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