This past Sunday, I shared with our familia that I will be transitioning out of my role as Co-Lead Pastor. If you missed the message, I believe watching and hearing the story will be most helpful in holding the sacredness of the story. I also wrote a letter about this movement in my life – and the life of our church – to our congregation last week that you can read here.

I want you to know how profoundly grateful I am for the compassion and care so many of you met me and my family with in that moment. Your words, your eyes, your embrace, your presence. To see your faces was to see the face of God. Over and again, each person anew. And the texts and emails and calls this week have been a gift I will long treasure. The Church We Hope For is that rare community that can hold a community’s story of loss while still honoring a pastor’s (and person’s) reality of pain. What embodied grace. What expansive love. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Pastora Inés has begun a transition plan that she outlined below my announcement here as well. And please know, familia, there is already a deeply thoughtful and intentional vision for our community being implemented in real time. More of this will continue to be communicated each step of the way. But as a people that take grief and practices of lament seriously, we also don’t want to abruptly move too quickly beyond the gravity of this moment. All of this is being taken into great consideration and care, with that deep balance of compassion and wisdom.

Summer Snapshots

June 16

This Sunday, our dear brother Dr. Phil Allen, Jr. will be preaching to our community. Phil is a member of our board. And he is also one who has faithfully shepherded our community through this preaching since the days of our Zoom Living Rooms. We wanted him to pastor us this Sunday because of his depth of care for our community over the course of the long haul. And we hope to all rest in receiving the Word the Spirit will be speaking through him.

June 30

On Sunday, June 30, we will be part of a Joint Service with Casa Grande – that is the three churches that all share the building we’re in. Pasadena Mennonite Church will be hosting the service this time. So we will be upstairs in the Fellowship Hall at their normal gathering time, 10:30 AM. Go ahead and mark your calendars!

July 1

Lastly, starting July 1st, The Center for Restorative Justice is hosting a book club on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. You can find more information and RSVP here: Parable of the Sower. But just to go ahead and mark your calendars, it will be a 5-week study on Monday nights starting July 1. Last little note: a great friend of ours, Dr. Tamisha Tyler, is hosting this group. And she’s just incredible. We’d recommend going just to be around her.

Familia, I’m hoping grace continues to bloom among us in such tangible and relationally rooted ways. Like vines bursting from the tree, blossoming with notes of love, bearing fruit bearing seeds to go and grow in ripples both in and beyond this moment. We are a beloved community. May the gift of that truth settle in your soul more and more, even today.

With such love,

Bobby