In days my email from my previous church will be taken down.
After almost ten years there will be no more fpc.candie@. The “fpc” is for
First Presbyterian Church of Downey, California. I finished this call the end
of October 2012 and began a new call at San Clemente Presbyterian Church. For a
variety of reasons it has taken almost five months to get to the place to shut
the email down. I find myself a little sad about this. I know why. It is not
about email. It is about deep relationships and dear people who I had the
privilege of serving for almost ten years.
Professional pastoral ethics and just plain good ministry
sense requires that when a pastor leaves a church they leave in such a way as
to allow a new pastor to enter and begin to build relationships that will
become deep and dear. It is clearly the ethical way and clearly good common
sense. But that does not make it easy or any less of a loss for those who
experience it. Good pastoral boundaries are easy to explain but very difficult
to live out. Pastors are human. Pastors have needs. Pastors are invited into
sacred and intimate places with people that bind in ways words can never
adequately explain. When you have married and buried and baptized, laughed and
cried at hospital bedsides and court-related proceeding you are joined with
others in ways that can run much deeper than blood. And yet, in the beginning,
we are invited because of a professional relationship that was
established—called through a process to be a pastor. And at some point, long or
short lived, we are called as a pastors to take leave—the professional
relationship ends. A new one must begin. The relationships that run so deep
must be given time and space to make room for another pastor to enter and
thrive. The payroll and services provided end.
The advice and counsel ends. The officiating of life events ends. The daily intersecting
of lives ends. But the love and the deep connections do not end. Ever. They
cannot because they are spiritually rooted and spiritually nurtured, and
intended to build an eternal kingdom. It is just difficult navigating the
“already but not yet” nature of these relationships that have a temporal
beginning and ending, but are eternity bound.
This is my second time navigating these boundaries. The
first time was easier because I moved 2000 miles away. This time I am only an
hour away. It is more difficult. The Lord knows, I KNOW the principles! I am
part of a group in our presbytery that provides oversight and support for these
places in ministry. But as good boundary training teaches, boundaries are not
always impenetrable brick walls. Sometimes they are more porous and more like bougainvillea
bushes. I am grateful for the Presbyterian way of ministry that provides advice
and counsel for pastors like me in these places. But I must switch roles from
one who advises others to one who receives it. This, too, is not easy. Knowing
it and living it are two very different realities.
As this old email shuts down, I am grateful I have a new
email. I have a new ministry. I have new opportunities to grow deep and dear
relationships in sacred spaces. All these, past and present, are gifts from
above. Letting go means days of sadness, days of joy. There is sadness in the
loss, but there is also joy in knowing these are friends forever. Just last
week two couples from the very first congregation I served visited us here in
Southern California. It was sweet reunion for sure. No brick walls. All
bougainvillea! As the song by Michael W. Smith says, “Friends are friends
forever/ If the Lord’s the Lord of them.”
