When Rev. Mitra Rahmena resigned last September, and until you call your next Settled Minister, probably in the summer of 2020, this congregation entered into an interim period. The Interim period is about change. Interim ministry is about ministering to persons and to the institution of the church as you and it and we all together go through change. In my first sermon to you I said, \u201cHello Interims!\u201d because in this process we are all interims.
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BTW, if you want to read that sermon, or any of my sermons, I post the manuscripts on my website: rickhoyt.com
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In that sermon I talked about the long life of a church as being like a moving stream. Each of us steps into that stream at a certain point. Only the founders of the church come in at the very beginning. And this church was founded in 1913 so I doubt I\u2019m speaking to any of the Founders today.
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For the rest of us the church was already here when we joined. We stepped in and at some point, further down the stream, all of us will step out. For all the reasons that people leave a church, happy reasons or sad, free choice, or forced by circumstances, or in some cases like me, because my contract has an end date, we will come to the day of our parting from this church. We will climb up on to the shore. Grab a towel to dry ourselves off. And then turn to take a last look as the church moves on without us down the stream.
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So we\u2019re all interims. Whether our interim period is long or short most of us can\u2019t know. But knowing that the end point is coming, eventually, for all of us, can help us prepare. That\u2019s what being an interim feels like from the inside, from the point of being the interim. Knowing that there will come a day when we must say goodbye to all this: the church, this community, eventually, of course, to life itself.
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And for more about life\u2019s ending I invite you to join me and Michael Lyde at the Death Caf\u00e9 program we\u2019re offering this Thursday evening.
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But there is another perspective to this fact of living and dying, to this fact of stream-entering and stream-exiting and the space in between.
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It is our experience of the church while we\u2019re in the church-stream that people are constantly joining and leaving: hello-ing and goodbye-ing. From our point of view in the stream, while we\u2019re in it, strangers are all the time joining us, becoming friends, becoming beloved members, joining us in covenant, working beside us (or swimming beside us to stay with the metaphor) and then for any of those reasons that eventually might be the reason we will leave, some of those folks come to their time to leave. They step out of the stream. They step away from us.
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The hello-ing is nice.\u00a0 But the goodbye-ing hurts.\u00a0 That hurts.\u00a0 That has to hurt.\u00a0 That it hurts is a good thing because that is the agreement of love.\u00a0 When we open ourselves deeply.\u00a0 When we include another person in our community of care.\u00a0 When we involve ourselves in another person\u2019s life and let them be involved in our lives we receive the pleasure and fulfillment of an experience of life that stretches us beyond the ego boundaries of ourselves alone\u2026 Yes, and\u2026in the bargain we also accept the inevitability that there will come a time when we will separate from the one we love, and we will suffer loss.\u00a0 Our hearts will break.\u00a0 Our community will feel torn apart.\u00a0 A piece of the expanded experience that we had come to know as \u201courselves\u201d will be revealed once more as separable.\u00a0 When that stranger turned friend goes away, a piece of us will go with them.
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Every change is like that. Which is why change is so difficult. Change that involves the loss of personal connections, friends, family, loved ones, church community are all a species of the same challenging experience of loss. We feel bereft. We go into mourning. People respond to change with different emotions and with different degrees of intensity. But no one\u2019s immune. Every change begins with loss. And loss is always hard.
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This congregation has been through a lot of change lately, and that means a lot of loss.
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Your minister, The Reverend Mitra Rahmena, resigned unexpectedly at the end of September. She\u2019d been in the stream with you for six years. So there\u2019s a loss. You feel it. A long-time and beloved Music Director resigned a few years ago; there\u2019s a loss. And then there was the tragic loss through the death of a new Music Director. An Office Administrator stepped out of the stream this fall. Some of you have been around long enough to remember when Rev. Marguerite Lovett, the previous settled minister stepped out of the stream, or when Tamara Cassanova, a long term Director of Religious Education stepped out of the stream. More loss. Other staff have come and gone. You know these names and stories better than I; I\u2019m still learning. More importantly you knew these people. And you\u2019ve borne the loss of church members, too. Lay leaders. Friends in the church who left for happy or sad reasons, some who felt like an anchor of stability in the congregation that we just couldn\u2019t do with out.
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And then, Rev. Judy Tomlinson entered the stream as a Bridge Minister between Mitra\u2019s last day and whenever an Interim Minister could be identified and get started. And Judy\u2019s ministry was welcomed and necessary and started the process of healing from loss, and then necessarily her bridge-ministry ended, I arrived, and there\u2019s another loss as Judy stepped away, stepped out of the stream.
