Let me begin with gratitude.

Thank you for your faithfulness, especially for how you have offered the peace and presence of Christ in tumultuous days.

You have been planning trainings to make clear how our mission is antithetical to Christian Nationalism. You have been organizing to provide sanctuary for people who have been harassed by the empire. You have been experimenting in ministry, some with mergers, some with reaching new people—and practice grace for the experiments as needed. I have seen your energy about vacation Bible school and supporting our camps.

I also celebrate the increase in apportionment payments in both annual conferences. Your gift helps us advance vocations into service, develop programs and connections that a local church cannot do alone, and help us grant and coach congregational development so that we might innovate and bless our ministries in this space and time.

This year I have appreciated the ways that the Northern Illinois and Wisconsin conferences have been living out a year of grace. Even before it is visible to us, we know prevenient grace is at work.

Grace is the unconditional, expansive love of God offered to all people in every moment. We have learned how we are here to grow by grace working in love. Thank you for the ways that you have explored and lived gracefully in your communities.

Obviously, we share a common mission: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. My life is seized by that mission and has been transformed in it. I trust your life has as well.

I'm very grateful that The United Methodist Church adopted a new vision statement. I do believe we are here to “love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously.” I celebrate this vision for our steps together.

Looking ahead

Let me now look ahead to 2026 by turning to scripture; specifically, Psalm 130:5: “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and in his word, I hope.”

This is a psalm for the night. Poets and prophets have spoken eloquently about our night prayers or our dark nights of the soul. One of my favorite lines in the scripture is John 20:1, which introduces Jesus’s resurrection by saying, “while it was still dark . . .”

I love the fact that God is working while it is still dark and when God’s ways are unseen to most of us. When I was born, the doctor told my mother a message about the night. I was born with pneumonia and jaundice. “If he gets through the night, he may make it,” the doctor said.

Maybe this reminds you of the ways you have found God or reached out in prayer while it was still dark. We all have had those nights when we prayed fervently for healing or wellbeing, or we have had some experience of the dark night of the soul or an experience of night that seeks the hand of God.

Meantime, what kind of spiritual focus is needed for our leadership in this moment? It is a time when many are dispirited for a variety of reasons. We have been divided by powerful monied interests who want us to fear and distrust each other so that we can be administered by fear. That has robbed us of our conviction that Christ is more than our opinions and that we are building back church unity, local collaboration, functional systems, and relationships at our holiday tables. It must be said that we are now being administered by misinformation that takes us toward darkness.

But we are people of hope. There is always more God than meets the eye.

Practicing hope

While attending United Women in Faith’s Mission u in Northern Illinois I heard a study on “practicing hope.” I was touched and moved by the ways in which UWF recognized that the challenges in this time start with the soul and how we can remain grounded and oriented to Christ when political messages threaten people groups.

They explored how the nature of our God is hope, how God’s coming in the flesh is hopeful, how there is always more God than meets the eye, and how our life together is one of practicing hope.

A deaconess (a lay order of women who pursue love and justice) named Martha Lundgren, who is a member of Renewed Hope UMC in Chicago, sat next to me at lunch. She told me how her congregation realized that they spent most of their budget on maintaining the building. Wasn’t God calling them to do more and be more?

So they prayed, grounded themselves in God and discernment, and considered what Jesus would have them do with the people they were given to love. They eventually sold the building and focused on how they might bring Christian love and a faith community into the neighborhood to impact the lives of people in their area.

Now they have a powerful ministry with residents of a nearby nursing home.

“I think we are practicing hope in our ministry,” she said, “and I wonder, Bishop, if what you say is true for almost everyone: that most churches have 35 or fewer in worship. Maybe for the year 2026 we should pray and think about our theme’s being “practicing hope”?

I put down my pea soup and knew God was whispering.

Hope brings light

In this dark time we might be stronger if we practiced hope. I love the idea that we are not alone; we practice hope as a community of faith.

We are practicing hope when we worship together and decide we will not isolate but bear witness with and to each other.

We can practice hope as we “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves,” to quote our baptismal vows. What does it mean to do this? What brings hope for you?

I sense that the churches that are trying to decide their futures could make better decisions if they were practicing hope as they discern what God may have for them in the future.

We will still live out our vision and be seized by the same mission, but we can be stronger in this moment when we know our two conferences, our episcopal area, is practicing hope together.

I believe we are grounded in the hope of our baptism, where we have joined Christ, where we belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

I believe the creativity and freedom of God calls us forward in hope. This is not fake happy talk, or hope on a shelf, but gospel grounded life lived on the foundation of our baptism: the never-ending love that is poured into our hearts and life in Jesus Christ.

Hope allows for newness. Hope allows that God will call us forward. Hope allows us to say yes to whatever call is placed on our lives.

How is God calling us to be people who are practicing hope?

I believe that as long as we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we have a relationship with hope. John Wesley reminded us that we are not defined by our opinions or agreements, but by the image of God born in us and growing by grace in and through us. All people bear the dignity of the image of God. Our discipleship itself is a stance against racism.

I wonder if we might think about the end of this year as a time to ground ourselves in grace so that we approach Advent and the new year asking the question, How is God calling us to be people who are practicing hope?

I know that our God offers us a hopeful imagination. We are children of an Exodus God, a God who knows how to carry us through exile; a God who knows the path from death to resurrection. How might hope grow in your life and lives of our churches and how might that bring hope to those God has given us to love?

Best of all, God is with us, and God is not finished with us yet.

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word, I hope.” Thanks be to God.

Hope to you in the power and love we know as Christ.