Dear People of Christ Church,
I have been praying about transitions in the life of the Church. Transitions are a fact of life in the church of Jesus the wandering Christ. There’s the transition from one Rector to another, the ways we move and translate our Sunday worship to the workaday world, the consistent prompting of the Spirit that moves the people of God from whatever was to whatever will be.
As a parent who has walked through a gender transition with my child, I understand a few things about transition.
We tend to pin our hopes on the new. Like many churches, my daughter had a vision of how life would be “after transitioning.” We spent a lot of time talking about this. Transition would NOT mean she was suddenly new—her life experiences, her character and personality didn’t change. And while changing her outward appearance to match her inward self was a relief, I think she was a little disappointed that she didn’t magically morph into a supermodel. Which shows you the power of magazines and media in setting expectations! Like my daughter, churches sometimes believe a transition will bring more newness than it really will—for good or ill. What we hope and pray for is transformation, rather than mere change.
We all participate. When my daughter decided to begin her social and medical transition, I think all of us in our family thought of it as her change. But that is not the reality. People and situations are particular, and cannot be neatly plugged in for one another. Although my child remained essentially herself—both the person she always was and the person we always thought she was — our way of thinking about her, knowing and understanding her changed as well. I look back now on old photographs and, despite the much shorter hair, I see my girl, the girl she always was, even if the outside didn’t match that. Likewise, a church grows and changes with each new person, and especially with each new leader. Being church will not remain the same. And there is much reason to celebrate that, and also…
There is grief and “looking back.” It is very natural that we long for a safe resting place to look out at a turbulent world. Often for us, the seemingly slow changes of church life provide that sense of safety and permanency. But that is not really Christ’s way. Christ’s life was about changing and challenging and moving from one place to the next. Although my daughter is exceedingly happy in her new way of being in the world, there are of course regrets—people who were unable to understand and had to be left behind, even old ways of coping with stress are being made new. Grief and stress and change cause discomfort—where is there a stable place to stand in the midst of shifting change? God has consistently told us to stand in faith.
As we move forward together in the faith that God is with us, may we find ourselves able to share in one another’s anticipation, participation and grief as important markers of transition. We are being made new!
In the Name of Christ,
The Rev. Rebecca Black