On Pentecost Sunday, May 15, 2005, you called me to be your Senior Pastor by a 96% vote. At that time, I signed a three-year contract with Church of the Trinity. That contract is up for renewal this summer and I have shared with the Board that I will not be renewing my Pastoral contract at Trinity. My last Sunday will be May 11, 2008, which, as the Spirit would have it, is Pentecost Sunday.

My partner Deb, has received a job transfer to Austin, TX which is a wonderful opportunity for her and I am looking forward to the ways I can be supportive of her in her career in the same ways she has been supportive of mine.

I have no doubt that God called me to be your Senior Pastor three years ago—many of us felt the anointing of the Spirit in that calling. And God has blessed us in the three years we have been together. In counting those blessings we could talk about hiring an architect and the completion of a master plan for our campus, or the Board’s completion of a three-year strategic plan, or the completion of a Capital Campaign that raised $577,000 in pledges.

But I want to lift up the ways God has blessed us spiritually. This Easter season has been one of deep spirituality for our congregation. We had over 400 people attending our Holy Week and Easter services and many of you have commented on how meaningful those services were for your personal journey. The forty one people who attended our retreat this past Saturday at DaySpring conference center deepened their spiritual journey through learning about and experiencing the healing ministry of the Church.

Over these three years God has blessed us to be a blessing. We have collected uniforms, school supplies and money for the students of Emma Booker Elementary school. We have provided clothing, medical supplies and money for the MCC in the Dominican Republic as they reached out to people in their community who were devastated by storms. We have taught our children about stewardship and watched them raise over $790 for the Heifer Project. We have helped to feed over 70 families a week by donating food, money and volunteer time to the Trinity Charities Food Pantry. The list could go on.

Our three years together have not always been easy, but we have grown deeper in our relationships with one another, and deeper in our spiritual life together. I have no doubt now that God is preparing me for my next calling, and God is preparing you too. Whatever it is that God calls me to do next; I will be wiser, stronger, and more authentic because of having made this journey with all of you. My prayer is that you will be wiser, stronger and more authentic because of what God has done in our midst these last three years.

One of the wonderful things we did together was to welcome Rev. David Wynn as our Associate Pastor. David has taught us in the two years he has been with us about the importance of remaining open to the Spirit. His very life has been a testimony to what it means to say ‘yes’ to Spirit’s transformational work.

Well, David has continued to say ‘yes’ to the Spirit, and the Spirit is leading him to take a position as the Interim Pastor of Agape MCC in Ft. Worth, TX.  David’s last Sunday with us will be next Sunday, April 13. He will be preaching at both services and we will have a reception for him that day.

It has been a joy to work with David as a colleague in ministry at Trinity. He has ‘done’ many wonderful things in the area of programming, but I believe his greatest gift to us has been his presence and his example of a heart truly open to the wonder of God in every moment.

The Board of Directors is in close contact with our denominational Regional Elder, Rev. Lillie Brock and she will be making a visit to Trinity in mid-May to meet with the Board and the congregation to put a Transition Team in place and discern the appointment of an Interim Pastor. The Interim Pastor will have specific training in leading churches through pastoral transitions and will work with Trinity, along with Elder Brock, to put a search process in place to call a permanent Senior Pastor.

In this season of Eastertide, we are invited to enter into the mystery and the tension of ‘presence and absence.’  Resurrection at its core is about the conversion of the pain of Jesus’ absence into a deeper understanding of his presence. The great spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, explores this tension between presence and absence when he says, “I am deeply convinced that there is a ministry in which our leaving creates space for God’s spirit and in which, by our absence, God can become present in a new way…Without a coming there can be no leaving, and without a presence absence is only emptiness and not the way to greater intimacy with God through the Spirit.”

The pain and sadness we feel right now is evidence, I believe, that there has been ‘a coming’ between us. There has been ‘a presence’ we have known in these three years of ministry together.  Let us do our leaving well so that God can become present to us in a new way.