Some weeks during the summer I can commute through between four and eight construction areas. Some are just small sections with a few workers trimming trees or working on a driveway, yet others are substantial delays or miles long strings of traffic cones and machines and workers.
Most of the time we mutter under our breath but understand that when you gotta get work done you gotta get work done, and the results are worth it.
We don’t have orange cones around the church these days, but there is a work crew busy digging away: our pastor search committee. They are busy building what the UCC calls the Local Church Profile. And, like so many construction sites, it can be kind of hard to tell what people are working on as you glance at it on your way by.
Like any good project, it starts with figuring out what you’ve got to work with and what your final objective is. That’s sort of the phase the committee is at right now. They are still sorting out the prep work needed. They are taking the data from our all-congregation sessions and the Congregational Life survey and, in essence, working out the engineering for the search process. While it doesn’t look like much on the outside, it is a critical time in the work, for if your foundations are not right, the structure can fail. And, getting the foundations thought out correctly is the most crucial part of the critical part! The committee is working very hard at articulating the vision of this congregation moving into God’s future, understanding its behavior and participation patterns, and, most difficult of all, the interactions of all the components in leadership.
And all of this happens before anybody appears on the other side of the construction signs; it is all hidden in the offices long before a shovel touches the earth. Some of the larger projects around here probably took years more planning and preparing than actual active work. (I might exempt the Commons from that… it seems to be taking years in the doing, too!) Just because you don’t see much going on with our pastoral search doesn’t mean there is not a lot going on behind the scenes.
Shortly, the committee will be asking for some more specific help from you. They will be circulating a questionnaire. Before you mutter, “Didn’t we do that already,” this is a different one, so be nice and do it, OK? The Search Committee is also setting up some informal ways for you to interact with them around a couple of topics they are working on. Those ways will also give you a chance to share your thoughts and questions with them if you have anything you feel moved to share. At minimum, I hope you will offer a word of support to them in addition to your ideas. Sometimes the highway workers need a cool drink of water, too!
The Romans scripture lesson this week ends with “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” You may want to find out what I do with that line! I hope you will join us this Sunday at 10 am.
Oh, and I hope a lot of you can congregate at the auditorium at Longview at 2 pm Sunday to share worship there. It’s a lovely time to share the Good News of God’s love and our presence with folks up on that hill. See you Sunday!
In Christ,
David
Texts for Sunday
From the Hebrew Bible Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
From the Epistles Romans 10:5-15
From the Gospels Matthew 14:22-33
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