2910 East Morgan Evansville, IN  47711 (812) 474-1704

One day a man who had been on vacation phoned his neighbor and said, “Jack, I just wanted to call and let you know that I am returning tonight and I was wondering how everything has been.” And Jack said, “well Frank – your cat died.”

Frank said, “My cat died? Jack – you can’t just tell me my cat died – you have to prepare me – you have to say something like – well Frank – the other day your cat went out on the roof – and then when we went up after her she jumped out into that old maple tree – and then we called the fire dept. – and before they could arrive – she fell and I’m sorry to have to tell you this Frank but your cat died.”

That’s how you’re supposed to do it Jack, you have to prepare people.

Time went by and the two stayed friends. And eventually Frank went out of town again on a trip and asked Jack to watch over his house for him. And again the time came that the vacation was ending, and Frank called Jack and said, “Jack, I will be getting back home tonight, the flights seem to be on time – just wanted to check in and see how everything is going.”

Jack hesitated for a moment, and took a breath and then he said – well Frank – the other day your mother-in-law climbed out of her dormer window and went up on the roof ….

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By now I imagine that all of you have heard that I will not be returning as your minister for the next fiscal year. It was hard to tell you. And I imagine it was a bit abrupt for you maybe like Frank – you wish I had prepared you.

For me there was a process of discernment – it wasn’t an overnight decision – it just wasn’t possible to say- 

It’s august - your pastor is contemplating whether or not it is time to leave – what she has to offer you – what kind of life does she wants for herself - is the foundation set – is it okay to go – is it time to go?

Sept – your pastor has called the UU dept of ministry and is entering into search

Oct. – you pastor has met a great woman and is not willing to move across country for another church – she is withdrawing from search.

Nov - Your pastor has fallen in love and is wavering thinking maybe she should stay here and see how things go with Elizabeth.

Dec - Your pastor is sure it is best for her to leave and ultimately for you and that has nothing to do with Elizabeth but thinks we should get through the holidays before she says anything.

January comes and she is thinking: Oh no – next is the pledge drive – when is best to tell them? She calls the department of ministry and talks to a few colleagues – the colleagues say wait til you have another job – then you don’t have to leave if you don’t get one. 

The dept. of ministry – says – it is best for your congregation to know now – tell them so you can have time for all of you to say your goodbyes – you have been there 10 yrs – you can’t just run out the door.

So here we are, it is Feb. and I will be leaving in June and we are going to be as intentional about our ending as we were about our beginning together.

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Last Aug – the director of the department of ministry told me “It is better to leave too soon than too late”. And for this congregation that is especially important. In your history you already have the story of a minister – who some wanted to leave and a messy forced resignation process. It was a part of your story which made some of our beginnings difficult.

So this time – I am taking the leaving into my hands – not leaving it to you. Ultimately, it is healthier for the congregation for things to end this way. And as I do this I want us all to be very clear – it is not because of anything you have done. Over the next few months some people will try to make sense of this – find a reason and there may be rumors – like “it was because she got her Doctorate and now can get a better church”, or maybe we didn’t pay her enough – or maybe she left us for Elizabeth.

It is not easy to choose to leave my position here. As I said in my letter we have done great things together and I am very clear that you have helped me to grow in many ways – you have affirmed my ministry with you – you have loved me – you have helped me become less shy and a more confident minister.

I am not leaving you because you have done something wrong or mistreated me or because of who you are or because I care more about Elizabeth than you. I am leaving my position because I had noticed that last year I wasn’t as engaged with you as I used to be – I didn’t feel that I was offering you the energy that you deserved. And most of all – I didn’t have the naiveté.

Many years ago I began to study Tai Chi and as you may or not know this is a Chinese martial art which is very slow – and the form I was learned had a sequence of 105 positions to learn. During class, students of like skills would group together in different places around the room and the teacher would come around and teach us what was next for us. Each week we would each learn a few more moves.

Then one night a young woman arrived. She was the only one who was new that night and the teacher took her aside and taught her a few things and she practiced and asked for more. And so the teacher taught her some more. In no time at all this young women learned probably eight weeks worth of moves. My teacher came over to my group where we were watching in astonishment and she said to us, “she does not know that you cannot learn so much in one evening.”

I believe that we as a congregation have accomplished all that we have because we didn’t know that we couldn’t. I am wearing my bumblebee jumper today – one that I purchased for a pledge drive a few years ago.  The theme was bumblebees can’t fly.

