Intern Ministry Covenanting Service: The Presentation of the Chairperson of Lay Supervision Team (Sep 15, 2013)

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.