Do you ever wonder how you got to this place in your faith walk? How you came to develop your way of believing, the way you see church community fitting into your daily life, the way you think the church
should make decisions, the way you allow your faith to influence the way you engage with the world, the way and when you were baptized, how your faith influences your response to social injustices, violence,
discord… the list really could go on endlessly. I have shared with you before that I was born and raised within the Church of the Brethren (COB) faith. My parents stood in the front of the Ephrata COB to
dedicate me as an infant. My first 18 years of life I had no other faith exposure except what flowed over me from the COB. I may have only been partially listening, at times, but the way of practicing faith in the COB really sunk into me and formed my way of thinking. I had other church tradition exposures once I went to college and thereafter, but my first 18 years I was steeped only in the COB. I never thought a lot about the doctrine and theology that I had grown up under. It never really occurred to me to dig into this thing called Brethren.

At Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS), I took a course called “Living Theology.” The material that we studied and the discussion that we had in that course suddenly made me snap to attention… and brought about within me a real, deep and rich appreciation for Church of the Brethren. Where previously I detested studying history, I was now engrossed in this history of the early Church and early Church fathers grappling with what had informed and guided the Church all these centuries later. Where I previously disliked digging into liturgy, world views, theological debates, social and geographical context impacting faith formation, or in-depth contemplation of doctrines, I was now intrigued with them. Okay… maybe I’ve lost you. But that is just the point. I had never considered the faith father’s footprints that created ancient pathways that we Christians have followed since Jesus’s resurrection and return to His
throne in heaven. Why was I on this particular path? I could not have cared less until… suddenly I did. It explained to me how I took a different path in my lifetime than my mother had. My mom was raised in
the Lutheran faith before she came to be part of the COB community when she married my dad. It has impacted the differences in the ways my mom and I initially receive and understand God’s word. My conversations with my mom as we explain to each other why we believe what we believe as it
informs each of our responses and reactions to a variety of situations (from some very hard personal situations to just dealing with the current happenings in our world). This is really good for me, to grapple with how my faith informs what I do and say and believe.

Whatever your faith upbringing has been before you came to be a part of the Green Tree COB community, I am so glad that you are here with us!! You help us (or will help us as we go forward) to work at living out this faith in the here and now! You are part of our “Living Theology” in this community of Oaks, Pennsylvania. Let’s keep at this faith journey together and know that the pathways we are wearing into the soil will be followed by those who come after us.

~Pastor Kim