Thoughts from Our Bridge Pastor
Rev. Barbara K. Peronteau
Thoughts from the Pastor…
For the devotion before and after last month’s council meeting, I used the imagery of being in a boat and feeling the presence of God as the waves gently lap against the boat and feeling the warmth of the sun. Together we would decide which shore would be our destination and then we would all row in the same direction. At the end of the meeting someone pointed out something I wouldn’t have known, but at one time one of your previous interim pastors also used similar imagery about boats and how we all might want to be in the same boat rowing in the same direction.
Since then, I’ve been thinking about another image, not only about ACC, but about other churches, specifically and in general. We are all in the same boat after all. I was toying with this idea whether I should or shouldn’t use this other image. Would it even be relevant for me as the Bridge Pastor to even talk about? Perhaps it would be something for the new pastor to talk about. Then I read Rev. Daniel Ross-Jones’ meditation in this week’s NCNC News, Let’s Talk: About You, Me & We. Daniel’s thoughts pushed me over the edge. So, here it goes.
As a young pastor serving a church in the Western Slopes of Colorado, way back in the very late 1980s, I was on the Rocky Mountain Conference Youth Committee. Our task was to envision what the large conference-wide youth events of summer and winter would be and how all that would happen. It was like coming up with a theme party every six months and then figuring out who’s doing what and when.
As I remember, there were four adults and about ten youth from around the conference on the youth committee. The youth were integral to the whole process. There are different models and paradigms we could have used on how to structure the committee. We could have been top down where there was one adult in charge, the other adults doing what was always done, and telling the youth what to do. We didn’t do that.
Instead, we took a model from Group Magazine. While their theology leans toward the conservative side, their group process was almost infallible. Picture a wagon wheel. The hub was our mission. The wheel needs the hub. The hub is what keeps the wheel, and the committee, together. Our hub was coming up with a theme for the next event and then implementing it. The spokes were the people. While the spokes could be interchangeable, each spoke – each person - was necessary for the wheel to remain balanced. Notice the process is not hierarchical, but equal. The rim, of course, appeared when we all pitched in and followed through with what we said we would do. That way everything would roll along nicely.
In this odd time of Covid and not Covid, this liminal space on the threshold of in-between now and what’s next, it will take all of us to determine and figure out our mission. What it is we are about. What’s next for us? What is our hub that keeps us together and focused? What shore are we rowing to? And then to be there for each other and others. That’s ministry and mission.
See you in church.
Peace and keep on rolling.
~ Pastor Barbara