Message from Pastor Fitting-Snyder

I shared the following story as an illustration for my sermon over the weekend and felt it was applicable to share it here as well.  

When my husband Jon was around 12 years old, he to get into cooking. He liked to try new things and wasn’t afraid to put things together to see what happens. While he was preparing some sort of chicken he wanted to make his own sauce. 

So, Jon goes to the fridge and grabs ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, and hot sauce. He mixes them together, tastes it, and calls himself a genius because it tastes great. He shares this new sauce he invented with his parents, who try it, also thinking it tastes good, because it tastes just like cocktail sauce. These ingredients are indeed found in cocktail sauce.

Not to crush the spirits of my then 12-year-old husband, Jon did not in fact create a new sauce, but simply made his own version of a sauce that had been around for decades before. It wasn’t in fact new, just new to him. 

Maybe you have done something like Jon, perhaps you didn’t rediscover a sauce, maybe it was a food combination, or maybe you thought you learned a new fact, but found it was something most people already knew. 

I think sometimes we celebrate Pentecost, the day the spirit came, as though the spirit was new, as though the Spirit wasn’t at work in the world until it was felt in wind and fire. 

When the reality is that Holy Spirit wasn’t new, it was just poured out and known in the world in a different way. Like it added an ingredient to the sauce that was already there. 

As I have been working in this role as the Bishop’s Assistant, I continue to witness the Spirit at work in familiar and new ways. Watching call processes come together, and candidates discern their call to ministry is the Sprit at work in familiar and new ways. Over the last three weeks, we celebrated three ordinations, and as part of those worship experiences, we could feel the Holy Spirit generating energy and hopefulness for the start of ordained ministry for these three new pastors. 

We anticipate and look forward to the new things that the Holy Spirit, will do through the ministry of these new pastors. We look forward to the working of the Holy Spirit within our synod as we have been charged with starting new ministries at synod assembly, and we look forward in hope in the ways the Spirit will continue to move in the individual congregations brining the love of God and the movement of the Spirit into their communities.

The Spirit of God has been present from the beginning, and it is at Pentecost where it started doing a new thing. May we continue to remain open to the ways the Holy Spirit continues to do new things all around us. 

Peace, 

Pastor Kelsey 

Pictured Below the ordinations of Pastor Trenton Ormsbee-Hale, Pastor Connie Ortega, and Pastor Christine Cracchiolo 

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NT-NL synod staff are excited to engage in-person on Sundays for worship. As good stewards of time and travel dollars, we will be utilizing online meeting formats in our new hybrid reality when possible. If you would like to schedule a meeting with the bishop or Synod staff please contact them directly.

Bishop Gronberg:

June 22: Immanuel, Kileen
June 29: Grace, Carrollton

Pastora Bañales:

June 16-23: Vacation
June 24: Annual Women’s Retreat Planning Team, First Sagrada Familia, Garland
June 26: PODER Latinx Adolescents Fall Retreat Planning Team
June 29: St. Luke’s, Richardson
June 30: Digital Spanish Coaching Training

Pastor Fitting-Snyder:

June 22: Trinity, Clovis and St. Paul, Levelland