What does one say to commemorate 10 years of ministry with TCL? It must be thank you.
Many years ago, my late mentor encouraged me to take a blank piece of paper and write anything that came to heart and mind about my call. He said it might take a few seconds or many months, but once I had it down on paper, I was to ask how this need was already being met. Are there churches or non-profits doing this work? How can I join in? How can I support and serve alongside? He said that if I found this need not being met, only then consider if I am being called to start something new. Great advice all around.
At this point I had been a pastor for a spell, I had facilitated interfaith dialogues for some years. This work had begun to blur together on its own, creating some important questions about spiritual life in the U.S. In doing this blank paper exercise, I eventually came to know something new was on the horizon.
The Church Lab’s mission is to explore innovative paths of spiritual growth for all, discovering the Church’s future and the future of faith practice. No biggie.
Ten years ago, most of us didn’t know each other. Now when I get to see each of your faces, countless cherished memories spring into my mind’s eye.
Now here we are. God making something out of nothing. Among us, inside of us even. I could not have conjured this up. TCL’s community has defined and shaped what our mission means, what it looks like, how it happens, by being who you are, together.
You have collectively defined who The Church Lab is through hundreds of dialogues, 3 pastors’ cohorts, Reimagining Service lay leader cohorts, churches with whom we’ve consulted, folks who join our workshops and trainings, folks who hang out for pastoral care and spiritual support, folks who care for each other among you during highlights and hard moments, our upcoming seminarian cohort for spiritual entrepreneurship, our board, our Advisory Council, our leadership support, my personal support system, all of our prayers, heartfelt donations and generous pledges that make this a concrete reality and more. Thanks be to God.
My own work with TCL has been harder than I could have imagined. For me, as for many faith leaders, pastoral work can bring a sense of isolation, often recovering from discrimination, implied and explicit messages of why and how The Church Lab cannot be done. It’s uphill and not ever meant to be downhill. The risks taken change but they are always high stakes. The uncertainty is certain. It can be soul crushing labor. It has involved sacrifices I did not understand I was agreeing to when I signed up for this, said yes to this call. I’m guessing at minimum other pastors reading this know exactly what I’m talking about. But God uses these challenges to form me into the kind of person and pastor I aspire to be: one always learning to love more like Jesus. This work is always changing. The lessons are always evolving. So I am so delighted and grateful for our TCL experiment not just being about the content of our ministry but also its operations. How can the future of faith practice be a wholehearted and sustainable endeavor for not just me but all vocational ministers in this season of great change for faith practice? The theologically sharp and giant hearted Ollie Jarvis has been vital in defining this when forming Team TCL. Thank you immensely. To Andrea, Natalie, Jane, Carlos, Ashlyn, Julia, Marianne, Dash, Jenelle, Laura, Stephen, and of course our board and Advisory Council…anyone who has done formal work as part of Team TCL, I am beyond grateful to you.
But my part in TCL’s story is not centrally about my own daily grind. It’s about the honor of cheering you on, in walking with you, in bearing witness to your lives. I understand my pastoral role to be like Barnabas from the New Testament of the Christian Bible: I aspire to be a daughter of encouragement. The miracle is in your allowing me to do so, knowing you were volunteering to be changed. This is beyond human; to me, this willingness alone is God’s work in and among us.
I get to see in this broken world how you exercise your faith, persevere in your lives with hope, and sometimes hope against hope. I get to see the love you extend to one another with no safety net. This is The Church Lab. You have each made it what it is by vulnerably and fully being the way God has made you to be, and seeing what happens when you do so together. You have come together to create a faith community representing any tradition and none at all. Who does that? How is that a thing? But somehow it is, by God’s grace!
You individually and collectively represent kindness, heart and depth in a world which rewards none of it. It is powerful to be around. Standing in the gap that says building bridges is not possible; we exist as proof that bridges are absolutely possible. We come together to laugh and giggle, to throw our hearts and our guts on the table, whether you left religion or dedicated your life to it, and you dare to trust that this will grow you spiritually, grow you as a person and us as a people. The bravery this takes as people who live in a very messy, divided world in a very messy time, and in a very transitional-messy moment for faith practice, is outstanding. Getting to walk with y’all in these moments again and again…that’s what has built and rebuilt my own heart again and again.
This is hard work we all engage from each of our angles. But it’s not the blood, sweat and tears that make TCL TCL. For me, it’s the letting go. It’s receiving God’s gifts for us, which we encounter in each other. It’s the surprises we didn’t expect to be changed by. It’s the conflicts we resolve, or learn to live with in care, and come out stronger through. It’s the hopelessness which encounters the hope that we hold for each other. It’s hope encountered. Faith discovered. Love-in-action, shared. It IS the embodiment of the way perfect love drives out all fear, as 1 John references.
I love discovering the future of faith practice with you, through our experiments together. I can think of no other pursuit so worthwhile and fun. And none of us know what that’ll look like for sure.
What I do know is that it has been and is an indescribable honor to dedicate my life’s work to supporting the lives y’all are committed to living. Truly, look what God has done in and among us. It cannot be described in words sufficiently. Though we have done an excellent job of hitting the highlights tonight.
I hope the following may speak to all of us, whether as a mantra or blessing or prayer. This is the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which represents to me who we are and who we’ve defined TCL to be:
Lord, make us an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Thank you. Thanks be to God for y’all. May God bless each of you and our community in The Church Lab.
My cup runneth over with Joy; may this be true for all of us as we continue life together. Amen.