September 10, 2026

Full Newsletter HERE

Dear Friends,

It is very good to be home. And I cannot wait to see you on Sunday!

When I left for sabbatical, I carried three words with me: community, creativity, and creation. I wanted to slow down. To pay attention. To make things with my hands. To listen and learn. To remember the wonder of this beautiful world God has made.

Along the way, I discovered another word.

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, I encountered the Māori word aroha.

Aroha means love, but it carries a depth that is difficult to capture in one English word: affection, compassion, empathy, care, respect, connection. Aroha recognizes that our lives are bound up with one another and with the living world around us.

Once I learned the word, I began seeing it everywhere.

I saw aroha in your generosity that made my sabbatical possible. In the staff, bishop’s committee members, and tons of people who cared for St. Nick’s while I was away. In strangers we met on our journey who became friends. In the meals Jeremy and I shared around unfamiliar tables. We experienced aroha in the beauty of creation, the joy of making something new, and the unexpected kindness we encountered on our sabbatical journey.

I found myself noticing God’s love moving throughout this sabbatical time. And when I would hear the word aroha used so naturally in New Zealand, I would smile and think of our Christian word: Agape.

Agape is the self-giving love of God we see embodied in the life and death of Jesus. Agape is love in action. It is more than affection or feeling. Agape does something. It welcomes and serves. It feeds and forgives. It makes room for the stranger, marginalized, hurting, and broken. It gives sacrificially without keeping score.

Aroha and agape come from different cultures and we should honor those differences. But I also have to share that when I held (hold) them beside one another – I am open to seeing God at work in new ways. And I am reminded of a deep and transformational truth – Love connects us. All of us – every person, in every place, no matter where you are in the world.

One of the many gifts I am bringing home from sabbatical is a renewed awareness that God’s love is transformational. God’s love is alive and vibrant at St. Nick’s. God’s love is moving among us, connecting us, making strangers into friends and friends into family here in Bulverde, Texas. God’s love is alive and vibrant and moving among beloved people in New Zealand and Australia too.

I have come home with many stories to tell, ideas to explore, and more than a few dreams for what God might want for us next. There will be time for all of that.

For now, I simply want to come home and worship with you.

So I hope you’ll join me this Sunday. Come worship. Come sing and pray. Come gather around God’s table. Stay—or come back—for the Welcome Back Tea after our 9:30 worship. I’ll share a little of what I discovered along the way, and I hope you’ll tell me what God has been doing in your life while I’ve been gone.

I am thinking that one of the greatest gifts of traveling halfway around the world is discovering again what has been true all along: We belong to God, and we belong to one another.

That is aroha. That is agape. And that is the beautiful, imperfect, holy work of being the Church together.

I am so grateful to be home. See you Sunday.

God’s Peace, Love, and Blessings,

Rev. Beth