A WORD FROM YOUR INTERIM PASTOR
It has been well over a year now since Pastor Tim left Holy Trinity. In that time, many of you have been working very hard, in tandem with the New England Synod, to move forward in the process of discerning the call of a new pastor. You dutifully completed the congregational assessment tool (CAT) used by the Synod for transitions, met to discuss the results, assembled a team of writers to author a ministry site profile (MSP), and pulled together a Call Committee, who, in turn, has been interviewing candidates. Even so, and despite everyone’s best efforts, things are moving slowly and it feels sometimes as if no progress is being made.
The problem, of course, is that this is a very challenging environment in which to search for a new pastor as so many churches are competing for a smaller and smaller pool of qualified candidates. It is easy, given all this, to become frustrated and despondent.
In times like this, I have found comfort and wisdom in a beautiful prayer by the French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. It is entitled “The Slow Work of God” and it goes like this:
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are all, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new; and yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -- and that it may take a very long time to get where we are going. And so it is with you. Your future matures gradually -- let it grow, let it shape itself, without undue haste. Don’t try to force what is to come, as though you could be today what only God’s grace will make you tomorrow. Only God can say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give God the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in the wondrous suspense of being incomplete, trusting that God is guiding you where you need to go, guiding you into His Truth.”
The fact is that these times of transition, as unsettling as they can be, are also filled with great grace. I know that I have experienced many moments of such grace in the time I have been here with you. I hope you feel the same way. Together, let’s trust that God is slowly but surely leading us all to where we need to be. The journey may not always be comfortable or easy, but it wouldn’t be called the Way of the Cross if it were.