December 12, 2008

Dear Friends,

This letter probably won’t reach you by Christmas, but it will certainly reach you by the date it is intended to announce. I turn 65 on the 8th of January. The church is holding a valedictory service for me the afternoon of Sunday the 11th, and I start collecting my pension the beginning of February. I am retiring.

You can imagine all the mixed emotions one might feel when the waiting comes to an end and retirement becomes an unavoidable fact. Yesterday, as I sat with Vicky and baby Daniel in the Children's Hospital I was thinking how deeply I will miss the opportunities we have for such extraordinary fellowship. And then later there was the joy of a potluck supper at the manse with those who are becoming new members of the church. Earlier in the week there was probably one of the most enjoyable Bible studies I have ever experienced in my career, and it was on the genealogical list of Jesus’ ancestors at the beginning of Matthew, of all things! This session could have been excruciatingly boring, but it was in fact hugely joyful. And then there was an elders meeting at the beginning of the week that filled me with confidence for the years ahead here at City Church. It is wonderful to know things are being left in a set of very capable hands.

But you realize there are also times when the ministry is something to endure. You don’t get this side of it, as our letters home are intended to be upbeat and encouraging for the church's mission program. A couple of years ago I was telling a friend how many elders meetings I had to survive before retirement. “As bad as that?” she asked. And then she sent me a large Advent-calendar-like thing with little windows to open after each elders meeting. You opened a window, and inside there was a picture of a saint, and a comforting message. “At least you weren't put in a leather bag with serpents and scorpions and thrown into the sea, like St Julian,” one of them said. “At least you weren’t burnt with red-hot irons, torn with sharp hooks then laid naked in live coals and broken glass like St Agatha.” And then there was the final one, opened and read just this last week. “At least you weren't tied to the back of a camel and severely scourged with whips that had lead balls tied to their ends, like St Julianus.”

It’s good to be able to announce that I have at least made it to the end, a bit scarred perhaps, and much wiser now than when starting out, for that. The ministry can be hard going at times. Last Thursday’s ecumenical carol singing, for instance, was meant to spread cheer in the heart of Cardiff's central shopping district. The weather was awful, for starters. We huddled together out of the rain in the bell tower of St John's Church. Then just outside the door an immense garbage truck pulled up and began grinding away as it devoured the refuse of the pubs and restaurants clustered around St John’s Square. The Salvation Army Band that was supposed to be accompanying our singing could barely compete with the noise as the garbage truck mangled up the festive season’s accumulating leftovers.  All I could think of was how difficult it so often is to sing the Lord’s song against all the world's competition. It seemed to be the perfect parable of the mission effort. The church can seem to be huddled together like this, just singing to itself.

Has my ministry made any difference? That’s an inevitable question. The garbage truck continues to grind away, drowning me out as I struggle to proclaim the good news of Emmanuel, God-with-us. Of course it is particularly in this festive season that we are supposed to remember how the hereness and nowness of God does not cancel the realness of the real world. The hereness and the nowness of God we call the incarnation is not a covering over of the world with tinselled liturgies or a blurring of its hard facts in an alcoholic haze, but an entering into it in unlikely and extraordinary moments of unprotected fellowship. I think maybe this is what my mission work has been all about, this simple solidarity with people in the ordinariness of their daily lives. Being together makes a difference. Perhaps, in the end, we need to see that our carols are in fact magnificently and appropriately accompanied by the grinding of the garbage truck, as a way of earthing them in what is really real.

Just being there with people is the only thing I can think of that lies beyond the things that have happened here at City Church in recent years—the formation of our “open and affirming” policy that welcomed the unwanted, the development of our program offering free legal assistance to asylum seekers, the nurture of an increasingly multi-ethnic congregation, even going into the book-selling business. Taking on the responsibility for keeping the only broadly mainstream, ecumenical book store in Wales going has also been a way of “being” with people. I’m pretty sure about that. Standing together has results.

One of the reasons I do feel good about retirement is knowing how much all this has been the result of a group of people who are faithful, creative, and entrepreneurial. The secret of my ministry has been delegation. I take my cue from the poet Walt Whitman: “I lean and loaf at my ease.” I remember one time early in my ministry when I was sitting in the car talking to Millie Jarrett, my Clerk of Session. Staring straight ahead, she said, cautiously, “Tom, you know how, if someone doesn’t do the job they’ve said they were going to do, you step in and do it?”  “Yes,” I said, after a perceptible pause, already feeling guilty. “That's no way to raise children,” she said. And my ministry hasn’t been the same since.

So retirement will be a cinch. I’ve been backing away for years. We’re staying in Cardiff, by the way, not just because Marieke has three or so more years to work, but also because Rachel with baby Mia is here. We have five grandchildren now, spread around the United Kingdom. Our new address is correct as on my home page.

Please write, or come visit.  Have a wonderful Christmas,

Peace,

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 152