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Here\u2019s some feelings you might be feeling: shock, mourning, \u201cfight or flight\u201d, yes? And. Disorientation. Turmoil. Anxiety. Like the support has been knocked out from under you. Maybe you\u2019re feeling anger, looking for someone to blame. Or maybe you\u2019re feeling the loss is partly your fault, a lot of us do that, and feelings don\u2019t have to be \u201ctrue\u201d in order to be felt. So you might feel guilty. Maybe you\u2019re just feeling depressed, detached, or numb. Maybe you\u2019re not feeling anything, or no feeling that you can name.
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And let\u2019s be honest, some of you might be feeling excited, hopeful, and eager. Some of us, in this room, don\u2019t know what the fuss is all about and are ready to move on already.
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All of that is OK. It\u2019s OK to feel what you feel. No one needs to \u201cget with the program.\u201d Eventually, yes, unresolved mourning can become unhealthy, but we aren\u2019t there yet. Go at your own pace. And as long as you still feel like you\u2019re going through it, you\u2019re doing OK. Where-ever you are. That\u2019s where you are. And that\u2019s OK. You\u2019re OK.
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When forced to experience a change, and knowing that change requires loss, our first response is to resist the change. The first response for most people is to minimize the change in one of two ways.
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If we experienced the previous reality in a positive way, then our response will be to quickly remake the old reality as exactly as we can. If we experienced the previous reality in a negative way, then our response will be to quickly re-create an even earlier reality that we perceived as positive. In either case, we work to resolve our anxiety about the future by creating in the present a model that we know from the past. Knowledge and certainty is very comforting during a time of change. So to ease our anxiety about the future we look to what we know, and certain knowledge only exists in the past.
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So for example, thinking about churches, and thinking generally about the situation of Interim Ministry that all churches go through from time to time. Imagine that a reasonably long-term settled minister leaves the church for happy or sad reasons. There will be some folks who experienced that ministry positively and their natural response will be to say, \u201cWell that\u2019s a blow. But we\u2019re doing fine. What we need is another minister just like dear old Rev. Recently Gone. In fact, let\u2019s avoid all the uncertainty and anxiety of an Interim Ministry let\u2019s just go find Rev. Recently Gone II and keep going.\u201d
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But it might be that some folks in the church weren\u2019t that excited about Rev. Recently Gone\u2019s ministry. They never really warmed up to Rev. Recently Gone\u2019s particular style. For them, frankly, the loss feels a little like a relief. For them, they might say, \u201cNow\u2019s the time to get this church back on the right path, the way it was before Rev. Recently Gone came in and started changing things. What we need is new leadership like dear old Rev. Prior Minister, remember them? In fact, let\u2019s avoid all the uncertainty and anxiety of an Interim Ministry, let\u2019s just go find Rev. Prior Minister II and keep going.\u201d
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Now obviously, if you have both kinds of people in one congregation, holding both positive and negative feelings about the most recent minister or the one before that, you\u2019re going to have a problem going right out and finding your next minister the same as the old one. Acknowledging the reality that congregations have complex and contradictory feelings about previous ministers is part of what constitutes the ministry of Interim Ministry, helping a congregation see that they probably shouldn\u2019t assume that every church member shares the same feelings about the ministry example they just experienced, or the one before that.
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So we can\u2019t just avoid all the uncertainty and anxiety of an Interim Ministry. We can\u2019t. Those two options of recreating the immediate or more distant ministries of the past won\u2019t work. Fortunately there\u2019s a third way.
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The future of the church lies in the future. That\u2019s where we\u2019re headed. The future is where we\u2019re going. That\u2019s the third way. Where we go from here is not back to any beloved past, but onward to the future. We can\u2019t go upstream, if you remember that metaphor. We\u2019ve got to go forward, around that bend in the river. And who knows, what we may find there?
