Parting
We’re getting ready to go to what the kids call “big church.” (as opposed to “home church.) It’s our last official Sunday at the Seattle Vineyard and Pastor Ed wants to “pray us out.”
We’ve been there for 15 years. This is my “Papa Ed.” We were married here, young and foolish, but blessed. The girls were dedicated here. People gathered around them and anointed them with oil. I was called out here, given authority and permission and power to lead and minister and find my own soul.
This is going to be harder than I thought.
Ed recently said that two things he appreciated about Paul and I were that 1)we said we’d come back and do ministry here after we finished seminar and we did and 2) we said we’d raise our children in the city and we are. It was surprising to me that those two things stuck with him so much. I’m glad those things have made him happy.
When we started multi-congregational church planting our purpose was to support new planters, and I was supported in this model…for awhile. But now, as our styles and visions and priorities shift and change we are finding it harder and harder to find common ground. The systems that work for ThPM don’t work for Seattle Vineyard Sunday Morning. And the things we need to work on aren’t the same–being as we are a house church and they are a building-based church. We keep getting under foot of one another. Mostly I get underfoot of everyone else. We can’t hold it together any more.
Someone (Doug Pagitt?) once said that modern and post-modern pastors simply cannot work together. Do you think that’s true? Maybe it’s not the pastors who can’t work together so much as the requisite systems that can’t coincide?
Plus my new mentors (women mentors, postmodern mentors, missional community mentors) all lie elsewhere. It’s too hard to hold together so many worlds. I have to move into this new one. But I do so want to honor the past.
But fifteen years. I ran a youth shelter here. The kids slept on the floor under the stained glass. I saw the Spirit move here in strange ways. I can never doubt her activity in the present ever again. I was ordained here. How many people would have done that for me, a woman? I was given permission to set the artists amok among us and we changed the face of our worshipping year. I was given whomever I asked for, whoever would come with me, when it came time to plant ThPM. How can I say thank you for all that in the same breath that I say good bye?
I didn’t think this would be so hard.
God bless you guys. You’re still staying in the tribe, right? If nobody’s asked, let me say that the Vineayrd needs more expressions than the main one, and I certainly want to see you stick with this tribe.
Thank you, Rachelle; I had asked some time ago about the separating of your ministry from the Vineyard, and you have provided an eloquent answer.
God’s Grace,
Peter
godspeed friend.
as my friend amy says, you cannot really say goodbye until you say thank you. i’m so glad this move will be marked by thanks and ceremony.
pat,
we are still staying in the Vineyard clan…sort of. Rose and Rich Swetman have agreed to continue on as mentors (especially Rose) and we’ll be a sort of defacto “project of” Vineyard Community Church until we decide what to do.
Thanks for asking. I don’t know if the AVC even knows that we really exsist though…or if they would approve of us when they met us. I noticed they interviewed Doug Pagit/Solomon’s Porch for the latest edition of Cutting Edge, when they could just as easily checked in on thier own tribal members down at Urban Grind in Portland. Wierd.
Much love to you and Shannon,
R
Peter,
Sorry the reply was so long in coming. I just wasn’t up to it for awhile.
One thing I didn’t include in this post is that ThPM is still affliated with two larger bodies: The Vineyard Community Church in N.Seattle and the Missional Co-operative, both of which are the home of my mentors.
Peace,
R
Pagitt has a book out; the Urban Grind folks don’t. I think they know their coffee n beer better though. Victory to Urban Grind.
>Sorry the reply was so long in coming. I just >wasn’t up to it for awhile.
>… ThPM is still affliated with two larger bodies: >The Vineyard Community Church in N.Seattle and the >Missional Co-operative, both of which are the home >of my mentors.
This calls for a lot more history than I have, so I’ll just say amen and wish you Grace. I will say, though, that for all the turbulence and regret and hope and joy you express, it’s clear to me that growth is what is happening. I don’t mean “bigger”; I mean “deeper”. It hurts. Often.
Peter
congrats you guys… how fun! and exciting.