Laurel Heights UMC Grace Notes and Possibilities

Hello new friends!

I look forward to our getting to know each other in August during LHUMC’s Grace Notes and Possibilities conversations. Thanks to the creative curiosity of your pastor and your exceptional leadership team, LHUMC is doing what so many congregations are wondering how to do. You are leaning in to living through COVID as an opportunity instead of being on-hold. LHUMC is embracing the now instead of allowing anxiety to rule. This is a bold action and will evoke fresh ideas and mutual needs.

We’ll have the opportunity to share together on Zoom about how God has been present in your lives during these challenging months and your vision for what lies ahead. I will be your facilitator for groups of about twenty persons per meeting to explore what is being learned in this unique time. Another option will be to express yourself through a survey that will ask similar questions.

Perhaps you’re wondering who I am and why I’ll be joining you. My name is Rev. Wyndee Holbrook and I’ve been working with faithful folks for most of my life. Currently, I coordinate Interfaith San Antonio Alliance and am the interim pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Garden Ridge. I am committed to helping bring out the best in God’s people through the call of hospitality. As Christ followers we are wooed by the grace of Christ Jesus to see the best in each other. This includes carrying each other’s burdens when the load is too heavy, and likewise, we are to rejoice with each other at every opportunity. This season of Grace Notes offers space for both through survey and conversation.

In preparation I encourage you to read Jeremiah 29: 1-14. This passage is part of Jeremiah’s pastoral letter to those who were in exile from Judah to Babylon. It was extremely difficult to be so far from home and under Nebuchadnezzar’s authority. They longed for the way things had been and wanted nothing more than to return to “normal.” But when the long years of captivity were over, many lessons were learned that changed the course of their history and what became the Judeo-Christian tradition. The most vital was discovering their God was not a national deity confined to their ruined temple in Jerusalem. No, the Great God Almighty was found everywhere they went and was to be worshiped in their hearts before worship in any building could occur.

May we all embody this lesson in our current state of “exile.”

Until August,

Rev. Wyn