FROM THE PASTOR
The Holy Spirit Digs In
It was a good meeting with good questions asked. I shared what I had written in last week’s blog: that the decision and oversight of the leave for Pastor Sally appropriately reside in the Office of Bishop in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod; that the leave is for three months; during that time the Office of Bishop will receive written updates from Pastor Sally and her doctors; that our role is to pray without ceasing for Pastor Sally and her family and pursue our ministry with confidence in the Spirit’s power. I shared two other things at the meeting. St. Luke’s will continue Pastor Sally’s compensation during the first two months of the leave, and that insurance coverage will begin the third month. Although Sally will not to be performing any pastoral acts of ministry during the leave, she remains, with her family a beloved member of St. Luke’s. Expressions of support and prayers are appropriate. Cards and other expressions of support can be coordinated through the office.
One of our members asked when we would appoint a Call Committee, and how this related to the Vision Process. I answered that the learnings from the Listening Season (over 100 interviews), the Strategic Mission Plan, and the learnings from the implementation of the Plan will all flow into the Call Process, beginning with the ministry Site Profile which will be received by each candidate and shape the Call discernment process and its interviews and conversations. I asked not to be held to a firm estimate, but hoped that the process would proceed in a timely way as we implement the Strategic Plan. This coming Thursday the Vision Team will meet with the Church Council and present the final Plan, the implementation process, the makeup of the Implementation Team, and the creation of a Communication Team to roll out the process in the congregation.
Let me end this blog with a story. Father Jack was a Carmelite priest in the neighboring Catholic church in New Jersey and one of my best friends. One day he told me about his ordination. He told of expecting this special day to be one filled with transcendence, of wonderful, holy evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit. He expected a “burning bush,” a “divine zapping of the Spirit.”
There is one part of the Roman ordination rite in which the ordinands lie prostrate on the floor of the chancel in a position of symbolic service and obedience. My friend recalled lying there thinking that this would surely be the moment in which the ecstasy of the Spirit would fill him. Instead, three things went through his mind as he lay on the cold stone floor. First, it was a hot summer day and he had worn a pair of cut-off shorts under his vestments, and he was worried that his legs were showing. Second, he was worried that one of the roving photographers would step on him. Finally he was worried that he would forget when to get up, afraid that the bishop would hover over him impatiently while he lay there in ignorance of the next part of the ritual.
In the place of intimations of divinity and immortality, this apprentice priest experienced the all-too-human emotions of vanity, vulnerability, and insecurity. Yet we have a parable here about the Call process and the ministry to which all of us have been called by our baptism. Ever since the Word became flesh, it is in the very vanity, vulnerability, and insecurity of human life that Call processes and ministry take place. The stuff of our humanity is where the Holy Spirit digs in, with wisdom and direction.
Pastor Stephen Bouman
