want God to do in our community? If you have time, you could take 21 minutes and work through these 3 questions yourself. Turn off your phone, find a quiet place, and listen to the Holy Spirit as he invites you into these questions.

          Here are some of the things that I wrote down. I want to have a deeper, richer, more alive experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence. It might surprise you to read a Presbyterian write that down. But the Holy Spirit is not absent from our tradition. He is alive and present in our church. Jesus promised that he would send the Spirit and he did.  And desiring to see the Holy Spirit’s work and hear his voice is something I long to experience more richly in my own life. I wrote down more desires for my family and myself.

          I told God that I wanted to see more young families in our church and for our children’s ministry to grow in it’s vitality. I would love for our singing to grow more robust and our prayer meetings to be more full. I would like those who are in our midst and feeling ‘stuck’ to take the next step that the Spirit is inviting them to take.

          As we talked, many elders said that they would love to see the marriages of our church strengthened. We would love to do more celebrating together. We would like to see more of our community come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

          We would like our community to feel more welcome in our church. We are thankful for the work that our deacons did this past year to meet our community at the Thistle Day events and inviting them into our building for the country Christmas. The deacons have set a wonderful example in reaching our community. It is time for more of us to participate with them in extending ourselves to our neighbors. Perhaps in 2025 we could offer classes on Saturday mornings on parenting, marriage, or finance and invite members from our community to join us. Maybe we could have meals in McLean hall open to whoever needs a warm meal and a safe space. I don’t know what 2025 will look like, but let’s imagine Jesus is asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” How will you answer this question?

Bryan Fitzgerald, Pastor (bryan@argylepresbyterian.org)

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