To the New Settled Pastor…
Congratulations and blessings on your call to serve Peoples Church of Flint.
I’m less than 24 hours away from my last worship here, and 31 days from the start of my next gig far away. I leave with joy and sadness, and want to share what I can with you.
First, this is a healthy congregation. They worship together and love one another, even as they disagree and deliberate. They take risks, they take care of each other. They never forget the world is in pain and they are called to make it better. They are hungry to pursue God’s dream of a mended world. They are open to learning, to being challenged, to reading and being led. “Joyfully defiant for the sake of a just world” is the mission tagline here, but it is also an ethos, a way of being — joyful and defiant. I hope you will embrace that and nurture it in them and in you.
We didn’t get here easily or quickly. This congregation had a history of pastors leaving under duress, of congregants living out their angst by taking it out on each other. They bore and reflected the diminishing fortunes of a city treated so badly by corporatocracy and austerity-obsessed government, and struggled to stay hopeful and focused. And that was before the water was poisoned.
Over 8 years together, we learned to trust one another, to face forward, to believe that life was possible, to see resurrection as a daily decision to live into God’s imagination. We made hard choices — selling a beloved building, moving to a neighborhood of particular need, changing the congregation’s name when the old one seemed no longer to fit. Amazingly, folks now talk of this new building as the place they are for now, and they seem determined not to let mere habit root them poorly or hold them back. They are people who want to be faithful, vital, “impossible to ignore,” as the poet said..
We have had lots of challenges and changes.
We’ve let people go who could no longer imagine home in this place. We confronted bad behavior and sidelined some people who were determined to cause harm and chaos. We established worship as the defining center of our life, set boundaries and expectations, and learned to hold one another accountable.
We have changed almost every aspect of our life together, including our governance, how we spend our money, what we stand for, and how we worship. We have gone through scores of resumes and several false starts to put together the excellent staff that now serves here.
We have worked out how to be “safe church” – and how to welcome folks in our midst who might not be welcome anywhere else. We have learned that political and spiritual are not mutually exclusive. We have embraced our identity as a sort of island of misfit toys, a collection of people like we think Jesus himself would have gathered. And we love it.
I have seen the most joyous faces of collaboration here — not false collaboration that secretly wants to control, but collegiality and camaraderie of people who are in it together. They value the mission and will work with you for a just world.
I have also changed here.
Pastors and churches like to talk about “pulpit freedom” as if it is discretionary, something the pastor can take advantage of or not, but I have learned to see it as a responsibility, an obligation. The people of this congregation are not lazy listeners and they don’t abide lazy preaching; the world is too damaged and the times are too urgent. I hope you will embrace that.
I have also come to embrace my own not-knowing. Don’t worry that you may terrify this congregation by your doubt or fear; they will love you for your honesty and welcome your humanness. Be yourself.
I have also learned that I have a greater capacity for love than I imagined. The people of this congregation will love you despite yourself and will grant you more grace than you have known. In your awkwardness, in your flashpoints of frustration, in your forgetfulness or wrongheadedness, they will love you, some days because Jesus said to, but mostly because they are a loving bunch. I hope you will be open to that and love them in return.
There are files I leave you that will tell you some of this, but you’ll know more by joining in worship, sharing a meal, being in conversation. Honesty is a value here; they wear it well. They will tell you what you need to know. And they will trust you to return the favor.
I hope I leave behind a spirit of joy and satisfaction, of prophetic hope and righteous determination. I will hold you in prayer, with an expectation that the years you serve here will transform you — which is, after all, according to Borg, the real meaning of salvation.
Enjoy the ride.