Pastor's Corner: Time for goodbye

It's my turn to say goodbye.

Even if you have only kept track through reading these pages, you might have picked up on an alarming trend among the clergy in mainline churches in the Havre area.

Quite a number of us have departed from our calls to ministry here in recent months. Between accepting new church positions, retirement, and sadly in the case of a beloved colleague (Pastor Valorie Putt of American Lutheran Church in Chinook), an unexpected death, several pastors are no longer filling pulpits in some of our longest-established churches in north-central Montana.

Others have shared their farewells in this column. Then again, other colleagues have slipped away quietly. I cannot speak for them but only for myself.

I am preaching and presiding one more time on Sunday at Messiah Lutheran Church in Havre and Christ Lutheran Church in Big Sandy. Then that afternoon, my family will roll out in a Penske moving truck and with our new (-to-us) minivan and begin the journey to Port Townsend, Washington, where I will begin to serve as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church before the end of the month.

The pandemic has been varying degrees of difficult for all of us. In my extended family, we had a non-COVID-related health scare or two. It became increasingly pressing that we get back nearer to loved ones whom my wife Vanessa and I want to have as present in our lives and the lives of our children as possible.

I had noticed colleagues exiting before me in one fashion or another and didn't quite know what to make of it. On the one hand, it is easy to think, "Phew, at least I'm not the only one going through this and leading a congregation into a transition!" On the other, it is easy to fear my decision is only making an already difficult and uncertain time that much more difficult and uncertain. Leaving the only ordained ministry I have ever known could not be taken lightly.

As I mentioned in my final newsletter article for Messiah, one of the most-appreciated aspects of ministry on behalf of the church of Jesus Christ in this neck of the woods for me is the camaraderie and support of the Greater Havre Area Ministerial Association. GHAMA combines the prayers and responses to God's grace and urging of the Holy Spirit of many local ministers, ordained and lay folk alike. The organization is responsible for attending to the needs of some of the most desperate situations people face in Havre and puts on some of the most-cherished gatherings for local believers and most-needed in the current cultural milieu. The latter include the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and midweek Lenten suppers hosted by a church which does not even typically adhere to the liturgical calendar but loves us as Christian neighbors enough to engage and try on new things.

I am grateful for the support and leadership of GHAMA president Pastor Edroy "Curt" Curtis but I also know his role, and that of each participant in GHAMA, gets harder with each new pastoral vacancy. I ask your prayers, support and encouragement of GHAMA during this time of transition as well as for my parish and the various other congregations in and around Havre where these changes are underway.

In the apostle Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (1:6), it is written, "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ."

In the same vein, God has long been at work in the region around Havre, Montana, and God is still at work. God is not done with any one of us yet. Nearly half of my ministry here has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and it has not been easy on any of us. Yet God uses our trials and the challenges we face in life to shape us and to prepare us for better things. The in-breaking of the realm of God here will not always look the same and it is natural to have apprehension about such things. But to borrow a line I have long appreciated from a church body that is not represented in this area (the United Church of Christ), "Never place a period where God has placed a comma ... ."

One of the fundamental tenets of our faith in Jesus Christ tells us that no matter what things look like when and where we are now, the best is yet to come.

--

The Rev. Sean Janssen is pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Havre and Christ Lutheran Church of Big Sandy.