Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

A few weeks ago, my seven year anniversary as rector at St. George’s, Valley Lee came and went. I was away at summer camp, actually, having a wonderful time and I only remembered the anniversary after our treasurer sent me a congratulations email last week.

Seven years, they say, is a full period of time. At and after seven years, there is supposed to be a transition. The writer of Deuteronomy talks about the end of that period as being the time to forgive all debts, and it’s obvious that something has to change – or, in reality, has already changed – seven years in.

There are clear procedures in some Christian churches for dealing with the seven year transition period. Many of these practices are developed on the basis of secular, managerial practices, and there is some truth in them. My uncle, a faithful Churchman himself, served as an officer in the United States Navy for his entire career. The Navy, he often tells me, regularly and repeatedly turns over its personnel – officers and enlisted folk – some at periodic intervals, but never longer than seven years. (This isn’t actually correct in every situation, but it sounds good as a talking point!) The purpose, my uncle tells me, is larger than the individual and key to organizational growth: it helps keep up energy, helps maintain the essential tension between centralized and decentralized authority. An institution that keeps turning over its people never grows stale. Or so the argument goes.

The issue, for me, is that I still feel called to St. George’s, Valley Lee and to St. Mary’s County, Maryland and the good work we are doing in our Diocese of Washington to plant and, yes, grow The Episcopal Church in St. Mary’s County. Last year our bishop asked me, and I undertook, an intentional process of asking God in prayer whether I am still called to this place at this time. The answer came back, ‘Yes.’

But our bishop also asked me to understand that even though I may still be called my own functioning and my style of leadership and who we have become over the past seven years may need to be re-discerned and, perhaps, changed and revised. I have begun to do this, chiefly with myself and my spiritual director but also with the congregation of St. George’s. I don’t know exactly what this means or how it will look, in time, but being able to practice this type of honesty and vulnerability, while still serving as priest and leader among leaders, is refreshing. Perhaps this is what we were trying to say when we talked so much about mutual ministry reviews in the past decade.

I also suspect that underneath St. George’s conversation about musical revitalization – which I wrote about in an earlier Vital Practices post – there is this larger and more awesome set of issues about change and functioning. In seven years, we have together grown this church into a small, strong congregation, to borrow the words of author and pastor Kennon Callahan.

Now at St. George's we are asking ourselves 'Why?', 'For what purpose?' The reality is that the world needs strong, small communities of faith. In part, what we are talking about when we talk about musical revitalization and adding a new freshness to our worship life has to do with creating a whole new model of what it means to be lively and strong parish church – not for the life of the church, necessarily, but for the life of the world. Our music, then, is not ours in any ownership sense but one way we could better tell, indeed sing the story of how our life is caught up with God’s life in Christ.

A lot of these are big changes and I know I wouldn’t feel ready for them if I didn’t hear a clear call from God that I am to be in this place at this time. But a lot of these big changes, and even my willingness to hear what God is saying, has come about because I have been honest with the people of Valley Lee – and I have asked them to be honest with me as we enter together our next new chapter.