This is the time between the times
I wasn’t at worship on the 16th of May until the very end. I was doing a grief workshop at Grace UCC in O’Fallon. Their pastor of nine years, Rev. James Caughlin, died from cancer just a few weeks ago. He was taken very quickly and they are all still in a state of shock.
While we are also mourning the loss of our pastor, it is not at all the same thing. I spent the day on the 17th with Cindy at a clergy retreat. She and John and Abigail and Andrew are still in our midst, just not with us in worship. She is no longer our pastor but she is still our friend and our sister in the faith.
I was invited to the retreat by an accident of timing. It was only for clergy currently serving churches in the St. Louis Association. As I am picking up the pastoral duties at Pilgrim for the month of May, I fit in under the wire. For the month I am a member of the club.
The retreat was stimulated by the concerns we all have about the intense pressure the Church is under as our culture undergoes a momentous shift. We know that the Church will not be what it has been. The days of the Church being the place in the community where everyone turns to for connection and comfort are over. The Church on the Green that is the institution that provides cohesion and continuity is a thing of the past.
But while we don’t know what the Church is going to be like, we certainly know that there will be a Church. Theologically we trust in the Church to be the risen Body of Christ. But we also know that there will always be a need for a community of faith which gives us a sense of belonging and identity. There will always be a need for an association of the faithful with which we act to transform the world around us into the Realm of God. There will always be a need for a community in which we are held and challenged to grow into the fullness of Christ. We just don’t know what it is going to look like.
In a more immediate sense, we don’t know what Pilgrim is going to look like. Sure, the granite blocks are not going to tumble down. But the identity and mission of Pilgrim is in flux. We are in a time of transition.
Beginning June 1 we will have as our Transitional Minister the Reverend Doctor Thomas Orin Bentz. He is most recently from Milwaukee. He and his wife, Lenore, will be moving to St. Louis to give us support and guidance for at least the next year. Rev. Bentz has had extensive experience with large urban churches with diverse congregations. He has served on the staff of the national church and on the staff of conferences. We are indeed blessed to have someone with such rich experience to guide us.
So this is the time between the times: between the time of Pastor Bumb and the time of a new pastor who will be identified by the deliberations of our Search Committee. The time between the church as we have known it and the church which is to come.
Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson
