Dear Friends,
I begin with wishing you a happy New Year and I know that many of us will be celebrating the arrival of a New Year with the Covenant Service. I am pleased this year that I will have a special opportunity to share in this with my Supernumerary colleagues and/or their loved ones when we gather for fellowship together in January. For me, this is an important opportunity, because I will be worshipping with others who have lived The Covenant Prayer either as ministers or as those who have travelled with them. They responded at different times to the prompting of God to get up and travel, until one day they asked permission to stop. In some cases that moment was planned and prepared for, in other cases it came suddenly because of changes they could not control, which meant they had no choice but to stop. Such people are a sign of what The Covenant Prayer can mean and how it can help us imagine endings differently. It reminds us that they are part of God’s care and that God has not finished with us, but instead is with us as always and calling us into a new way of responding.
The prayers we share remind us that there are many services, and that being active or sitting down is not an act apart from God, but one with God; one that is the will and wish of God, even when we cannot at first comprehend why.
I offer this at the beginning of the year because I know not only ministers reach this moment, but churches also. I have talked with members in several different churches over the last year that have reached the decision to request to cease to meet. For them, this will be the last Covenant Service they will share in their current buildings. Those I speak to can feel guilty that they are not continuing and that they are letting others down. I want to suggest that it is not guilt we should feel, but thanksgiving, because if this is what God is asking of us, we are simply being faithful to God’s will. We need to stop making ourselves feel like failures, and instead receive the grace that is part of the Covenant Service, where we commit to God’s will and to trust God for all that will come. When we reach the place of understanding that God no longer calls us to be the church we were in a particular place, it is God setting us aside there, but not setting us aside in all places or as disciples. Because of that we are on the verge of discovering God’s grace anew, and this is something that we can delight in.
Therefore, be encouraged, be hopeful, be thankful, and know that God is with us all, whatever God is calling us to do in this moment.
God bless,
Kerry
