The Coming Sad Farewell

I told my church family Sunday morning I was retiring from pastoral ministry.

After 15 years with them, it is a tough decision and a tough decision to hear. We have grown older together and like old shoes had finally, truly broken each other in. I knew them and they knew me. We both had scratches and bruises from living together as family.

Being a Baptist pastor is not unlike herding chickens. It is more art than science. Too much at any one time and they get scattered rather than gathered. Wading into them to lead is always noisy and can they cluck and cackle! Feathers are easily rankled and occasionally, the feathers fly. Some of the flock are just mean, but most are not. Sometimes all the effort produces eggs and all to often not.

For 33 years I have been a pastor--except for a six month period of time when the chickens won. In those years, I have been honored to serve four churches. It is appropriate that I finish my marathon at the best church with the greatest family. Not that the others weren't good. We just didn't stay long enough to get where we are with this family. No church was less than five years and each was hard to leave.

Now unless you are confused, I am not retiring to some retirement home on the waterfront. The churches I have served has never paid that much. Rather, we are moving closer to ailing family and undertaking new careers. Mine when finalized will be a real hoot. 33 years ago, I would never have seen myself doing what I will be doing. Yet, there it is. Staring right back at me.

What I do know is that I shall move off the scene of Baptist life. I won't much care who is fighting whom, and who is not taking care of whom. I probably won't even remember the new Executive Director's name or who is the next anointed President of the BGCT. I may even forget what those unwieldy initials stand for. Sadly, my convention home is not the bastion of integrity I once knew--or thought I knew.

Somehow that is all right with me. The cynic in me always knew what was going on. I was the best friend at the moment because I would ask the question no one else would ask and make the public comment no one else would make because it might come back on them politically. I was not politically naive, I just had no political ambitions. It is amazing how free that leaves one.

My folks will miss me and I will miss them deeply. Church family is just that, family. I will never forget them or get over them.

And across the coming years, I won't be surprised if a few of their feathers fall out on the floor of the new house where we live.