How Skyline Has Changed Me - January 26, 2011

(Note: I wrote this Blog the morning after I learned that the Bishop had appointed me to leave Skyline after 14 years. At the time, I did not know which church I would be privileged to serve, but only that I would have to leave. I remembered an old pastor prophesying that Skyline would change me and I took the time this cold January morning to reflect on how Skyline had changed me in the last 14 years.)

Since arriving with my wife and co-pastor, Vicki, at Skyline in the Summer of 1997, I have matured in the areas of conflict management, postmodern theology, evangelism and ecclesiology, and clergy-lay partnership in ministry. The experience as co-pastor here for 14 years, through two church splits and a two million dollar construction project, has given me deeper insight into faith, pastoral leadership, and who God creates and calls me to be as a person. I have exchanged a one-size-fits-all church "growth" model for a more responsive emerging church model at resonates especially with people in search of a faith relevant to postmodern life.

At Skyline, I have come to see the role of pastor in the context of the ministry of all believers. Our lay partners in ministry here have taught me both the extraordinary power of God's Spirit poured out on all believers as well as the perspective of pastoral leadership in articulating both the shape of God's presence in the gathered believers and the trajectory of God's movement among God's people. At seminary, I came to accept the dogma of a gulf between professional and lay Christians. The people at Skyline have given the lie to this myth, and have encouraged me to speak the truth in love as I have listened to and witnessed the courageous power of their faith.

I have witnessed the best and worst in people here and in myself, and have come to rely time and again on the miracle of God's forgiveness for us all. At times this miracle leads to a transformation in others, but always it opens the way to an inner transformation in me. The most profound change I have experienced as co-pastor here involves the peace these repeated and sustained transformations have wrought in my soul. Peace in parting (by death or other leave-taking); peace in the stillness of waiting (while God's presence deepens); and peace in witnessing in awe and wonder that truly "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose".

That peace in Christ, as a weaned child on its mother's breast (a bittersweet comfort if ever there was one!), has become the only meaningful consolation and affirmation of the narrow way I am following. That peace has calmed my inner fears and doubts, and stilled the raging storm of my ego and anxiety when all around me seems to indicate failure and danger. That peace has become the author of my faith in God, in cemeteries and contentious meetings, whether the people of God (or especially when I, myself) fulfill, exceed, or fail to meet my expectations.

Most especially, that peace has sustained me when the image I carry of God burns to ash in the fire of life. In the wake of that profound silence, I have learned to pray in the darkness until light shines again - knowing beyond understanding that it shines whether I sense it or not. I have walked often enough in the valley of the shadow of the death of my dreams and of my faith in God at Skyline, with a changing cast of companions on this journey who encourage and confound, challenge and heal me along the way - but without fear. I have learned that in the faithful act of returning to the grave to minister as I am able, resurrection dawns, and with it, a transformation of the relationship and the calling I thought I had known.

Dying and rising so many times here, I have learned to leap into chasms of darkness in the exhilarating knowledge that falling does not kill me - the fear that pins me to the precipice alone has the power to kill - and that power has long been broken here. And if it is not exactly flying, it is a form of falling with style and grace. The things have tried to do here at Skyline have not always (perhaps never) had the effect I originally intended. But the fact that they have turned out serendipitously has taught me to offer my creativity and conviction (and to listen without judgment as a non-anxious presence) in the certain faith that God will honor such offerings by incorporating them into a tapestry that looks like a plan in retrospect.

Of all the things I have tried to accomplish while serving as co-pastor at Skyline, none compares with the humbling and profound honor of serving as a foster parent to several children over the past few years. Apart from the people of Skyline, I would never have been able to answer this call to welcome the strangers which has profoundly transformed and blessed my life. Through the welcome Vicki, Joy, Eli and I have been able to provide for others, we have found a place at the table God sets for us all. As the experience of fatherhood converted me to a new sense of love (giving and receiving this love), so too has the experience of sheltering a child of God as a foster parent converted me to a new way of life in God's love.

I take my leave indelibly marked by this transforming love, filling and overflowing my life. The blessing to love and live as a generous friend to those to whom love is a stranger marks and guides my life now as never before. I have come, as Jesus comes, that they might have life in all of it's abundance. I am a traveling midwife who will stop at nothing to assist in birthing that abundant life in all of God's children - paying no heed to the Pharaoh.

I bring a fearlessness and reckless creativity to the pastoral ministry, wherever God sends me from this place of transformation among the saints gathered at Skyline. I mock the Pharaoh, and I follow blindly in the path of Jesus, crucified and risen, not only on the third day, but in me, and in every gathering of saints with whom I am privileged to serve.

And one final reflection:

Serving as co-pastor with Vicki for the past 14 years has been the catalyst for every transformation I have celebrated above. Surely we have experienced a profound synergy in our partnership and in our love, but that synergy has made possible a wealth of partnerships in ministry at Skyline and beyond, in the larger community we serve. As a co-pastor, I have learned to value the other parts of the body of Christ of which I am a part. And because of this partnership in ministry that extends beyond the two of us as co-pastors, any ministry in which I am involved in the future will also be an expression of my love and partnership with Vicki.

Nothing - absolutely nothing that has happened here at Skyline in the past 14 years - could have happened without the synergy and support of our ministry as co-pastors. We modeled partnership and mutual interdependence for others and for each other. That model created sacred space to nurture great faith in times of despair, light in places of darkness, and fierce hope where the path gave way to wilderness. Our partnership with each other and with other ministers at Skyline made a way where there was no way, time and again (just like we planned).

So our partnership does not end with this parting - or rather, with this new way of serving together with God in each other and in other members of the body of Christ. Before serving as co-pastors at Skyline, my vision of our partnership in ministry and in love was bound by restrictions of space and time. But serving together for so long at Skyline has revealed the many ways in which our partnership in ministry and in love transcends and is not dependent on those restrictions. I understand now that just as nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, so too can no space or even time prevent us from serving in the profound realization that God's love binds us together in the midst of a great cloud of witnesses.

Since we are fully committed to God, we know that God will strongly support us, wherever we serve (2 Chronicles 16:9a). And wherever God sends each of us from this gathering of grace and love, we will serve in the power of our love for each other, and in the mutual encouragement and wisdom we give to each other day by day. I leave this particular expression of co-pastoral ministry in the knowledge that every calling will of necessity be a co-ministry. In short, I go knowing that neither I nor Vicki will ever have to serve alone - God will always provide gifted partners with whom we can be in ministry.