I haven’t yet had the inclination, energy or time to write about this, but – yesterday was the last worship gathering for Mt. Si Vineyard. Our church has shut its doors and we are helping our folks to process the change as we continue to meet as a small group for another month.
I’ll write more in a short while about the why and the how, but the decision is good, and we are being given the opportunity to rest, reflect and recover a bit before considering what our next steps as church planters might be.
But this morning is the first time I’ve awakened in nearly four years that I’m not a church planter, and in five and a half that I’m not (by role) a pastor. We’re in a hard place of grieving – sometimes feeling fine, sometimes feeling disappointed, sometimes worse. The roller coaster continues.
For the first time in a long time today I pulled out my Celtic Daily Prayer book and turned to the Aidan series of readings. This song accompanies the readings for today:
RESERVOIR:
You place my feet upon a larger place, Lord,
You give my hands a greater task for You.
You set my eyes upon the far horizon
and in my heart I know Your word is true.
You place a reservoir within my heart, Lord,
that all my tears
would come from a different place:
that all my ways would minister Your grace
to those who long
to see your face.
I can’t begin to describe how much that means to me. Part of my processing time continues to be around ‘calling’. I still feel called to the area in which I live. I still feel called to lead a community of faith. I battle against feelings of failure, of despair, wondering why I feel these calls if we are at the end. I know that there is something more out there; I know that in my life story God has continued to transition us rapidly and without warning, and we soon knew why. Though only in retrospect. I suspect that two years from now I’ll have a very different perspective, but my problem for today is that I don’t have those two years. I have to live into them.
What’s next for us, I don’t know. Where we attend church this coming Sunday or the one after is up in the air, though I have places I want to visit (I’ll have to write about this too).
But that song, that gives me great hope that, as an old friend of mine used to say when he didn’t know the way, “One thing is for sure. God is still King, and He’s still on the throne.”.
I’ll have to settle for that.
pat loughery 
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