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My heart aches… yet I rejoice

Guest commentary by Don Meeks

Editor’s note: This piece is written in response to a recent guest commentary column by Steve Wilkins. You can read that piece here.

Steve, my heart aches too. Yet in the aching I have learned to rejoice.

My heart ached when I left my theologically diverse seminary community.   Gone were the shared meals and engaging conversations (and pick-up basketball games!) with Southern Baptist and United Methodist and PC(USA) and PCA and Assemblies of God colleagues. Yet even as my heart ached in our parting, I rejoiced knowing we were united by a larger commitment to proclaim and serve Jesus Christ in our various callings and denominations.

My heart ached when I left the church of my first call in small-town Kansas after only three short years. This was the church that had taken a risk and called me, fresh out of seminary. They laid hands and welcomed me into ordained ministry. They put up with my BIG ideas and fumbling pastoral calls and way-too-long sermons. They loved me, and my young family, so very well. When the call to leave came, our hearts ached together.   Not everyone understood why we were leaving, but they trusted us and loved us by letting us go. But even with aching hearts, we celebrated together what God had done in and through and among us. With an aching heart, I rejoiced as they sent me to Colorado to love and serve a big church with a small-town heart.

My heart ached again when after five years of fruitful ministry I was called away from that big Colorado church to the church I now serve in suburban northern Virginia. A rich season of ministry had bonded me deeply with the staff and members as we labored for Christ and weathered the challenges of a building project. Again, not everyone understood why we were leaving, but they trusted us and loved us by letting us go. My going away party was staged as a mock “funeral” with staff, friends and family in attendance. This funeral served as a witness to their appreciation and to the reality that our departure was a kind of death. We all knew our relationships would never quite be the same once we left. But with an aching heart I rejoiced as they sent me back home to Virginia with vision and passion and love.

My pastoral heart has ached over those who have left our congregation because we were not conservative enough … or because we were too conservative. Even in this I have learned to rejoice, trusting that God sees beyond my vision for someone else’s life. That the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” is bigger than any congregation or denomination.

My heart has ached in other ways as well.   Five years ago we dropped our oldest son off at college. Then a year later, we did it all again, with our only daughter heading to school. I kept my tears to myself lest they think I didn’t believe in them, or wanted to hold them back, or that somehow my emotions were their responsibility.   Yet even as my heart ached, I rejoiced in sending them out to struggle and learn for themselves about life and love and God’s faithfulness.

I now see that God sometimes sends me out to follow my call, and sometimes God sends others out to follow their call.   As I have broken hearts in leaving others behind, so my heart has been broken in being left behind.

From both sides of the leave-taking, I have developed a deep respect for the holy work of parting. Leaving well is hard work. It is holy work. As it ought to be. For in some measure, every leave-taking we experience in life is but a dress rehearsal for a final farewell we will make in death.   Leaving well, and helping others to leave well, becomes an opportunity to “practice resurrection.”

My wife and I are so very grateful for those who have made our many leave-takings a blessing instead of a burden. And because we believe in this holy work, we have tried to extend that same trust to others by blessing them when they need to go. We have a simple saying in our house: Make it easy for people to go so it will be easy for them to come back.

And yes, my heart also aches along with Steve Wilkins at the state of affairs in our denomination. But I think it aches for very different reasons.

My heart aches that we seem unable to embrace the holy work of parting that is now upon us.   We seem unable to recognize this unprecedented opportunity to practice resurrection. It aches that we can’t be as radically gracious in leave-taking as we are in welcoming. It aches over the institutional amnesia that has forgotten our own family story. How from our very beginning in 1983 the unity we now cherish and so fiercely defend was made possible only by allowing some to leave through the Article 13 “window.”   My heart aches that we have not had the wisdom or courage or humility to create such a window again.

My heart aches that we seem unable to embrace an expansive vision of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church (as if a congregation that leaves the PC(USA) is no longer part of that holy church?). It aches that we seem unable to move beyond our own disappointment to joyfully send those who are leaving to follow God’s call. My heart aches that we seem unable to honor the motives of our leave-taking friends and end up making the whole affair a horrible and costly mess.

In all of this I have found myself imagining and praying towards a different state of affairs. What reconciliation might we experience if we embraced an expansive vision of the church that views those who leave the PC(USA) as still “us” rather than “them”?   What witness to a watching world could we offer if we chose to send these churches unto a new work rather than fight them to stay? What relational continuity might we experience if we chose to make their leave-taking a blessing rather than a burden? What goodness and mercy would follow those who do depart if they were to initiate generous and sacrificial offerings to presbyteries as a missional gift rather than be forced grudgingly into a negotiated buyout?

My heart aches for a church that understands, as the bishop in “Les Miserables” most certainly did with Jean Valjean, how worldly wealth might be used to serve the life-altering message of grace. It aches for a church with the humility and compassion of a father who honored the leave-taking of his younger son, in the longing and hope that he would one day return home.

Yes, Steve. My heart aches too… yet in this I rejoice.

Don Meeks headshotDON MEEKS is pastor of Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Greenwich, Virginia. Don will soon be celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary with his wife, Krista. Don and Krista are parents of three adult children, Turner, Bailey and Colson.

 

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