Reentry can be a jarring feeling that most pastors feel when we return to our offices after times of leave. No matter whether it is vacation or other forms of leave, there is a weary anxious energy over the wonderings of “what did I miss while I was gone?” It can be very hard to “stop thinking about work” even weeks into a vacation time, even after being given permission to set it gently down. This energy comes out of a place of deep care for the people we serve. This time of year sees a lot of church leaders taking well deserved time of leave, and my prayers go with all who are returning to different experiences of reentry.
Reentry after a time of leave often gives the gift of fresh eyes to see and hear the beauty around us that may have eluded us in the pre-vacation, unrestful times trying to meet demands of our schedules and expectations, taking care of others needs before our own. Now that I am two weeks back into the office after my intentional season of medical and family leave, I have been blessed with the opportunity to see and hear what’s going on around the presbytery in your lives.
I would like to share some of my noticings and gratitudes that I am processing in the wake of my reentry:
• I am so grateful for our small staff who stepped up to during my time of leave to ensure that the ministry of the presbytery through our churches is accompanied, supported, and empowered.
• I am grateful for our young people’s return from a successful PC(USA) Triennium, the first since the pandemic. Thank you, Rev. Matt Miller for your coordination as Lead Adult Advisor, and I echo Matt’s appreciation for Adult Advisors Kristen Link and Joey Stokes, for the young people themselves, and also the generous giving of the presbytery community that made this transformational experience possible.
• I am grateful for the experience of visiting and sharing words of continued solidarity and hope with the good people of Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church on my first Sunday back, to personally witness their resilience, faith, and hope as they rebuild spirits and community after the May tornado devasted their building. They are worshipping now at the building of First Presbyterian Church of Ferguson, whose previous congregation celebrated the completion of their mission and last worship service in May.
• I am grateful for the birth of a standing local disaster response team that will help steward the distribution of funds so generously given to assist our siblings in ministry through all forms of disasters.
• I am grateful for the different AC’s who have been working diligently to be faithful to our responsibilities, work that very often involves grief and grieving that so often accompanies closings and new beginnings.
• I am grateful for the opportunity to hear the insights of our leadership over how we can right-size and focus our ministry with coordinated vision, as institutional structures of the church are experiencing change across the nation.
• I am grateful for the eight plus years of service from Leigh Porter, in the wake of her resignation as office manager in June, who has asked our blessing in her new adventure as she pursues a career change.
• I am grateful for the arrival of new pastors into our presbytery community, calls openly celebrated as complete, and calls gleefully held close as yet to be revealed.
• I am grateful for the many pastors who are on Sabbatical leave right now, to study, to learn, to play, to explore, and to create, so that they may be rejuvenated for new challenging ministry landscapes ahead of us.
• I am grateful for the ongoing consolidation and refinement of explicit processes, protocols, and procedures so that we can assure that institutional memory is preserved across leadership turnover, and so the ways we work together are clear, consistent, accessible, transparent, and representative of the entire presbytery.
• I am personally grateful for a new season of being present, of noticing, listening, of feeling, of being, and breathing, as we bravely face the realities of our current day together.
• Above all, I am grateful for you, for hanging in there through seasons of challenge and change, speaking truth to powers and principalities while holding onto the conviction that “we will not fear, thought the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult” and 46th Psalm that ends with the reminder that, even as we hold space for so much pain and anxiety in our communities right now, we can hear to words from the divine to “be still and know that I am God.”
I am grateful for a God who has called us, as a particular people, called to serve in a particular time, called to serve in a particular place. Through all of the different kinds of entries and reentries, our responsibility as a community is to carry a tradition of hope, a hope that ties us together: “for I know the plans I have for you, declares our God, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11). We have work to do, and part of that work is carrying hope from season to season.
Blessings as we (re)enter a new season now!
In faith and gratitude,
Ryan
Rev. Ryan J. Landino
Presbytery Leader
Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy
