april showers bring may flowers


i've been an active (or aware) part of three (about to be four) pastor transitions at huffman, but this one feels quite a bit different. my first was the most awkward and frustrating. john rutland brought me on staff with the help of my gateway drug and good friend chris perry. i don't know if john and i agreed on everything, but, boy, did i look up to him and respect him. i sat in his office for at least one hour every week as he and i explored what i felt like was some sort of "calling". we played basketball together. i enjoyed his sermons terribly. his company more. when, in one of those office "hours", he told me he was being moved, i didn't really know what to make of it. i had not been on the "inside" long enough to wrap my head around what the conference was attempting to do with the charles lee move, and i hated that i wouldn't have my easy excuse to kick it with john. there wasn't a ton of fanfare to john's exit. he left and i missed him.

the transition away from the charles lee era was a little more, how do you say, affecting. no real reason to relive all the reasons that those two years weren't the best for our congregation. they just weren't.

look at him! he's taking the high road.

it felt like the best thing that could happen for both sides. the pastor was rewarded for his hard work with a promotion. we would receive someone new and interesting that maybe we could rebuild around.

and rebuild we did. or, at least, it felt like it. having the luxury of a few more years hindsight at this point, what humc really did was rally around the idea of not being unhappy for a little bit. rick had tons of good and positive energy. he was quite genuine. it felt like his heart was in the right place. and because of those factors in combination with a congregation that wanted to prove the previous two year's failings weren't all their fault, we actually found a few new members and increased attendance for about twelve months. again, using the hindsight-o-meter, we were overlooking something. we were still overlooking the fact that we had lost our footing in our community. rick did try and do something about that with his kindergarten for hispanics effort and welcoming ruben into the church, but it was rick that was doing everything. the congregation was merely along for the ride. and therein lied the problem. we owned the "dia"mission statement because it sounded decent enough. and it was. decent. but incomplete. incomplete in that it didn't really say anything about "us" as much as it said, yes, we are christians. no more. no less. and we started losing footing again. rick's exit wasn't celebrated as much as it was mourned. humc liked rick. rick liked humc. but he left for greener pastures and we still didn't know who we were any more than when he arrived.

enter chris.

fourth pastor in not enough years to have four pastors. big hopes (for me). big dreams (for chris). no communication. no chance. and we are already preparing for someone else. the last two years have gone by pretty fast with the exception of a couple months last fall. it's been a whirlwind of drama topped off with some fairly unrealistic expectations given the circumstances.

and now we wait.

again.

for what? who knows. it feels like the church has a better sense of wanting to figure out who we are. and that's a huge step. we just haven't decided yet. maybe we should wait for the new guy to settle in before we put anything in ink. maybe we shouldn't. i could argue both cases. but we are working on it. that counts for something, right? and we are, hopefully, willing to put in the legwork that will be required to turn this mother around.

are we?