The theory is that they shouldn’t be able to – but the reality is that they can. And the same goes for this congregation. One of the things that we didn’t know was that a small congregation couldn’t have a full time minister.

I have heard that over and over from many small churches. I would be asked to lead retreats for them and invariably they would tell me they did not have a full time minister because they were a small congregation. And when I would ask – they would tell me a number of members which was larger than when I started here.

When they asked me the size of our congregation – I would tell them and they would be amazed. I hear the same thing from part-time ministers and ministers who serve congregations who don’t pay them very well.

I always smile and tell them – the Evansville congregation is successful because it doesn’t know what it can’t do. (and I hope you will remember that as you move through the next two years selecting your new minister – set your expectations high – you are a wonderful and generous group of people – you are generous with your praise, you are generous with your love and you are generous with your money). You don’t need to settle.

I am leaving because I noticed that I have lost this edge – I have started to lower my expectations. And so I want to go off and recharge and retool and then look for another position.

And I want to step out of the way while I am still wanted here – so that you will not next year or some other year – need to go through the anguishing process of asking me to leave.

It is time for you to have another minister who is excited and energetic and doesn’t know that some things aren’t possible. So they will lead you and love you and challenge you.

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As I was preparing myself to tell you about my impending resignation – I realized that my preferred method of leaving – is at the last minute to turn off the lights – say a quick goodbye and hurry off. So I don’t have to see how it affects anyone else and I don’t have to feel how it affects me.

We all have our own styles of leaving – if you think about your life – how you leave a party – how you say goodbye to friends when they move away – or your move away. How do you leave a job a reflections which will tell you about how you do goodbyes.

My family does not acknowledge endings. We do not in fact have feelings – we are always fine. My sister’s story of when my parents took her to college is that as they drove by her dorm – they paused the car for a moment – just barely allowing her enough time to get out and then they drove off. It isn’t much of a stretch of the truth.

This is not a healthy way to say goodbye. To do an ending. And so I am telling you now – making us all face this – 5 months before I leave – so that we will have the potential to end well. We will have time to have our feelings. We will have time to talk about this – how it feels – how we are doing and what is next. We will end well – or the best we can – so that the congregation is in a good position to welcome a new minister and prosper. And I am in a good position to move on and establish another relationship with another group of people.

Ending any relationship is a foretaste of death. It is an ending and it is a loss. And so we will all have a mixture of feelings.

Some of you might feel relief – perhaps you are not satisfied with the work I am doing – or my preaching is not what you would like.

Some of you might be sad. Some of you might be disappointed – maybe you wanted to tell me something you haven’t told me. Maybe you hoped I’d do your wedding or funeral.

Some of you might find yourself feeling abandoned.

Some of you might feel hurt – you have treated me well – why would I leave?

Some of you might be really angry.

Some of you might be afraid. Perhaps you wonder what will happen to the congregation.

Most of you will have some mix of these feelings. You might be simultaneously happy for me or genuinely wishing me well and you might also be sad and disappointed and worried and even angry. And you might have some feelings now and over the course of the next few months experience very different feelings.

All of those feelings are normal. It is okay for you to have those feelings.  And whatever else is stirred up because you all have had life and loss to face before and maybe you didn’t finish with it.

And I will have and do have mixed emotions too. I am relieved that I have told you and I’m not holding a secret from you. I am sad because I love you and I will miss you. I am disappointed that I didn’t accomplish some things I had hoped to do. I am nervous about what will be next – and in anxious moments I am hoping I didn’t make a really big mistake by resigning before I had another position and I am sure deep in my heart that this is the right thing to do and curious about what will happen next.

I want so much to see where you go and what this congregation does. I want so much for you to get a wonderful minister and say – whoa – isn’t it lucky that other yahoo left.

Not really – I hope you get a new minister and that that ministry blesses you and that you will also be able to look back and remember what we did together that was good.

And so let us take time in the coming months to really speak to each other. It is not necessary for you to paint a smile on your face and say – good luck.  We can tell stories – speak of our foibles – you can tell me of things I might have done differently – this will help me grow. I will laugh with you and cry with you and I too will speak the truth to you. And that is how we will be together – and how we will make our ending.

