Dear Members of First UMC Brighton and Whitmore Lake,

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ! We have been praying for you and our church from the moment we learned that the Bishop appointed us to be Co-Senior Pastors of Brighton and Whitmore Lake. We are so excited to move to Brighton in a little less than a week. We have been inspired by your faithfulness, generosity, commitment to mission and your hospitality. Our children, Joshua (4) and Lydia (2), were so excited to see inside the beautiful parsonage and they are excited to make new friends in our community.

As you read this letter, perhaps you are curious to know a little more about us. Lindsey grew up in Nebraska and Jon grew up in Michigan. We met nearly halfway in between in the northern suburbs of Chicago in Evanston, IL. We met the first day of orientation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and the rest is history. We got married shortly after our third year of school there and quickly moved to Michigan to start new ministry positions at Birmingham First United Methodist Church and Rochester St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. Lindsey loves to walk, tap dance, camp, and enjoys coffee and chocolate. Jon is an avid Tigers fan, and in his spare time he loves to ride his bicycle.

We could not be more honored to be your pastors and look forward to worshipping with you, growing disciples in small groups, serving together in mission, challenging each other in our faith and helping each other to develop a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. God is up to wonderful things in our church!

We cannot wait to meet you. There are three different ways for us to have a chance to visit in the next couple weeks. You’re invited to drive by the parsonage to meet us and the kids on Sunday July 5th. Zoom meetings are being scheduled so that those who do not yet feel comfortable leaving home can meet us electronically. Finally, there will be some in person gatherings, hosted outside of the church building. We have been doing the best we can to drop in on committee meetings, small groups and online worship and will continue.

Learn more about plans to gather together for outdoor worship here.

We look forward to the ministry we will share together and the relationships we will make in our new church community. We are excited to make new disciples of Jesus Christ to transform the world. We hope that the new disciples we make as a church are young and old. We believe that there are extremely bright seasons of ministry ahead of us together as a church. Let’s get started serving together, we are looking forward to it!

Grace and peace be with you all.

See you soon,

Pastors Lindsey and Jon