We are not the first people to live in difficult and divided times. While there is much anxiety about our future, as Christ followers there is a reality that can anchor us in this time. Our calling in Christ, to be the Beloved Community, has specific implication for the time in which we live. Even though there are strains of Christianity that would seek to impose theocracy, this impulse to use faith to control politics and the public square are antithetical to the core of the Gospel. Our call in Christ is to use the power of our witness to build, to restore, to heal, and to include persons within the community.  This community that we build today, is meant to be a means of grace to our broader, broken community as part of an eternal community. Even though our forebearers in faith have had the same call, they struggled, as we do, to bear a faithful witness to the love of Christ. Just as the Spirit worked through their witness to heal and grow their ministry, so the Spirit does that work in and through us. While it is true that the world in which we live necessitates new models of ministry, beyond anything we’ve previously practiced, the Spirit will guide us to new expressions of faithfulness that will bear witness to the hope we hold in Christ.