Our Story
Eugene Peterson once said, “The job of a pastor is to pay attention to what’s happening here.” The pastors responsibility is to live with eyes open, paying attention to what God is doing in a particular community. We are to pay attention to what God is inviting us to, how we are responding to what He’s inviting us to and how He would have have us respond to what He’s inviting us to. So I have found this simple counsel from Peterson to be profoundly helpful.
As a result of it, I’ve spent an immense amount of time this past year attempting to pay attention to what’s happening in our community. The deeper I look, the more two realities become more and more obvious to me:
1. The church we are is different than the church we set out to start.
We started Ridgeline out of the most traumatic ministry season in my life. We moved to Salt Lake so worn out, I didn’t know which way was up. As a result, I didn’t have a strong sense of who God wanted Ridgeline to be. What I had was a strong sense of who we would not be. The good news is, Ridgeline has been for me, the same thing it’s been for so many: a safe place to heal. As a result of this healing, I’ve become a very different person and a very different pastor. I’ve learned much about what I am and what I’m not. I’ve learned that I am a son of God before anything else. I’m a teacher, more than preacher. I’m a spiritual director, who loves helping people cultivate deeper intimacy with God.
We moved to Salt Lake almost five years ago. I had no idea how much of God’s plan for Ridgeline involved my own healing and how much my own healing would have a profound impact on my pastoring and on our community. The result of all this is that the church we are is different than the church we set out to plant. But that’s not all.
2. We have all walked through a global trauma that has changed us.
The combination of events that took place in 2020 and 2021 changed so many behaviors in all our lives. Some of us are aware of the impact. Some of us aren’t. Regardless, I don’t believe anyone is the same. Many have felt so overwhelmed that our capacity has been severely diminished. We became accustomed to “worship services” being something we consume at our own leisure, rather than a life-altering event in which we participate. We were isolated. Some of us were alone with our thoughts and feelings for the first time and what we found was scary. Relationships were tested and some didn’t survive. Faith was tested and for some, it didn’t survive. Politics became the true religion of many professing Christians. Some of us lost people we loved.
The point is, you don’t walk through an experience like this unfazed. We changed. Some of that change was necessary and good. Some of it was unhelpful and as result, is going to require a significant reset in our lives.
In this process of “paying attention to what’s happening here,” something has become increasingly clear to me:
We desperately need to align around who God is inviting us to become.
We need to reset personally and we need to reset as a community: We need to intentionally release who we thought we would be and align around who we actually are.
In Scripture when who someone has been is incongruent with who God is inviting them to become, He gives them a new name. He changed Abram to Abraham. He changed Sarai to Sarah. He changed Jacob to Israel. He changed Simon to Peter and He changed Saul to Paul.
If we’re going to reset many of the behaviors we’ve adopted and fully embrace who God is inviting us to become, I think it’s critical that we allow Him to give us a new name. A name that’s more indicative of our true identity.
Ridgeline has been a healing gift and I believe God has so much more He longs to do. To that end I believe He’s inviting us to become Formation Church. We want to be a safe place for hurting people to find healing relationship with Jesus.
But I believe God’s inviting us to more than a name change and rebrand. This is a matter of more fully embracing all that we love about what Ridgeline has become and allowing God to expand it more and more as Formation Church.
Formation is God’s purpose for our church and every church that sets out to follow Jesus together. He intends that each of us position our lives to be formed in the image of Jesus for the sake of others. If that’s God’s purpose for our church, then it only makes sense that Formation would be our very identity. But again, a true reset demands more then simply changing our name. We have to learn to order our lives around this new identity. That will demand intention.
To that end, we’re intentionally stepping back from Sunday morning worship services in July, August and September and into a three month season of learning together how to fully embody this new identity before relaunching as Formation Church on September 25, 2022 (which also happens to be Ridgeline’s 4th birthday).
None of us knows exactly what the future holds.
What I do know is that God is with us.
I know God has a good plan for our church.
I know that more people will find healing relationship with Jesus.
I know that we will all be changed through this process because that is what God does.
So welcome to our next chapter together. Welcome to Formation.
Pastor Ryan Huguley | Lead Pastor