Hey! Anybody Listening?!?! (aka Pastoral Transitions 2020)

Give thanks to the one who led his people through the desert—
    God’s faithful love lasts forever. (Psalm 136:16)

God heard the boy’s cries, and God’s messenger called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “Hagar! What’s wrong? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy’s cries over there.  Get up, pick up the boy, and take him by the hand because I will make of him a great nation.” (Genesis 21:17-18)

I was in a meeting of church developers and I raised the question as to what people were doing for pastors transitioning to a new church this year. At first there were crickets. Then someone spoke up and said roughly that they were moving their usual face-to-face meeting to an online option. I pushed back. This is a live question for me, because I happen to be transitioning to a new church this year. I start July 1. I cannot wrap my brain around what needs to happen between now and then, and I am not even leaving another church, but a conference office position. People who are saying goodbye and hello to a church… I can’t even imagine.

Actually, I can imagine, because in my previous life I served as a Study Abroad Advisor for 5 years, and I helped over 1200 students learn how to transition from one culture to another. Some of those transitions were easier than others, and I became rather adept at anticipating where the pitfalls would be. So I have been looking both at the moments right before us but also I am looking months ahead, deep into this transition. This year needs intentional, and very different, work as we approach walking alongside those of us who are transitioning. It seems as though for the powers that be, there are much more urgent fish to fry right now (and in many ways that is true), so while I know there is work going on toward these ends, the collective conversation is pushed far out. However, because those events have to be timed to catch the best known reality close to actual transition, that will miss many of the critical steps that are having to take place right now.

So, I have decided to be part of the solution instead of just naming the problem. I have decided to both share my training and experience in managing cultural transitions and to share my own journey of transition so that it might illuminate the paths that so many of us are trying to walk. Also, I want to name the reality that every single pastor in the United States is going through a transition this year, as are all of their parishioners. This should really be global training this year. So perhaps those of you who are staying put but having to transition your churches through the pandemic may find this useful too.

To start the conversation, however, I want to simply name some of the challenges that face us this year. The next two blogs following this one will discuss the stages of culture shock and the means of managing that process, and then I will move into the nuts and bolts reality of transition. I welcome your stories of this year’s transition too. Either email them to me at grownupbible@grownupbible.org, or put them in the comments below. 

Here are some of the challenges that pastors who are moving this summer face:

• ·        We do not have time to work on transition to the new place, because we are currently overwhelmed with transitioning our current place. And it is possible that come May/June, we will be overwhelmed again transitioning our current place to another new reality, the reality of coming out of quarantine.

• ·        Along those lines, you know how you spend the months between when it is announced that you are leaving and the day you leave winding things down? Yeah, not this year. Not only have we had to wind things up, we have actually had to start new things. That is not how this usually works at all. Not at all.

• ·        We do not know what to tell the person who is following us. We do not have any idea what church we are handing off to the person who is coming. We don't know what finances, membership, or staff will look like. We don’t know what programs will have dissolved as a result. We don’t know what church is on the other side of this period away from each other.

• ·        People are not preparing for our arrival. It is off everyone's radar. As an example, my appointment was announced in the midst of this crisis. I have had 3 welcome emails, including one from someone who works with me already in another context who was actually asking me a different question, and 3 Facebook friend requests from people at my future church. The same is true for most everyone else in transition right now - communication about the future ground to a halt because communication about the present became overwhelmingly important. Still, this is strikingly different from prior moves. I am not taking this personally - no one is looking to July 1 right now. But that also means July 1 will sneak up on all of us. 

• ·        We can't meet with staff and leadership much ahead of our arrival. Like literally we cannot meet.

• ·        We can't look for places to live. We are having to take virtual tours, or look at outsides of houses.  Or we are limited to vacated houses. Finding a place to live is proving extremely tricky.

• ·        Moving companies still at work are few and far between. Policies for moving are shifting as the understanding of Covid shifts. And boxes are proving scarce as everyone gets rid of them quickly because they potentially transmit Covid.

• ·        Also, we don't have time to do any of this. Every pastor I know has had their workload triple.

• ·        We are going into a new appointment exhausted and spent.

• ·        We are all of us going into new appointments navigating the fact that we have all been through traumas. And while the experience was collective, we did not go through it with the people we are about to serve. It is as if every congregation got hit by a tornado, but we were in a different town and went through a slightly different tornado than the people we will be serving. And then, for those of us in United Methodist churches, we get to navigate the earthquake of General Conference perhaps before the congregation trusts us.  

• ·        There may or may not have been sufficient time for closure with the pastor we are replacing. In fact, the congregation may not get to say goodbye to them at all.  How do we say hello without first saying goodbye?

Now, it seems as though all of these things are manageable, but only if we start naming them and thinking creatively about it. I believe God can and will be at work in these moves, but I also believe we could do our part to cooperate with God’s creative Spirit. I will do that part through this blog. I welcome your thoughts, as many of you are facing this reality too. 

And I am grateful for the God who always saw Hagar, and heard Ishmael, and will hear and see us even as we find ourselves wandering into uncharted territory, stumbling about in the wilderness. May that which awaits us be a blessing from God.

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash