Church Family,
This week has been a nightmare. I spent a significant amount of time at the Iowa City hospital, and processing the events of this week while my father went through a significant brain surgery was surreal (the surgery went well- thanks for prayers). While I am not familiar with much of Charlie Kirk’s content and talking points, I have woken up in the middle of the night with him, his family and this moment on my mind. I’ve been haunted by it. As I have personally processed the assassination, I have been filled with rage, anger and hatred at times. I am ashamed to confess that I have scrolled too much and prayed too little. Several church members have told me it’s been a heavy, heavy week.
I want to say two things in this Saturday email:
First, come gather tomorrow. The temptation in seasons like this is to isolate yourself from community and deepen in social media. This is exactly the wrong response. It will warp your mindset and fill you with anger, some righteous and some unrighteous. You need to do exactly the opposite: you need to isolate yourself from social media and deepen in real community. The church is filled with people who are a safe place for you to bring a broken heart, and they are the type of people who will be helpful to have conversations with. Social media will prioritize the worst and most inhumane responses of this week, and you will spiral away from Christlikeness.
Second, come prepared to pray tomorrow. There are always two extremes to keep in mind when planning a Sunday Gathering. 1) You don’t want the gathering to be ruled by current events rather than the Word of God, but also 2) You want the Word of God to make contact with the real world. I am aware of how your thinking is being deeply shaped by strangers on the internet who don’t know you or care for your soul. And so we are planning on carving out time to pray about this week, the assassination and our nation’s response. I want your heart to be shaped more by the Holy Spirit and the people of God than the algorithm. As I mentioned above, our church is a safe place to bring a broken heart to.
Love you guys!
