Week of the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Dear Friends in Christ:

Many people, perhaps especially pastors, dread annual congregational meetings. They may be burdened by the sense that annual meetings are only all about the “business” of the church, that is, the legal and organizational requirements of congregations as non-profit organizations. Indeed, there are such administrative matters to attend to, like electing new Council members and passing budgets, and so on.

But I am not among those who dread annual meetings, for I see them as occasions, not unlike state of the union addresses by presidents, when both chambers of Congress, and indeed, much of the nation turns its collective attention to the big picture of how things are going in the nation. For me, annual meetings are state of the church occasions, times to assess the quality of our life together as a congregation.

But before I get to the big picture of assessing the state of our congregation in light of this past Sunday’s annual meeting, I don’t want to leave too quickly the administrative side of things. Doing the “business” of the church is indeed important, for administrative matters serve the primary mission of the church to proclaim the gospel of Christ. In fact, we could not engage in our mission to proclaim Christ if it weren’t for the well-run, behind-the-scenes organizational systems that ungird our capacities to herald the gospel.

And as I am fond of saying, as I did in a message after last year’s annual meeting, and quoting a friend and former colleague, “good administration is good pastoral care.” So, I came away from the 2022 annual congregational meeting of Resurrection Lutheran Church with a renewed sense that we are in good hands administratively. Our congregation is well-ordered, its systems carefully attended to. And all of this happens because of the care and attention, competence and expertise, of a cadre of strong lay leaders who stay on top of things administratively. Having been around the block a few times as a member of a synodical bishop’s staff, I’ve seen too many congregations in administrative upheaval and disarray, and such conditions radically diminish the quality of life in congregations and inhibit the church’s mission. Resurrection Church is not one of those congregations. The caring attention to the administrative life of the church was much in evidence among our leaders who were panelists at our Zoom annual meeting, but they are supported by teams of people behind the scenes who also offer their wisdom, passion, and expertise.

One of the stated desires that appeared in the consultant’s report on our congregation during the interim period prior to you calling me as your Pastor was the hope that Resurrection Church might involve still more fully the laity in the moving forward of the church in and for mission. It strikes me that we are currently doing a rather commendable job of being a congregation that makes the most of lay leadership in the service of our divine calling.

Moreover, such sharing of leadership in teamwork is enormously beneficial to me as your Pastor, for when lay leaders exercise faithfully their respective ministries, especially perhaps responsibility for the “business” aspects of the church as a non-profit, that frees me to attend more diligently to what are the central foci of my particular calling as Pastor, namely, exercising oversight of the preaching and teaching and worship ministries of the church. I am heartened by the division of labor that has evolved among us over the course of my almost two years of serving as your Pastor, and it is a privilege to serve in a shepherding and coordinating capacity the collaborative team that we have become together.

In terms of raising up new and additional lay leaders to serve our mission, there’s always some anxiety on the part of those recruiting and nominating folk, for example, willing to serve on the Congregation Council. Will there be enough people to serve our needs? Yet, when it’s all said and done, people step forward, perhaps reluctantly at first given their busy and complex lives, but they do make themselves available to serve. Thus, we elected this past Sunday an excellent slate of new Council members.

Likewise, in terms of the financial status of our congregation, there is consistently also some anxiety about giving failing to match budgeted needs. But by year’s end, with the common practice among many, myself included for the charitable giving that I do beyond the church, people also step forward by the end of December with gifts that reduce what otherwise had been a running deficit throughout the year. Yes, our giving has not been matching budgeted expenses, but the shortfall has not yet been catastrophic, and there are reserves sufficient at this time to meet deficits. We are also just beginning to explore ways to generate income beyond gifts of members, likely via renting some of our space to other organizations. All of this is to say that Resurrection Church continues to be on a solid financial footing and is a well-resourced congregation to serve Christ’s mission in and for the sake of the world – a mission reflected by the particularly generous amount of money we devote each year to a wide array of organizations that seek to alleviate the suffering of those in need.

So, given the ways we fulfill the maxim that “good administration is good pastoral care,” Resurrection Church is poised in the coming months of 2022 to have the capacity earnestly to live into our shared visions for mission and ministry. Such statements of vision provide the criteria to assess and evaluate the bigger picture of the state of the church with a focus on its mission. Recall that at our annual meeting in 2021, I introduced to you statements of vision that I generated as your Pastor. Over the course of the months of 2021, these “I” statements evolved into becoming “we” statements, informed by the insights of our wider membership, and approved by our Congregation Council. I am glad for the conversations we have had about these vision statements over the past year, and I am heartened by the conversations we have been having and will continue to have in coming months to bring to concrete expression ways of making our visions realities on the ground to serve our ministry and mission as a congregation.

The ship of this church has a better idea of where it is headed, guided by the statements of vision, and inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit working also through our administrative life, which again is the servant of our mission.

The long and the short of it, by way of concluding these reflections on the 2022 annual congregational meeting of Resurrection Church, is that despite the constraints of the pandemic and the challenging realities that make congregational life difficult these days, the state of our church is, in my assessment, strong and solid and faithful.

By God’s grace, may this continue to be so, for Jesus’ sake,

Pastor Jonathan Linman