Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Growing up in a competitive, game-playing family, if I was thoroughly thumped during a card game, then the score promptly went up on the refrigerator.

The good-natured taunts of “refrigerator score” would begin about midway through a game, particularly if I had fallen a trick short of the bid in Spades.

At my home, I’ve had one refrigerator score posted for four years. It’s the last card game my mom and dad played with us before we learned they were getting a divorce.

For awhile, I held onto that scrap of paper in the hope that life would return to that afternoon, that my parents wouldn’t separate and I wouldn’t be forced to acknowledge their unhappiness. In time, I’ve been able to look at the score card without feeling the stab of pain and the ache of loss. And on some days, I can see past that frozen moment of time and into the years of laughing and joking, teasing and taunting around kitchen and picnic tables, from childhood to my own home.

My husband announced yesterday that he accepted a call to serve a new congregation. We are excited about the adventure and believe God has called us into this new ministry and community. But answering this call means saying goodbye to people we love. 

And for the people of the two churches he currently serves, it means a time of uncertainty, of searching for who God is calling them to be and the type of leadership they want to help respond to that call. 

For awhile, there will be tangible reminders of change. A new preacher on Sundays. New visitors to the sick. Different teachers for Wednesday night Bible study and Sunday night youth group. And more than that, new leaders – both lay and ordained – will bring changes in direction, from worship style and spiritual formation to the types of outreach and evangelism. 

In time and through prayer, both congregations will find new ways of living into the Gospel and in community. And memories of how things used to be will be transformed from loss to opportunity, from grief to sweet remembrance. 

That refrigerator score will come to our new home, not as an albatross to the past but as a snapshot of one day in a life full of change, promise, disappointments and joys.