Pastor’s Corner 1/4/2026

Dear Church Friends,

As our congregation stands on the threshold of a significant decision about the possible sale of church property to help create affordable housing, we turn to Scripture for grounding. This Sunday's New Testament reading (Ephesians 1:3–14) gives us a foundation, beginning not with commands or strategies but with blessing: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us… with every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3).

This matters because transitions often feel unsettling. Buildings carry memory, meaning, and identity. They hold baptisms and funerals, laughter and grief, prayer and persistence. Letting go of property can feel like letting go of ourselves. Yet Ephesians reminds us that the church's most profound truth is not what we own but who we are: a people already claimed, loved, and held by God (Eph 1:5).

The letter tells us that we are chosen, adopted, and redeemed (Eph 1:7) not because of what we possess or preserve, but because of God’s grace. Our identity as a church does not begin with land or walls but with belonging. That truth frees us to ask a more complex, holier question: What is this blessing for?

Ephesians suggests that God’s blessings are never meant to end with us. Again and again, the passage points outward toward reconciliation, shared inheritance, and the healing of “all things, in heaven and on earth” (Eph 1:10). Blessing leads to responsibility. Grace leads to generosity. Faith leads to love made visible.

In a world shaped by scarcity and fear, property is often treated as security. But Scripture offers a different vision of power. God’s power is not found in holding tightly but in redeeming what has been broken and making space for life. Affordable housing is not simply a social project; it is a spiritual act. It proclaims that people matter more than assets and that dignity is not a privilege but a promise.

This kind of decision also invites honest reflection on how faith interacts with systems of power. Churches, like other institutions, can unintentionally protect comfort while others struggle to survive. A growing movement within Christian thought, sometimes called critical spirituality, asks us to examine whether our spiritual language serves justice or merely stability. Are our resources reinforcing inequality or participating in God’s work of restoration?

Scholars who study critical spirituality remind us that spirituality is at its healthiest when it resists being used to protect power or preserve comfort for its own sake. In their recent integrative review, Wolf and Feldbauer-Durstmüller describe critical spirituality as faith that looks outward as well as inward and asks how our beliefs shape real economic, social, and political conditions. Rather than treating spirituality as a tool to help institutions function smoothly, critical spirituality calls communities to examine whether their structures serve human dignity, equity, and the flourishing of the most vulnerable. In this light, our discernment about selling property for affordable housing becomes a profoundly spiritual act: not a loss of identity but a practice of faith that places people before assets and aligns our life together with God’s ongoing work of justice, repair, and shared hope.

Ephesians offers guidance here as well. It speaks of a “mystery” now revealed: that God is drawing all people into a shared future. There is no private inheritance in Christ. What we receive is meant to be shared. When a church uses its resources to support affordable housing, it is not abandoning its mission; it is living it.

This does not mean the decision is easy or without loss. Grief can walk alongside faith. Uncertainty can coexist with trust. Ephesians does not promise clarity at every step, but it does promise the presence of the Spirit, described as a pledge, a sign that God is still at work even when outcomes are not fully visible.

As we discern together, we remember that the church is not finally a place but a people. The Spirit seals us, calls us to love our neighbors, and invites us to participate in God’s healing of the world. Selling property to help create homes is not simply a financial transaction; it is a declaration of hope. It says that we believe God’s future is larger than our fear and that blessing grows when it is shared.

May we move forward trusting that the God who chose us will also guide us, and that in making room for others, we may discover again what it means to be the church.

• Blessings, Pr. Josh