August? Already? It’s hard to believe but it’s true. When I was a kid summer seemed to last forever. Lazy days of bike riding, slushie eating and swimming pool soaking. Picking strawberries with my mother and sister, the smell of food cooking on the grill and time to sleep late at my grandmother’s house in the Catskills. But here we are…
My kids go back to school in just over five weeks (Isaac to middle school…eek!) and I’m still trying to wrap my brain around this. I am so far behind this summer mentally that it seems to have just evaporated. That said, all is not lost. We’ve still got August and Deacon Deb and I are hard at work looking at the first fall for our Triad/Quad (SUM, Copper Hill, NCCUMC and Washington Hill). Our theme out of the gate is Better Together and we could not be more excited about it. We are already witnessing some real passion and excitement around being together and like any leaders, we’re looking forward to learning more about you as we go.
But we can’t learn more about you if we can’t find time to be together. Our planned Ice Cream social should be in (or nearly in) the rearview mirror by the time you’re reading this letter (thanks NCCUMC!), and very soon you will be turning your calendars to August. We’re on the cusp of that inevitable shift towards fall. Here in Connecticut that means cooler nights, maybe a return to long pants and…the SUM Rally Day with pork BBQ. Wait what? Yes, that’s correct. We’re planning a blowout good time here at SUM on September 8. We move back to three services (8, 9 and 1030AM) and following the third service there will be BBQ for all, along with some tasty desserts. While Rally Day has always been a thing at SUM (and many other churches), Tim Boswell and I cooked (sorry!) this idea up years ago on a mission trip to Southeastern Kentucky. It took us a few years to get to it (pesky COVID), but we’re now fully engaged each year with BBQ, mac and cheese, coleslaw and other goodies.
This year we’d like to extend an invitation to each church in our Triad/Quad. As such, there will be no services offered on September 8 at NCCUMC or Copper Hill. What we’d love for you to do instead is come over the hill and join us at SUM for any or all of the three services and then pig out for lunch. Now don’t worry. Each church will be back up and running the following week and throughout the year, the other churches will have an opportunity to host the rest of us at a special event of their choosing. What could be a better way to get to know each other??
I hope you will circle September 8 on your calendar and get ready to be Better Together.
OTJ*,
PG
*On The Journey