Pastor's Message
June 2008
Greetings Children of God:
One of the things I am worried about as I serve Emmanuel as its interim deals with an important question. Is Emmanuel feeling its age? Several of you have been honest enough with me to talk about how many times Emmanuel has gone through different pastors and different situations. I recognize how that can make a congregation begin to feel its age. Pain and loss eventually takes it toll on people often adding to each that sense of "feeling their age". I have added up the number of funerals and memorials services I have attended or presided at in the last year. I am just shy of two dozen. Even as I write potential funeral/memorial services are possible in the near future.
This can really play with my mind and cause me to feel the aches and pains of life far more than I might without these memorial/funeral services. I assume this is also true with a congregation as it goes through similar deaths and losses as a community of faith. It can cause one to look inward and become highly introspective at many levels. It can even lead towards a level of depression if a community is not aware of these "transitions".
We then can begin to feel our age and act like we are tired, worn out, and aching all over. What do we do when this happens? Well, I start praying more fervently. I then begin doing things and looking outward. I try to serve others by becoming less concerned about myself. I ask God where God wants me to go and what God wants me to do. More often than not when I start to focus on such questions what often happens to me is a miraculous transformation! I stop acting my age and a renewed vitality and youthful attitude fills my life. (My joints don’t stop aching, but they seem less of a problem for me.)
I have been promoting for some time now a need for Emmanuel to think about going through a "transformation". I don't know if any of you are getting what I am talking about. I suspect there is a great deal of limitations in such a thought for most of you. Transformation means that changes happen at the deepest levels of a community of faith. The primary starting point is prayer and scripture that ask questions about "being" the body of Christ instead of simply "doing" church Sunday after Sunday. The community of faith looks at its current assets and resources and then asks how we can serve God's will in the larger community. We come to realize that even in caring for ourselves we are ultimately doing this so we can care for all our sisters and brothers outside our regular Sunday morning times. It assumes that its structure and normal processes will need to be evaluated and even altered in order to become "slaves to Christ and servants to the world". It trusts that its greatest assets is not in its pastor, and not even in its own people, but in the power of God to lead, guide and empower their entire community of faith.
It struggles with shifting its understanding of what the church is and does. This shift looks something like this according to Rouse and Van Gelder:
FROM: |
TO: |
|---|---|
Maintenance |
Mission |
Membership |
Discipleship |
Pastor-Centered |
Lay Empowered |
Chaplaincy (Self) |
Hospitality (Others) |
Focus on Ourselves |
Focus on The World |
Settled |
Sent |
You need to pray and think carefully as you seek your next pastor in my opinion. You can ask the standard questions but you may want to think deeply about this community of faith’s future before you come to 2009 and your 150th Anniversary.
One of Christ’s servants,
Pastor David Hendricks - Child of God/I.I.M.