What’s in a Name?

Three months after the first Launch Team gatherings around my kitchen table during Advent, our new faith community has begun to take shape. One of the things we have stumbled upon together is a name: Pecan Street Mission.

Pecan Street, extending a total of 3/4-mile throughout Decatur, is the road on which the Methodist Activity Center (MAC) is/used to be located. I’ve been playing with the image from Isaiah 61:3: “They will be called Oaks of Righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.” What might it look like for this new faith community to be planted not by Ricky, not by a Launch Team, not by FUMC Decatur, but by none other than the Living God? How might our identity be shaped if we believed ourselves to be produce of the Master Gardener, existing to display God’s glory?

I love the image of roots as well. Did you know pecan trees have two sets of roots? The first is a single large “tap-root” that runs straight down from the trunk, deep into the earth to gather nutrients during the winters and seasons of drought. Pecan trees also have a second set of shallower branch roots which connect it to the soil and community of trees around it. It is this practice of deeply rooting that gives the trees rich and abundant life. It is being deeply rooted in the love of God and consistently rooted in the love of our neighbors that builds true community. Like the roots of an Oak — or a Pecan Tree — we love deeply so that we might live differently.

This spring, Pecan Street Mission will host two community worship gatherings. The first, a Community Easter Sunrise Worship, was on the downtown square at sunrise on Easter morning. What better way to celebrate the beginning of this new thing God is doing than on a morning of resurrection! Our second community worship gathering — Moms in the Park — will be a family-friendly celebration and blessing of mothers at First United Methodist Church Playground on Mother’s Day. As we begin to live into God’s new work among us in planting Pecan Street Mission, please continue to pray with and for us. Pray that we might continue to be ever more deeply rooted in God’s love, that Jesus might continue to meet us in new and unexpected places, and that the Holy Spirit might be poured out up-on our faithful efforts to faithfully follow God’s call. In the footsteps of the Risen Jesus Christ, may we all continue to walk.

In Christ,
Ricky Harrison