Leigh Ann and I have been with you all as co-associate pastors for over a year now.  What a year it’s been!  Thanks everybody for your warm welcome and support. You made this year a real joy for us as we settled into a new community.  We especially appreciate your openness, patience, and encouragement in our shared pastorate.  We consider it a real gift from God, and from you, to be able to be in ministry together.  We know there are challenges for all of us with the 1 + 1 = 1 concept, but we also see the rich blessings in our ministry.

We hope this year to better communicate our movements in order to give everyone a better grasp of what, or should I say who, to expect.  One way we hope to do this is by placing in the bulletin each Sunday which of us will be assisting in worship.  As a general rule, Leigh Ann will be assisting on the 1st and 3rd Sundays and I (Mark) will be assisting on the 2nd and 4th Sundays.  On those Sundays where one of us is not assisting, that person will sit with the congregation in one worship service.  This allows us to experience worship both as pastor and as a fellow congregant in our Covenant family. 

Here is our tentative schedule from February until Easter:

2/5   Leigh Ann @ Women’s Retreat
2/12  Mark   
2/19  Both on Vacation 
2/26  Mark

3/5   Leigh Ann
3/12  Mark   
3/19  Leigh Ann 
3/26  Mark 
  

4/2   Leigh Ann 
4/9   Mark 
4/16  Leigh Ann 
 
I also hope to begin my monthly column Mark’s Margin as a means of providing a devotional thought or two from my own personal walk with Jesus.  My heart’s desire is that my column will give personal connection with the gospel and so serve all of us in our growth and formation as Christ’s disciples.  As we grow together this year, I want to love God more and I want to love people more.  I want to live less and less of my life at the center where life’s about me and live more and more of my life from the center of Jesus’ grasp. 
The grasp of Christ is a refuge of freedom.  The grasp of Christ is where healing overflows.  The grasp of Christ is where adventure calls.  And so the grasp of Christ is where I am made alive again and where God’s rightly given worship.    
The Adult Spiritual Care and Formation team, through much prayer and study of Scripture, has sensed God’s desire to deepen Christ’s grasp upon, and within, the life of our Covenant Family.  Using the acronym GRASP C, there are six values found within the grasp of Christ that we have discerned are God’s heart for us and for our ministry to others.  The growing disciple who lives in the grasp of Christ is becoming more: 

Grateful
Real
Accepting
Surrendered
Purposeful
Compassionate

What do these values mean to you?  What do these values mean to God for you?   Each month, I will provide some personal and scriptural perspective to create a space for Christ’s grasp to deepen in our being and in our living.

In His grasp,

Mark