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I’m sure some of you are also wondering what happens to the congregation now. So briefly – the process is that the board will be responsible to hire an interim minister who will work here for a year. And Rev. Lisa Presley the district executive is coming here at the end of February to meet with the board and to explain how to go about this. In April the department of ministry of the UUA starts to match interims and congregations – which is one of the reasons I am telling you now – because they told me this would put you in a good position.

An interim is usually a very experienced minister. Some of them are people who actually specialize in interim ministry, they are called accredited interims and that is all they do. All of the ministers who take interim positions have received training in this type of work. Their job is to help you look at yourselves – and your identity – help you with anything (for example grief work) and help you get ready for a new minister. It can be hard to transition to the way a new person does things – especially when I may have been the only minister you have ever had. So having an interim gives you a chance to work through some things – sample some other ways of doing things. And during that interim year you will be looking for a new minister. They are not allowed to stay as your settled minister. So during the interim year you will be in search for a new minister.

In early March the district settlement representative – in this case also Lisa Presley will come to Evansville to meet with the congregation. All of you will be invited to that meeting. And she will tell you how you go about finding a new settled minister. You will do a self-study and create a packet about the congregation. And you will set up a committee to review the papers and packets of ministers who are interested in learning more about this congregation (that will probably happen next fall) and then the search committee does telephone interviews with the people they think look interesting and then if some of them seem like possibilities – the committee will go hear them preach someplace (for example the Louisville church might make its pulpit available when you want to check somebody out and the committee would go to Louisville to hear them and spend time interviewing them.  And then if all goes well, sometime next spring the committee will think they have found the person who would be a good match for the congregation and they will let you know about them and invite that person to come spend a week with the congregation – that is called candidating The candidate comes in and preaches here on a Sunday and then spends the whole week meeting people and attending meetings with small groups and looking at housing and probably their family will come too and then they will preach again the following Sunday and then they leave and you vote on whether you want them to be your next minister.

And if about 95% of you vote yes – then they will probably move here and start the following August. (and in the mean time the interim has been here – preaching and going to meetings and teaching and doing all the stuff a minister does from when I leave til when the new person starts so you don’t loose that continuity. )

And when you find someone – you plan a party and lots of UU clergy come here to a special service and you install your new minister.

So that is a brief description of your next year.

Closer to home is the next five months. I will be here – working as I always do and I will be visiting with anyone who wants to talk. We can speak the truth. We can talk about how I have been a good minister to you and how I have failed you. And how I have experienced you. We will do that so that we can both grow as human beings and so that our relationship can end well.

And then at the end of the church year  – we will have an uninstallation and we will release each other from the covenant we made when you installed me as your minister. And we will celebrate what we have accomplished together and wish each other well.

That is what lies ahead for us. We have moved into a new phase of my ministry here. The first phase my arrival – I was assigned here for 3 yrs. and your first work was learning to trust me.

After two years together we went trough a process of discernment together we brought in a consultant who took you through a process of looking at who you wanted to be and whether a full time minister would be helpful. And you decided yes – having tried full time ministry you wanted to stay with it. And then you next decision was – was I the person you wanted to be that minister. You were afraid then – I told you I wouldn’t stay if the vote wasn’t 95% and you said why not 55% - how can Unitarians agree. I told you – all over the country Unitarian Universalists did this – if more than 5% did not want me here – I was not the right person for you. And so we took a vote and you did it. The vote was 4 no’s the rest yes.  And as is inevitable some people left the church at that point. But It has been a good match and many more people have joined the church. (so remember that learning for the next time – it is very important that there is a high level of agreement on who is to be the minister). The next goal I set was to have fun here and to attempt to grow a  joyful, generous congregation. 

And then we settled in and over the next two years we moved from a family style of church (where folks look to a particular person in the church (not the minister) to decide whether it will do something or not – to a pastoral style church where the congregation looks to the minister for direction.

This was the next phase and it happened about my 5^th year here. And then I spent time reflecting on whether I would go or stay. And I decided to stay. And I set a new goal to work with you on taking a role in the community. I helped to start CAJE and to encourage you to take an active role in it.

And now I am leaving – you brought me here to grow you from a fellowship into a church. I think I have done that and I have given you a taste of what you might yet accomplish together – and it is up to you to decide now what kind of church you want to be and who is the person who can take you there.

You are a wonderful and capable congregation and I know you will be well. And I look forward to attending minister’s retreats and hearing your new minister talk about what is going on in Evansville.