Friends,
I want to begin with gratitude to the PNC for their incredible work during a season that brought unique challenges. Their graciousness, humor and humility throughout all our encounters truly inspired and encouraged me these past months.
Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield
FPC’s 12th pastor, who will join us on December 1.
I also want to thank you, the congregation, for voting to call me as the 12th senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Greensboro. While I like that number 12, it’s biblical after all, what I am even more excited about is being called to be your pastor. I am honored and humbled and thrilled and overjoyed that God has brought us together as fellow disciples to follow and imitate Jesus Christ. What an incredible gift and privilege it already is to be in communion with you.
I want to say thank you as well to Danny Massie and the entire staff for their diligence and faithfulness in this interim time that brought with it unprecedented circumstances. Their passion and skill are evident everywhere I look, and I know I will drink from wells I did not dig in the months and years ahead.
As Advent approaches, we are called to be on watch for God’s present and coming kingdom. Eugene Peterson in The Message paraphrases John 1:14a as, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”
As I prepare to move into your neighborhood, I am confident the Spirit goes ahead of me and Jesus is already present and at work in ways we can perceive and no doubt in many ways we do not yet see. We are told in Scripture that God is doing a new thing and we are promised that God will do abundantly more than we can hope or imagine.
As the psalmist writes, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Our joy, and our challenge, is to trust these truths and discern the new, abundant, good and merciful things God is surely doing and then participate fully in them.
Again, thank you. I cannot wait to get to know you and walk alongside you on this journey of faith.
Grace and peace,
Jill