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Well who knows?\u00a0 No one knows.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we\u2019re tempted to recreate the past.\u00a0 The path of the stream once it gets around that bend is unknowable.\u00a0 To keep going that way means to accept uncertainty.\u00a0 Mystery.\u00a0 But the truth is we\u2019re going that way whether we like it or not.\u00a0 The stream is sweeping us along.\u00a0 So the spiritual work required for this interim time is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, to accept the coming uncertainty, the mystery.\u00a0 We can resist, but not forever, and resisting takes up a lot of energy that we could put to better use.\u00a0 The future of this church is downstream.\u00a0 To be successful we will need some courage.\u00a0 We will need some trust.\u00a0 We will need creativity, experimentation, playfulness, risk, all the gifts and strengths of this community that we have always relied on.\u00a0 We need faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though days be dark with storms
And burdens weigh my heart
Though troubles wait at every turn,\u00a0
I know I can go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So brothers take my hand
And sisters sing my song,
When hope awaits at every turn,
I know we will go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To turn this interim period from a time of anxiety to a time of hope, is to reframe this period as an opportunity instead of a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The loss of one way of doing church feels like a problem we need to solve.\u00a0 And the sooner the better.\u00a0 When we have a problem; we solve it.\u00a0 That\u2019s how we work.\u00a0 This approach works well for recreating the past.\u00a0 And some problems are like this.\u00a0 It\u2019s called a \u201ctechnical\u201d problem.\u00a0 If a light bulb burns out you don\u2019t have to buy a new lamp, you just change the light bulb.\u00a0 We solve the problem within the same system that we had in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when a light bulb goes out, there is, for a short period, an interim period, an opportunity to do something different.\u00a0 Maybe now is the time to buy a new lamp.\u00a0 Maybe, you decide you don\u2019t need a lamp there at all.\u00a0 Maybe now\u2019s an opportunity to switch to a more energy efficient kind of bulb, and maybe the old lamp won\u2019t work with that kind of bulb.\u00a0 In this situation, instead of having a technical problem, you have an adaptive problem.\u00a0 Not just the bulb needs to be changed, but the whole system of lighting the room needs to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A technical problem is a problem where the solution lies within the existing system.\u00a0 You already know what you need to know.\u00a0 You apply a tool you already know how to use.\u00a0 A piece is broken but the system is fine.\u00a0 You fix the piece and leave the system in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An adaptive problem is a problem where the solution requires a whole new system.\u00a0 You don\u2019t know all that you need to know.\u00a0 The tools you have aren\u2019t appropriate.\u00a0 And when the solution appears the new reality won\u2019t be like the past.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be in a whole new world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, that feels scary.\u00a0 Go ahead and feel what you feel.\u00a0 But recognize also that this interim period gives us an incredible and valuable opportunity to create something new:\u00a0 a new system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are building a new way.
Feeling stronger everyday,
We are building a new way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been using a stream metaphor to talk about the flow of time, the life of a church.\u00a0 But there\u2019s one way that streams and churches are different, because landscapes and time are different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If churches were like streams moving through a physical landscape, we would have a technical problem:\u00a0 how to keep ourselves afloat as the stream carries us around the bend.\u00a0 But churches are like everything else that moves through time.\u00a0 The past is set but the future is open.\u00a0 We don\u2019t just move through our lives, we also partly create our lives as we go.\u00a0 So life, including the life of churches, is an endless adaptive challenge.\u00a0 We\u2019re not just changing light bulbs.\u00a0 We\u2019re changing worlds.\u00a0 We\u2019re not just concerned with floating where the stream takes us, we\u2019re also creating the course of the stream.\u00a0 Where the stream goes from here is up to us.\u00a0 We decide.\u00a0 We talk and ponder, and dream and discuss.\u00a0 We look within.\u00a0 We listen to others.\u00a0 We learn something new about our church and our mission for today.\u00a0 And then we set the course for our future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there\u2019s our opportunity.\u00a0 There\u2019s our adaptive challenge.\u00a0 There\u2019s our work.\u00a0 There\u2019s our interim ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Christian liturgical calendar, we entered this week into the season of Lent.\u00a0 Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, which was the same day as Valentine\u2019s Day this year.\u00a0 You might have celebrated Mardi Gras last Tuesday which was traditionally the last day that you could party and feast before you entered the 40 days of Lent which is marked with fasting.\u00a0 Lent ends, 40 days from now with Easter (not counting the Sundays).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During these 6 weeks plus the four days we\u2019ve already had, the work of Lent is to contemplate our mortality.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Christians get marked with ashes on Ash Wednesday.\u00a0 \u201cAshes to ashes.\u00a0 Dust to dust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not Christian.\u00a0 But I appreciate the spiritual lesson of Lent, which I interpret as an annual reminder that nothing lasts.\u00a0 Not even us.\u00a0 Nothing is permanent.\u00a0 Things that have beginnings have endings.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good lesson to know.\u00a0 And we need an annual reminder because we forget.\u00a0 Lent reminds us that change is inevitable and even constant.\u00a0 So too, then, loss is inevitable and even constant.\u00a0 We will go one day.\u00a0 We will step out of every stream we ever enter.\u00a0 And meanwhile the things in our lives and the people we love will also in their time take their leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where you find comfort in the face of that spiritual truth is part of what defines your spiritual path.\u00a0 For me, I find comfort in seeing that for today, today is pretty good.\u00a0 I\u2019m here.\u00a0 I\u2019m alive.\u00a0 I\u2019m surrounded by love.\u00a0 The water feels pretty good.\u00a0 And I get to choose, partly, where the stream goes from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So let\u2019s swim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"