I love Fall. Fall is my favorite season. I don’t know if it‘s because I have a hoodie addiction, love all things apple or because I finally stop sweating and having to water the outdoor plants that I thought I wanted at the beginning of the summer but a couple of months in I’m ready for them to die.

I love Fall because Fall is always an exciting time at church. I miss seeing people who are gone during the summer due to family vacations and time at the cabin. I love preparing children’s time. And having the kids back in worship brings energy and new life. (Parents of little ones, never worry about your kids being loud in worship. That is the sound of a living and not a dying church! We love having you—wails, fidgets and all). I love when programming resumes, even when it means busier schedules.

I love Fall because it also has my favorite church days: Reformation Sunday when our youth affirm their baptism and All Saints Day. I believe these are two of the most important and overlooked Sundays in the life of the Church.

Confirmation is a day that we celebrate as a church that we have kept our Baptismal promises to love and nurture the children in our midst. It is a day when we give thanks for parents who with packed schedules and demands on time have ensured that their child knows God, knows Christ, knows that they are wonderfully and fearfully made in Christ’s image. And it is a day when a young person takes on those baptismal promises for themselves and chooses to become a follower of Christ. Through the promises they make that day, through that beginning (for that is what confirmation is—a beginning and not an end), our faith is made new.

All Saints Day in many ways is the opposite. It is an ending. A time when we take stock of those in our lives who go before us, whose work on earth is done and who (in the words of a former pastor of mine) have joined the Church Universal and Triumphant. But it is more than that. As those names are listed, we remember all the “saints in light” in our lives over the years who have passed on the faith. We give thanks for the saints still here with us—examples of how to be a servant of Christ. And hopefully, we consider how we too might be for someone else a reflection of Christ’s love.

There is so much happening this Fall at Gethsemane. I hope you will get involved!

Blessings,

Pastor Rebecca