Dear Edwards Church Community,
Happy New Year! I wish all of you the best in this New Year and in all the years to come. It has been deeply gratifying to serve as your pastor, and as the first one to be officially the senior minster and head of staff.
I am now away from Edwards until Monday, January 6. Accompanied by our children and grandchildren, Frances and I are celebrating the day 40 years ago when we promised to be together and support each other, ‘til death do us part. It has been 14 years – 11 and a half here and two and a half serving in Centerville on Cape Cod – since we maintained the same address seven days a week. Among my Christmas presents are a couple of “healthy” cookbooks, a gym membership, and the sweet anticipation of setting into a new shared rhythm.
On February 2, I will be retiring and a wonderful interim minister, Rev. Jennifer Geary, will start as you begin a new phase of your journey, while mine continues along a different road. What brought us together will remain: a shared commitment to living in the Way that Jesus taught. I hope that will remain a defining feature of this community.
In his first letter to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul wrote about his ministry there: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:6) Paul was one of the pastors of the community in Corinth, and Apollos was another after him. Both served God within and through the local church, each in their own time.
For the last 11 years, I have been focused on helping you deepen your faith and the church’s ties to the wider community, not just so Edwards could be recognized for serving the wider community, but so that people who are not part of this church might see evidence that following Jesus means loving your neighbor. When we have gathered on Sundays or other days, it has always been a major part of my purpose to deepen our roots and become even more grounded in God, so that we can be fed for the work of loving, whether that loving is person to person or supporting something programmatic.
That work will never be finished, but the mere act of doing it with some consistency and seeing progress over time is fulfilling. Leaving when there is work unfinished is bittersweet. Bitter because I do care deeply about you as individuals and as a community, and I will miss you. Sweet because even with occasional challenges, I think we were good for each other. We stretched each other and supported each other in growing, as together we followed the Way of Jesus. Like any good partnership, we called on each other to grow in ways we anticipated and in ways required by our shared commitments when unforeseen events occurred.
On Christmas Eve, I spoke about Howard Thurman’s poem “The Growing Edge,” in which he urges all of us to find renewed hope and the will to carry on when we become discouraged, because “roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth.” You could, with Thurman’s blessing, think of that darkness of the earth as the ground of God and those roots as you reaching out for the same Spirit that was in Jesus. My role has provided me with the privileged perspective of knowing you in your Sunday morning best, and sometimes in the messier parts of personal and congregational life. That access helps me appreciate how much can happen here, because you are already rooted and grounded deep in the Spirit.
I have abiding confidence that your growth will be helped greatly by Rev. Geary, but it will not be her alone. It will also need to be helped along by your willingness to try new things, to trust each other, and be ready to fail and try again. More than anything, I believe it will depend on how much you are willing to work – within reasonable limits – like it depends on you, and then rest and play together, knowing that it also depends on God. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” May it be so, and may it be soon enough to see the fruits of your labor.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
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