Pastor and Congregation: a continuing mutual relationship and commitment

I recently had the privilege of preaching and presiding at the installation of another pastor here in the Rocky Mountain Synod. Pastor Jerry Reynolds was installed at Trinity Lutheran Church in Las Cruces, New Mexico on Tuesday, May 21. As I continue to reflect on the critical relationship between congregations and their pastors, I offer this sermon (below) and its perspectives on the pastor-congregation relationship for your consideration and feedback.  

Yours in Faith, 

Bishop Jim Gonia

Installation of Pastor Jerry Reynolds

Trinity Lutheran Church – Las Cruces, NM

21 May 2013

Exodus 3:7-15 – 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:13 – John 21:15-17

My beloved sisters and brothers in Christ:  grace, mercy and peace be with you from our God who is love, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have to tell you, one of the joys of being bishop is getting to celebrate moments like this – the installation of a new pastor.  Those of us who accompany congregations in transitions like to believe that a call process, while very much a human endeavor, is also Spirit-led.  It’s fitting then, as we still bask in the glow of our Pentecost celebration last Sunday, that we give thanks to the Holy Spirit for bringing Pastor Jerry into your lives here at Trinity, and for bringing the people of Trinity into Pastor Jerry and Ann’s lives.  A call is a unique thing:  it’s not the same as hiring someone.  To begin with, those of you who extend a call and the one who receives a call both do so on behalf of the whole church; it’s not just a private matter between you as a congregation and you as a pastor. Your ministry together is carried out on behalf of all of us in the wider church, which is why those of us representing the larger church are here to celebrate with you. 

But there’s another dimension to this matter of a “call” between a pastor and a congregation.  To discover it you need look no further than your own constitution.  Now I know constitutions don’t sound very exciting, but there’s some good stuff in there!  Like this, for example:  The call of a congregation, when accepted by a pastor, shall constitute a continuing mutual relationship and commitment …  A continuing mutual relationship and commitment.  That’s what call means.  We have another word for that:  it’s called a covenant. 

Today we gather to celebrate and to bear witness to the covenantal relationship that is now established between you as pastor and parish through this call.  The texts chosen for today’s worship have some important things to say about this covenantal relationship.  Let’s take a look.

To begin with, your covenant as pastor and parish is grounded in the God of covenant, the One was revealed to Moses by the name “I AM WHO I AM”.  This God, who is beyond all imagining and yet who is intimately and ever present with us is the same God who worked through the likes of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel.  This same God, whose covenant with us is sealed in baptism, continues to be at work through the likes of you and me.  God’s goal is the same: to liberate people from all forms of enslavement and oppression, to bring hope and salvation to a world weighed down by suffering, much of it of our own making. 

You’ve perhaps heard our tagline as a church:  God’s work. Our hands.  This says a lot, because it means that our call to serve in the world, whether as pastor or plumber or pre-school teacher – your call to engage your community as a congregation and pastor – this is not an endeavor of our own making.  It’s not a work that belongs to you and me.  This is God’s work – the hands are yours and mine.  As the church, you and I don’t have a mission – God does.   

That becomes critically important in your covenantal relationship with one another.  Too often the pastor tries to tell the congregation:  “this is what a church is supposed to look like and act like – why can’t you get on board?”  Or the congregation tries to tell the pastor:  “this is the way we’ve always done things – why can’t you get on board?”  Neither is particularly helpful if you don’t understand that the church doesn’t belong to either of you.  The church is called and gathered by God for the sake of equipping us and sending us out to follow an agenda that is not our own.  Which means that your primary task together as pastor and parish is to ask the question: where God is leading us as a congregation now?  What is our particular role in God’s mission in this place, at this time?  You each bring valuable perspective to that conversation; rely on each other.

I’m delighted to know that you’ll be using the Healthy Start program.  Too often pastor and congregation leap into a new relationship without the intentional conversation that helps define everyone’s roles and form a common vision.  This process will help your covenantal relationship stay focused on what really matters.

And what matters is highlighted for us in the text from Second Corinthians.  As pastor and congregation, you are ambassadors for Christ.  Together, you are entrusted with a ministry of reconciliation.  That ministry of reconciliation means that there’s brokenness out there, including our own brokenness.  Together as pastor and parish you have the opportunity to show the world – who will be watching – what reconciliation in Christ actually looks like.  You do that most profoundly when you model reconciliation among yourselves.

Let me get this out of the way and say it clearly:  as pastor and congregation you will face conflict.  Like the Apostle Paul and his communities, you will face afflictions and hardships, maybe even some sleepless nights.  Such things are normal in any relationship, in every congregation.  A covenantal relationship doesn’t mean you avoid the hard things, including conflict.  Rather it means that you face every challenge by tapping into Christ’s deep well of reconciliation where you find patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech and most of all, the power of God by which you can recognize your own brokenness and claim your own blessedness.

As bishop for nine and a half months now, I can tell you that I’ve seen too many situations where congregation and pastor are unable to navigate the hard moments of life together because one or the other – or both – are blinded to their own contribution to a difficult situation: they forget to be Christ and to see Christ in each other.  Conflict not about winning or losing, right or wrong: it’s about learning to open our hearts wide to one another for the sake of the one whose heart for us has already been opened wide on the cross. 

Which is where the final text, the gospel text, is helpful to us.  Here in this conversation between the risen Jesus and Peter, we learn of the seamless connection between love and selfless service.  To love Jesus is to focus your gifts and abilities on the needs of the other.  In a covenantal relationship between pastor and congregation, your love for Jesus is expressed in your willingness to tend to the needs of the other.  It doesn’t always come naturally, which is perhaps why Jesus has to ask Peter three times.  Our natural inclination is to see how the other can serve our needs.  So as congregations, we try to figure out how we can get the most out of our pastor for the least amount of input and we call it good stewardship.  And as pastors, we try to figure out how we can get the congregation to do things our way – because it’s the right way – and we call it leadership. 

Jesus shakes his head when we resort to those kinds of behaviors.  “Do you love me, Pastor Jerry?” he asks.  “Then pay attention to what my sheep here need!”  “Do you love me, members of Trinity?  Then tend to the needs of my servant who is in your care.”  A covenantal relationship between pastor and congregation is one in which you look upon one another in love, and seek to provide what the other truly needs so that together you can be about God’s mission in the world.

Dearly beloved, it is a wonderful thing indeed that the Spirit has brought you together through this new call.  It is a joy for us to gather on behalf of the whole church to celebrate this new covenantal relationship.  May the God of Jesus Christ, the Great I AM, continue to nourish and strengthen you in this relationship, so that as the Body of Christ together, our hands may indeed be about God’s work here in Las Cruces and throughout God’s beloved world. 

AMEN