Dear Edwards Church Community,
Further into this edition of the Spire is an item titled “Should we or shouldn’t we?” It deals with the pictures of former pastors of this church hanging in the sloped hallway and the deep cleaning of storage space accomplished this summer. Sandra Rossi, Deb Dietrich, Janet Tucker and, joining them for the Edwards Room kitchenette, Grace del Vecchio and Debbie Davis, have done fantastic work decluttering and reorganizing precious storage space.
We also have another Spire item about possibly donating the Coolidge family pew to the presidential museum at Forbes Library. These two matters came up at the same time quite by coincidence, but their coming up now says something to me about institutional housekeeping and my individual retirement.
Housekeeping – Inertia is a force in organizational behavior: in churches, businesses, and non-profits. We humans will keep doing something long after we forget why we started doing it. As part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of our founding, in 1983 this church put up a display of photographs of former pastors and then left it up for 40 years due more to inertia than choice. I am happy to be the pastor in place when the congregation decides to clear the way for the future.
Offering the Coolidge family pew to the museum housed at Forbes can also be thought of as an opportunity to redirect energy from preservation of the past to discerning your future as a spiritual community. Just as local gardeners have recently been clearing away the leftover, dried out material from a season of growth now ended, making way for the next cycle of new life, we can choose to treat this housekeeping as making ourselves (I mean yourselves) ready to focus on preparing for the future.
My Retirement – There are some things we started, as a partnership of pastor and church, and did not get to finish as fully as we might. My decision to retire stem in part from a persistent realization that I no longer have the reserves of energy in the late afternoon that I did five years ago. I do believe that some other “retirement age” person could effectively lead a church. But I can also honestly say that this 69 year-old man has realized he can no longer do the job in the way he feels is needed. A fresh pastoral leader with a fresh perspective will help a lot.
The relationship between pastors and congregations can become very personal. Alice, an older, life-long member of my first church in Boston, knew I was enrolled for training as an interim minister when I was preparing to leave that church. “I just can’t see you as an interim,” she said. “You get too attached to people.” I do get attached, as any caring human would. I also appreciate the value of objective assessments of what might be holding a local church back from their full potential, and that sort of objectivity gets harder to achieve or share the longer one is “part of the tribe.”
My sense of vocation – my calling and my sense of the church’s – tells me this church will be better off in the long run by taking the time now, in the long arc of its life, to do the work a church does best with an interim. I think I know what the challenges are. All of us have an idea about that. But none of us can see them at arm’s length. A good interim will help you do that. Then you will discern where to focus your energy and what sort of pastor will best help you grow toward the 200th anniversary in 2033.
I understand the profile for the Interim minister search has been approved and will be posted soon to the UCC national website. Meanwhile, as the ECM conducts the searcher, I will keep doing my best as your pastor and senior minister.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
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