This past week a new sign went up in front of the church. You might not notice it.  As part of our journey to a new denomination, our friends in the old denomination asked that we clarify our denominational identity on our signs and website and elsewhere. A fair request.

At first we thought it might just be a matter of inserting a new sign into the old sign frame. It turns out that the old sign frame was, well, old. As in rusty and not worth repairing. So the new sign has been installed in a new frame.

Most of us won’t notice the change in the sign itself – we’ve simply removed the silly clip art dove and replaced the website URL (not needed in the age of Google) with the requested “A Congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.”  And the rust stains are gone.

During the journey to the EPC, our elders were quick to remind us that LPC would still be LPC.  It is.  I think the little-changed sign reminds us of our continuity with the past and all that God has been doing on the corner of Gillam and Bellevue for 130 years.

The first thing I noticed when I saw the new sign was not so much the sign (good, nothing misspelled), but the frame.  It is clean and simple.  Nothing to distract.

As we move into the new year – and a wonderful season of life at LPC – our new sign is a good reminder.  Our task is not to change our message, the old, old story of Jesus and his love, but to reframe it in ways that speak to 2019 and beyond.

When the framing of the gospel distracts from the message of the gospel, we have a problem, a problem that can be hard to repair. When the message is framed in terms of a cultural Christianity, the vocabulary of the country club or partisan politics, therapeutic self-concern or divisive identity-ism, we are distracted from the truth of the Gospel (which speaks to all of that and more).  Neither Karl Marx nor Adam Smith are among the apostolic writers.

When our message is stained by “we’ve always done it that way,” passersby will just pass us by.

Yes, during the journey to the EPC, our elders were quick to remind us that LPC would still be LPC. I am thankful that we are.  But how might we use this new season in our life together for some reframing? How might we “share the life of Jesus” in ways that make sense to 2019 and beyond, the old, old story of Jesus and his love in the age of Google (without paying undue attention to Google and whatever comes after Google)?

It is a new year and a new season in the life of LPC.  Welcome, new sign. Welcome, new season.

See you Sunday!