Wilder View - June 2010

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” - Ecclesiastes 3:1

I have had the privilege of sharing many seasons with Sharon. Our first season was when we were both in the exploration and wonder of going into ministry. We were both part time staff members at Webster Hills UMC and were filled with wonderment that God could call us and use us in ministry. It was a season of newness.

We shared another season as I was first appointed to Lafayette Park and Sharon served as our intern while she was in seminary. A season of questions – why do you do this, have you thought about doing this. What is the story behind… what if we tried this? This was a season of experimentation and learning.

And then we shared another season… a season in which we served the people of Lafayette Park. Time was spent on how we could better care for those we serve. This was a time of perfecting pastoral skills and learning administration. It was a season of preparing to be a seasoned pastor.
Now a new season begins. A season of soaring above the clouds! Shortly, Pastor Sharon will begin a new season, a season of serving as pastor to two churches. She will start the season of falling in love with more of God’s people. She will learn the unique gifts that are within those churches and will help those gifts become nourished and begin to grow.

We at Lafayette Park UMC also enter a new season. This will be a season of discernment as we seek out specific areas where we would like to grow. We will call forth gifts of ministry within the congregation so that we all may grow into using the gifts that God has placed within us.

Every season contains joys and sorrows, life and death, tears and laughter. Let us enter into this new season with the expectant hope of the God that is the giver of life and love, and ask God to plant within us the new growth we hunger for in our churches.

May God bless Pastor Sharon and her two new churches as they enter into this new season of hope and growth. May God bless Lafayette Park as we enter into this new season of hope and growth.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

~Pastor Kathleen

Time with Sharon: Practicing Our Goodbyes

From Lafayette Park UMC-Pastor's Blog

June 2010

Now the LORD said to Abram: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” - Genesis 12:1

Some years ago, when I began the exploration of my call to Ordained Ministry, I met with a mentor, whose task it was to help me make some sense of the intense yearnings of my heart scrambled together with a boatload of objections coming from my head. When I finally realized I must leave my home church of nearly 20 years to go onto a new place for ministry, I was hit by the profound impact of leaving the community that I had grown to love and serve. My wise mentor suggested that if I was to become a United Methodist pastor, then I had better start practicing my goodbyes. She was referring, of course, to the itinerant nature of our ministries, moving from church to church as our bishop finds need for our gifts and graces.

Leaving my home church was painful and some of the goodbyes tear-filled. I had raised my children there, developed close friendships there, and come to a deeper, more vibrant faith there. Sort of like Abram, only in a car instead of a camel, and on a highway in stead of on a desert path, I trusted in God as I left what I knew and set out on a journey into the future. God’s path for me, via Highway 44, brought me to this place, Lafayette Park United Methodist Church. Here, I enjoyed a warm welcome into this zesty community of believers. Here I was invited to witness to God in the unfolding of your personal stories. Here, I have tasted the sweetness of the bread of diversity, and drunk deeply from the chalice of grace. You are my friends, my community, my kindred. And yet…I am called to practice my goodbyes again. I have no doubt that your sendoff will be as gracious as your welcome. That is who you are.

Welcoming and sending. Gosh, when you think about it, that’s an integral part of what we do in the church. Into our midst and heart, we welcome visitors in worship each week. We welcome as littlest members, babies fresh with the splash of the baptismal waters still upon their cheeks. We welcome home long-missed folks returning from journeys to other lands. And we welcome new workers to the vineyard. Together, we pray, we worship, we hear the Word spoken, and we respond. But it doesn’t stop there. If it did, eventually, the gospel message would die. No, at the end of our time together, we are commissioned, scattered, sent out. Like little Abrams, we journey with God to our places of work and leisure, to witness our faith in “the land that God will show us.”

And so, goodbyes are every bit as important a part of our loving God and each other as our hellos. I leave you, my friends, to take up a new appointment in the Gateway Regional District. My little rural churches are in a far-off land from LPUMC. As my season with you ends, I am assured of your blessings, and your love. I shall saddle up my little Prius, packed full of memories and experiences. Confident that you will continue the work of welcoming and sending that defines us as Christians, I will head west, “to the land that God will show…to me.”

Goodbye, and may God bless you and keep you always,

From Pastor Sharon Kichline Ordination

Pastor Sharon