Learning to deal with the loss of people who move away

Rarely is this good news. The pastor of your church announces she’s accepted a call to a church several states away. You and your community welcomed this pastor, as you welcome all your pastors, with grace and enthusiasm and hope. It’s been a great four years, and you all have been through a lot together. She helped your community come out of some hard and dark places. The church and pastor were on the way to doing some amazing ministry for building the kingdom of God. Some projects were realized. Some projects were still in the dreaming phase. Now what?

Or that great family with four children—they are going to visit the next Mennonite church up the road—the one with a larger youth program. How can they leave? Your church expanded Sunday school classes for this family. They are the most regular ones for children’s story. Your church and this family have grown to love each other and supported each other. And the father is the best (only?) guitar player in the church. How can they just change churches like that?

What about that energetic college student who so inspired your church. Maybe it was her great public speaking and reading of Scripture. Or his wonderful way to engage the youth. Or the twins who played violin and piano for prelude and offertory. You and your church have spent four years providing a home away from home for these young adults. They were regular participants at the prayer meeting and Bible study. They always showed up for a service project or potluck. They became so integral to your community. They have such life and talent. Why do they have to move on?

There are the voluntary service workers, the SOOP workers, the intentional interim pastor, the family being called away to long-term mission, the family moving away for graduate school or work or retirement. The young adult moving on to worship with his new spouse at her church.

These scenarios are played out across our churches every year. It can be so difficult to let go.

Some of our communities are more practiced at letting go than others. Other communities are striving to be sustaining communities, and every leaving is painful. Sooner or later, all communities experience beloved people moving on. We live in a mobile culture.

I used to have a hard time with these kinds of transitions. A big part of my childhood wounding comes from difficult separations, which is not unusual for children who come from divorced homes or with family members with addictions and/or mental illness. So much of my pain comes from such questions as, What’s wrong with me (us) that they must go? After they leave, will we see them again? What if they don’t remember us or we aren’t that important to them anymore. We wonder, Will we be OK with this important part of us leaving? Who will fill the gap?

As I age and grow in my faith walk, I notice that my mourning over folks moving away has become less painful. I give some credit to Facebook. I enjoy keeping in touch and knowing what is going on in my friends’ lives. But much has to do with being a member of the Mennonite church. As I have traveled through churches and communities in Pennsylvania, Virginia, St. Louis, Dallas and now Colorado, I have come to count on connecting with my Mennonite friends at conferences, meetings, retreats, assemblies and relief sales.

And as I learn to know more people, I find that sooner or later I will run into someone who knows Mennonites who were in my life earlier. “Oh, you know Ruth Detwiler, too? She was my first friend through MCC [Mennonite Central Committee].” And I feel connected once again.

But nothing comforts me more than knowing these folks are not changing churches. We worship in the same denomination, Mennonite Church USA; we simply worship at different campuses. All of us are brothers and sisters in Christ. All our communities come together every two years at a biennial convention. I look forward to these larger church gatherings.

However, my understanding of the wider church goes broader than even being Mennonite.

I was in my last weeks in Dallas, Texas, before moving onto my new call in Colorado and was seeing my Methodist spiritual director for the last time. In the seven or so sessions we met, I grew to love and trust her and look forward to her gentle, challenging guidance. As she saw me to the door this final time, I heard the voice of my grandfather in my comment to her, “I guess we won’t see each other again on this side of glory.” I never said anything like that before. But we stopped and looked at each other and connected eyes. Yes, it was true. We have few avenues to meet up again in this life. Yet we both knew this was not the end for Christian sisters to meet again.

Even more than that, I am beginning to understand how each person I encounter on a spiritual level will never leave me. In fact, the longer our spirits connect, the more we become knit into the fabric of each other’s being, forever influenced, love built upon love.

I remember sitting with a pastor peer who was weeping over breaking the news of an upcoming pastoral call that would take her back to her home state, to pastor a church of her youth. This city is where she raised her family. This is the state where her children and grandchildren live. The tears were for the current congregation. Would they feel let down? One of her peers remarked that congregations can take great pride in forming a beginning pastor, providing a place of nurture to strive and fail, to grow and shine. And congregations can be pleased with the way we’ve formed, nurtured, been served and serve folks who move on from our communities.

In what scholars call Jesus’ final discourse in John’s Gospel (17:20-21), Jesus is praying to God “on behalf of these” (disciples) and “also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word” (future generations, including us) “that they may all be one.”
What does it mean to you that all believers have the chance that “they may all be one”?

When beloved friends, family, pastors, church members separate, we are not separate, are we? We worship the same God, through the same Savior, Jesus Christ. With Mennonites we worship in the same church in multiple campuses across the world. With other Christian believers, we know that Jesus came as a groom to marry and become one with his bride, the church. Jesus is not married to many churches or many brides but to one bride, the Christian church.

May we have confidence in Jesus’ words that our friends who no longer are a part of our immediate worshiping communities have not gone. Just as we have confidence that our risen Lord is present in many worshiping communities. Again from John’s Gospel (17:24): “Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me, may be with me where I am.”

Can we bless one another in the missions, ministries and lives that God calls us to, even when we are no longer in the same church? Can we have confidence that we have not been left but are connected by the very Spirit God sends to advocate for us and unite us. May we see how God brings people into and out of our lives, through whom we continue to see the workings of the risen One. May we, yes, mourn their loss among us yet know they are still with us. Let us meditate, struggle and accept that Jesus’ desire is that we all become one.

Melissa S. Roth is pastor of Mountain Community Menno­nite Church in Palmer Lake, Colo.