Pastor's Midweek Message

 February 25, 2026

Sisters and brothers,

Praise God for what God is doing with and through our youth!

I am excited to share with you the faith of our youth disciples this coming Sunday. It’s the first of our two Youth-Led Worship services this year, opportunities for our youth to serve and to lead us all in worship.

How would you describe worship? I think it’s an important question for us to consider as disciples: why is it we gather each week, after all? We talked in Youth Group on Sunday about what worship means to them, our youth. The youth said that for them, worship means talking about God, God sending a message to us, praising God, and celebrating God. In worship, they say they love God because God loves us, because God protects us, because God forgives us, and because God gives us wisdom to live our lives. Those sound like good reasons to worship!

Worship can also be described as our response to the reality of God. When we come to know the incredible love of God, the awe and majesty of God—we cannot help but to praise and to worship, in word and in song. And during Lent, our worship is also an opportunity for us to recognize our created status, our fallen nature, and how we need God and God’s endless grace to be made whole again.

We actually have a couple of opportunities coming up for our next generations to be leading us in worship. This Sunday, March 1, the BHUMC Youth Group leads us: Samantha Coker has prepared a sermon, “Always Trust in the Lord’s Love,” to share God’s encouragement for us. It’s an appropriate message for Lent: we are in a season where the theme is a reminder for us to “Turn and Draw Near,” and remembering God’s love is a good reason to do both. The youth have written the Call to Worship, the Opening Prayer, the sermon, the offering prayer, the children’s moment, and the benediction themselves, and it will be a wonderful time of them sharing their faith with us all.

Then one week later, on March 8, remember to set your clocks ahead, and join the Girl Scouts of Troop 5257 as they help celebrate Girl Scout Sunday. These young women will be leading worship and sharing some of what makes Girl Scouting special for them. While I will be back in the pulpit that morning, it’s a joy to me to be able to share in the leading role with these young women, and to celebrate what Girl Scouting does, and has done, in our community over the years.

In all of this, we can be thankful for how God is moving. Recall that a couple of years ago there was no youth group, there was no Girl Scout Sunday. We started with just a few youth in 2024, and now our Youth Group meetings are as many as 10 people. I thank Gary Starr, Kathy Mitchell, and Jessica Mathis for being willing to be regulars with our youth, so the youth can look to them as guides and mentors on their journeys. God has been faithfully leading new people to us, and these next two weeks are opportunities for us to celebrate that.

So let’s go.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Eric