I Just got back from a vacation I sort of backed into.  Over the summer we thought it would be fun to go do some hiking and sight-seeing in Ireland for a couple weeks.  We did the preliminary planning and took the time off. We got people to commit to preaching at the church in my stead. Then...we didn't go. Life got complicated.

Still, we had the time so we went up to Maine for a week and visited family.  We saw my sister and brother-in-law's new house.  We checked in with my mom.  We stayed with my brother and sister-in-law.  We stumped around the part of the state where I grew up. We caught a friend's book-launch and poetry reading. Then we also hiked, ticking off visits to the Camden Hills and to Gulf Hagas.  It was a restful trip that I would love to post about some time in the future. However, that is not what I am up to today. Instead I want to touch briefly on developments in my church.

You see, for years we have been talking about the future of churches in the United States.  I have written about it, talked about it, and preached about it numerous times. In that broader context I and others have set the life of our specific congregation. Things have been hard for the modernist institutions we think of when we hear the word "church".  Progressive or conservative, they come with buildings which are often too large for their needs.  They come with a struggling staff in desperate need of retraining and revisioning. They come with programs--like Sunday School--that are much less popular now. They come with the perception of arbitrary judgement which--while not as common as people think--still holds true in many places. The post-modern world has caught up to us.  Congregations--progressive ones anyway--are adapting...but slowly.

 While religion may just be fine, our old institutions may not be. They must change and learn in order to grow.

All of this is to say that The Eliot Church, where I have served for twenty-one years and two months, will be cutting the pastoral position from full-time to half-time starting no later than September 2025. It gives us as a congregation time to plan for what that will look like.  It gives me a year to figure out what I will be doing for the rest of my career. It feels like a long period, but it isn't really.  We are adapting to the new reality--churches must be more flexible, more creative, and more stable ​going forward--but we are still an old and venerable institution. Pastors also need to be these things but I, of course, am older, too.  I am glad we are facing the current reality, even though there will be some hard traveling both for the congregation and for me.

I don't think it is time to dwell on the details.  These will come in time and I will probably post some of what I witness and learn here on Sabbath Walks. However, on our way up to Gulf Hagas we happened to drive past my first church settlement.  I was 1/3 time but they shortly re-connected with another congregation who hired me for 2/3 time. This gave me the same "uneven yoke" that my predecessor had.  Both of those churches are still there, surviving in the face of all the difficulties that this era brings to voluntary associations. Seeing the old parish was a good reminder that life goes on, as does love.  It reminded me that God does not abandon us. We just need to make sense both in and to the society and culture that needs our message.

We have made a big step.  I do not know what it means for me or my family.  I do not really know what it means for the congregation.  What I do know is that we are acknowledging a change that leaves room for celebration as well as grief.

"Remember your baptism" is a popular phrase in my life.  My colleagues and I are urged to do so--and to encourage others to do so--every once in a while throughout the year.  There are good reasons for this, of course.  When we remember this moment in our lives, we recall our relationship with God.  We also recall our relationship with the holy people who gathered together to witness the moment.  At least some of those people are our family, or chosen family. Sometimes it is done in the midst of a congregation as well.  In my congregation on Ingathering Sunday we bring water from places that have been important to us.  Then we use it for baptisms and other things so the congregation is always there in spirit. A baptism doesn't need witnesses.  However, when they are present, they remember their baptisms, too.

Of course, many people don't literally remember.  They were infants at the time.  Also--after the baptism--some people have few opportunities to be reminded of it. Families don't attend worship like they used to. In the absence of anything other than a very occasional visit for Christmas Eve, more and more adults give little thought to their children's spiritual lives or their own. The ritual can be just a thing you do in those early days before other things take precedence.

I am not saying this as a complaint.  It is just a statement of fact.  In fact, I literally remember my baptism.  I was 18.  The reasons my parents decided to encourage me (along with my siblings) to be baptized were complicated. Neither we nor they attended church regularly.  However, even at the time I found it moving.  I had been hovering around the edges of my friends' churches for a while by then.  I had questions about life and its meaning and the people I met in church--while they didn't have answers--seemed to have a path.  Now I am a pastor and so is my mom.

During worship this past Sunday, I officiated a baptism for an adult who was formerly a member of the youth group. It reminded me of my own experience.  Before the service I told him that there would be times when it meant very little to him and times when it meant a great deal.  That is how these things work.  Baptism is one string that connects us in every direction to Creation.  We don't always notice it, even when we know it is there.  Then...we really do when we need that connection.

Baptism is a sacrament in the tradition I represent.  There is only one other.  That is communion.  The reasoning is that they are the only ones that appear in the Gospels.  John the Baptizer stood down by the river. Jesus sat in the upper room. Other traditions range from having no real sense of sacraments to having seven or nine.  Each tradition chooses different things as well. That is the richness of how we see God.  We are humans, the Divine speaks to us in a language we understand. We all have different "languages" that we speak.

We had communion on Sunday as well.  It was, in fact "World Communion Sunday," which is a celebration of diversity and ecumenism held on the first Sunday in October.  It is another opportunity to consider our spiritual connections.  At Eliot we pass the tray of bread cubes and little glasses through the pews.  We do this so we might serve each other in the process.  Also, it is a recognition of the divine spark within each of us.  Other congregations go to the front to break bread off a communal loaf or take a wafer from a priest.  Frequently there is a communal cup as well.  That we recognize each other in our diverse manifestations of ritual is important.  These are small differences that reflect the wide variety of roads we take toward God.

When I was first getting interested in the United Church of Christ, a UCC colleague asked me how I planned on dealing with participating in a more sacramental tradition.  I had spent some time as a Unitarian Universalist pastor where the word "sacrament" when it is used doesn't have the same weight.  She had also entered the UCC from a less sacramental tradition.  I didn't have an answer then and she didn't expect me to.  It was more of a "head's up" that I might want to start thinking about baptism and communion more seriously and systematically.

I am glad I took her warning. I have learned over the years that ritual can be built over differences in style and belief.  It creates common ground upon which we can sit and converse. We can see our commonality in the quest toward unknowable mysteries.  It also gives us a way to show our love both to God and the world.  Amen to that.