LST message/
David
Dear friends,
This
is a day that we have wanted for a year now, a day that we can acknowledge that
we have been walking with Ha Na on a faith journey. Every week, we have come to
worship, to gather and celebrate in community, to find some soul time and talk.
We have lived forward to this day.
How often we turn to metaphor to explain
our deepest thoughts. A faith journey: what is in this image that allows us to
explain our time with Ha Na. As with any journey, we make a plan, pack our bags,
a camera, travel, take time to eat, to rest, then to do it all again the next
day. Only this journey is different because it is our daily life as we work and
wonder and worship with our families and with each other. Ha Na has joined us
in this daily walk more than a year ago, and more formally, as an intern supply
minister in December.
The plan is a Learning Covenant that names
three learning goals: (1) creating enriching, meaningful worship for all ages;
(2) developing leadership skills in helping learning, discussion and
meditation; and (3) learning how to offer pastoral care. More than a plan ,
these are the areas of learning to which Ha Na brings her knowledge and
intellect and [Twitter line] desire to experience as ministry work. We see and
hear and experience the substance and images of Ha Na’s work each week in
worship - in prayer and sermon and in pastoral care. The people who walk with
her include the Lay Supervision Team of Lana, Gloria, Ken as well as Board and
Committee members as Marian and Helen and Gloria in Chemainus United. Only a
telephone call, a text or a Serious coffee shop meeting away are two more
people on this journey, Rev Murray Groom as Education Supervisor and Nancy
Heatherington-Pierce from BC Conference. With grace and wisdom [Twitter] Ha Na finds
support and guidance from these people who are committed to help her in this
Internship ministry. In May, we completed a mid-point evaluation, and by
December, a full-term evaluation, although Ha Na’s internship ministry
continues to April, 2014.
Most
Sundays, just before Worship, we gather in prayer with Ha Na to affirm and give
… thanks for her ministry. This is a quiet, purposeful time which builds
solidarity and brings each of us into worship in a new and caring way.
In the first days of Ha Na’s internship
ministry, Rev Fran Darling attended a Lay Supervision meeting to share her
experience with it. She said it would be a crucible experience – a time that
would challenge and change Ha Na. We would know in God’s good time the full
meaning of that comment as Ha Na walked with us through Rev Fran’s end of life
and ministry.
Our journey continues through all that life
offers us daily: work, wonder, health and illness, celebration and grieving.
Today’s covenant celebration has not been lost in all of this, only tempered in
the crucible experience of it all.
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