From Our Board Prez: Impermanence
As I listened to Reverend Pam’s Easter Sunday sermon, the themes of impermanence and attachment really resonated with me – as well as the accompanying ideas about hope and fear. Reverend Pam quoted Margaret Wheatley whose words rang so true to me: “Hope never enters a room without fear at its side. If I hope to accomplish something, I’m also afraid I’ll fail. You can’t have one without the other.”
As I near the end of my third and last year on the board, I’ve been struck anew by this sense of impermanence. At the time I joined the Board, I anticipated being Board President in our second year of interim ministry and our first year of a settled ministry. Coincidentally, this was the same place we were the last time I was board president: finishing a period of interim ministry and calling our settled minister, Reverend Hilary Krivchenia. So, although we were facing uncertainty, I felt I had been here before and I was not uneasy about the idea of changing ministers mid-term.
But what was different as I joined the board this time, was that, across society and across denominations, churches had been shrinking, more ministers seemed to be leaving ministry. We were also still in the wake of the COVID pandemic and did not know what the future held in that arena. The environment that we’d be navigating this time around seemed more uncertain. This message from Jack Kornfield resonated with me as I thought about the role of Board President:
“Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.”
So, faced with this new-to-me uncertainty, I reminded myself that, as board members, we could help steer, help orchestrate, help plan – but we could not promise an outcome. I cautioned myself not to become attached to a specific outcome. Yes, we wanted to find a settled minister. Yes, we wanted our church to grow. But these were not things we could guarantee.
These past three years on the board have offered good lessons in these companion concepts that Reverend Pam spoke about last week – impermanence, attachment to outcome, hope and fear and letting go.
We experienced ups and downs as we sought an Interim Minister – it took us two “rounds” to find an Interim Minister. In our two years of Interim Ministry, we stretched, we grew, we overcame obstacles, we learned some lessons.
We experienced ups and downs as we sought a Settled Minister. We appeared to have excellent applicants, yet none of them was ultimately the right match.
As we began our year of Contract Ministry, I imagined we might feel adrift, but, instead, I sensed that people felt calm and at peace. I worried visitors might be discouraged by not having a settled minister, yet we drew more visitors. I anticipated I might sense detachment, but what I sensed was compassion, commitment and connection.
We experienced ups and downs as we strived to grow our Religious Exploration program. We unexpectedly lost two RE Leaders and then were surprisingly blessed with an experienced, organized and energetic leader.
We experienced ups and downs in our growth. We did not grow in members, yet our pledges grew significantly.
So here we are.
Our path hasn’t led quite where I expected when I began my board term three years ago. Nor could I have forced the path to go where I’d imagined it should go. But this path brought us to the place we are now – a good place.
We have a place of sanctuary and compassionate pastoral care. We have a place of caring and engaged community. We have volunteers stepping into new roles and lively energy in Atherton Hall, with people staying for hours of conversation after service. We’re offering so many interesting adult faith classes and experimenting with children’s activities and new kinds of worship gatherings. We’re giving generously to support our congregation and staff. We’re putting up signs to call out to families at Hamilton Park to join us here at CCUU.
What about feeling settled? When will we have that feeling? At recent Board meetings, as we discussed the implications of not conducting a traditional search for a settled minister, some pointed out the apparent downside that we would have to keep re-deciding whether to conduct a settled minister search, keep re-figuring out what we wanted to do every year and keep re-planning for these possible different paths. Yet, as one of our trustees calmly said, “Yes, that’s right. We would have to grow comfortable with this uncertainty and learn how to deal with this sense of impermanence. We would have to embrace that uncertainty and ask ourselves, every year, how things are going and if we are still doing well with our minister.” He reminded us that we never really know what will happen and that this impermanence exists all the time, even with a settled minister – it is just more visible with a contract minister. And he reminded us that we can be confident that we are healthy as a community and that we are strong, no matter who our minister is, and we will be able to deal with whatever we encounter.
… which brings me back to the wisdom of Reverend Pam’s message and the words of Margaret Wheatley, that “We are consoled and strengthened by being together. We don’t need specific outcomes. We don’t need hope. We need each other.”
I will sorely miss these wise people and these conversations in our Board meetings.
But I’ll see you around. And I look forward to being with you on this journey, in new ways.
Yours in covenant,
Lisa Gilley
Board President