Today our church will say good-bye to a great man, our pastor for the last 11 years, the Rev. Dr. Bryan Burton. Since Jon and I moved here a year and a half ago we have had the privilege of worshiping with Pastor Bryan and hearing him preach nearly every week. This period of our lives has a time of significant spiritual growth for us, both personally and together as a family, and we can trace much of that growth to Pastor Bryan's consistent and faithful preaching of God's Word. As he now follows God's call to 'leave and go into the land I will show you', we pray for God's continued blessing and anointing on him. As he leaves our church family, we pray for God's provision for both him and us.
Thank you Pastor Bryan, and praise God for your faithful work in our lives and in this community. I want to end this post by listing just a few things that I have learned from you.
The Old Testament is not boring.
The Old Testament is relevant to my life today.
God is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
God has always been a God of grace.
Church matters.
Loving God fully involves using my mind, as well as my heart, soul, and strength.
It's OK to sing U2 songs in church.
It's possible for a church staff to have unity and actually like each other.
Speaking the truth in love is more important than popularity.
Earrings can be distracting at first, but then you get over it. (No wait! My husband taught me that one.)
Jesus is the Word made flesh, and that has radical significance for how we read the Bible.
Prayer is the most important thing we can do as a community.
Jesus loves me.
2 comments:
It was a great morning, but hard to say goodbye. I love your litany of things learned. I wish I would have had the capacity to speak this morning...maybe I just should have read this. Regardless, you should send this email to him.
My last sentence should have read, "You should email this to him."
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