In Resigning As A Pastor, I Want To RE-sign As A Newborn In the Jesus Family

The Zion Mennonite Church nurtured and supported me
in the first two decades of my ministry as a pastor. 

It was September of1965, sixty years ago, that I was first licensed as a minister in the Virginia Mennonite Conference. I was only 26, and had no seminary trining when I began serving as an assistant pastor, then senior pastor, at Zion Mennonite for the next two decades while also teaching part time at Eastern Mennonite High School. 

In 1972-74 I was granted a two-year leave of absence to serve as an interim principal at Western Mennonite School in Oregon  and was later granted a nine-month leave to attend the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana in 1983-84. Meanwhile I was also taking graduate courses at JMU and intermittently at Eastern Mennonite Seminary before finally completing a masters degree in counseling at JMU in 1979 and one at EMS in 1996. I could have never done that without the encouragement and help of my good wife, family and church family.

In 1988 I left Zion and accepted an assignment as a counselor and congregational resource pastor at VMC's new Family Life Resource Center, where I worked for the next 38 years while also serving as an unsalaried pastor of  Family of Hope, a house church congregation I've been a part of up to this day.

At 86, I am far past the age at which Virginia Conference pastors are expected to retire, and our aging house church no longer has the required ten households to be recognized as an official VMC congregation.

In consultation with our overseer Roy Hange, and in light of normal uncertainties about my future vitality and health, I've felt it was time to resign my official role as pastor of the house church I have loved and been an active part of for nearly four decades. I've expressed my willingness to continue being an active participant in whatever form Family of Hope may take in the future, whether as an official VMC congregation (with another pastor or pastoral team), or as simply a fellowship or cell group of people who meet for occasional fellowship, prayer and/or Bible study, but in which each member has transferred their membership to another congregation. 

Needless to say, I feel some sadness and loss in coming to this place, as well as feeling a pastoral obligation to make sure none of our members are left spiritually homeless should the congregation choose to disband. I am meeting with individual members and with the group to consider a range of possible options.

Me at around six or seven

I am also planning for a change in other involvements, to seek a replacement for my role as Valley Justice Coalition chair while continuing to advocate for multitudes who are oppressed, in prison, and deserving of second chances. 

I am likewise encouraging the HomeTown Pastoral Counseling Group, where I still work one day a week, to seek a replacement for me.

Meanwhile I'm making a conscious choice to reclaim a new sense of just being a beloved child in God's great extended family. As such I choose to re-sign for the following:

I am re-signing to practice being more dependent on the care of others rather than being primarily being a caregiver for others.

I am re-signing to experience the wonder of being an ever more avid learner, reveling in more of the mystery and miracle of all God has created rather than primarily being in the role of a teacher for others.

I am re-signing for closer relationships with friends, family and members of my church family, recovering more of my role as a sibling and an "under-seer" rather than primarily as an elder or overseer.

I am re-signing for a time of intentional preparation for the life to come, of getting my earthly affairs in order and focusing on whatever legacy I can leave behind for my children, grandchildren and other loved ones everywhere.

This is but the beginning of a list I want to be adding to in the time I have left here on earth.