Welcoming Your New Rector

[This past Sunday at our Parish Forum on the New Rector Transition, I spoke about the role of a rector in a parish and offered some of my own thoughts and experiences of what a priest goes through in making that transition.  Some of the people present asked me to share my comments with a wider group of people.  I am using today’s Daily Cup to do so.]

St. Alban’s Parish is now awaiting the arrival of The Rev. Dr. Deborah Meister as its own new Rector.  She is a highly educated, deeply committed, and faithful priest who, I am convinced, will be able to lead St. Alban’s Parish with devotion, energy, and love.  There is a lot of excitement about her impending arrival and her first Sunday, September 25.  A transition.  There are, of course, a lot of expectations about her and the new ministry that is about to begin.  Some of these expectations are realistic; some are not.  It will be especially important in the weeks and months to come to distinguish between the two.

In order to put some focus on this, I think it is helpful, at the outset, to think about just what a priest and rector is.  The Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church provide our basic guidelines as to what the Church itself expects of its clergy.  It’s relatively simply, at least on the surface.  The Canons list the following duties and responsibilities as primary:  The conduct of worship and “spiritual jurisdiction” of the parish; the use and control of the church, together with all the buildings; and all the education of the parish, including Scripture; the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church; stewardship; and the response of the Church to the needs of the world.  The rector is also the president and chair of the Vestry and the one to whom all church staff members and employees report.

Those are the major responsibilities from the Church’s point of view, but other expectations have accumulated in the hearts and minds of people over time.  Some, undoubtedly, think a rector should double the attendance within a year and triple the income within two.  Obviously, those fall among the most unreasonable expectations.  But what is behind these and many other such hopes and dreams is the erroneous notion that the rector alone controls the destiny and direction, as well as the success or decline, of a parish.  Ministry is too important to be left to one person.  By virtue of our baptism, all are called to minister and serve together within the context of community.  All the literature indicates that over 90% of all parishioners become involved with and committed to a church, not because of the clergy, but because of other lay people.  The role of clergy in general, and a rector in particular, is to equip and nourish the laity in order to enable them to do their ministry and to reach out to others to discover the Christ in them.  Together with each other in and through this community of faith you can accomplish extraordinary and wonderful things.

How, many have been asking, can parishioners best help to welcome the new Rector and make her feel part of St. Alban’s?  Just as the parish has been undergoing a major time of transition, so is she.  Many, indeed most, of you have experienced job changes over the course of your lives, so you have some sense of what is entailed.  Some of you have also had to move as a result of that transition, so you know some of the issues that involves as well.  For a priest and a rector, the change is virtually total:  new work, new environment, new home, new friends, new doctors, dentists, mechanics, grocery stores—I think you grasp the picture.  But there are even deeper issues.  A priest is at the center of a community, sharing in the lives, loves, troubles, joys, and deaths of hundreds of people.  That community is the priest’s spiritual home and spiritual center.  After a while, a priest comes to know how that community works and comes to live and breathe it every moment of every day.  It provides the structure of the priest’s life and helps shape the priest’s relationship with God as well as the mission and ministry of God’s church and parish.  For most priests, and especially rectors, that defines a great deal of, not only what they do, but—even more importantly—what they are.  A change in cures (as parishes are known) is an enormous transition.

You can best help Deborah Meister as she goes through these changes and makes the transition to St. Alban’s by praying for her.  She needs those prayers especially at this time in her life, and you need to pray, as well, as a means of opening yourself to hear and receive the many gifts she brings in her ministry.  Secondly, and I’m serious about this, wear nametags on Sunday—there’s no way anyone can learn everyone’s name in a parish this size in a matter of weeks or months or even within a year or so.  Give her time and space to settle in and get to know the parish without being overwhelmed by personal requests, invitations, and answers she cannot possibly fulfill within a short time.  Every priest has her or his own style of coming into a parish, but the best advice I ever received was to spend the first few months concentrating on my preaching, my sermon preparation, and my prayer life, for those are often the best means we have to discern God’s will and intention for the ministry that is to come.  That requires discipline on the part of the parish as well.

Finally, let her be a human being.  Let her laugh.  Let her tell jokes—even bad ones, if that’s her style.  Let her make mistakes.  Let her feel that she belongs to a community that is supportive and caring in the way that I know St. Alban’s, at its heart, can be.  She won’t have all the answers all at once; she’s probably still trying to formulate the questions.  Don’t think that every word she speaks is an articulation of either policy or doctrine.  Let her take the time she needs to discover what you and this community are all about and where you want and need to go.

An analogy that has often been made to the relationship between a rector and a parish is that of marriage, for it, too, requires respect, honor, forbearance, work, trust, and, most of all, love.  When those are present, grace can abound.  Do all you can to insure that it does, and you will know the real joy that mutual ministry in the service of Christ can bring to all.

Many blessings,