Dear Friends,

One of my favorite prayers within the Anglican tradition is the Collect for Purity. I love it because it anchors life within the frame of God’s knowledge of the real us,  every aspect of our story - the parts we like and celebrate and those we like less, feel shame over, or even withdraw from. I pray these words nearly every day as a matter of relief. But it hasn’t always been so. Like yours, my story is complicated, and my understanding of God and his grace is equally tangled. The gap between what I know to say and teach about the graciousness of God and my experience of him as a God of grace is sometimes painfully wide. 

This is common to all of us in some sense. The families and communities that  shaped us were unavoidably broken, and for some of us far more than for others. I have long suspected that many pastors confuse the clarity they sense around a call to ministry with the underlying pain and questions that drive them to seminary and to ministry where they hope to find a few more answers, but where they often unwittingly pass their pain along in minor and significant ways. For me, all of this came to a head in 2005 as I contemplated planting a church. 

Stacy and I had been in ministry long enough and married long enough for her to say something like, “We can go plant a church, but I am not going with you until you talk with a counselor.” She saw how unprocessed parts of my story, my family of origin, and painful experiences in ministry played out in the sphere of my pastoral calling. She saw what was often invisible to others - or perhaps not as invisible as I thought! So, in 2005, I started making the trip to Philadelphia from New York City to meet  with Dr. Diane Langberg where I took a deep dive into some of the most challenging parts of my life story. In mid-2006, we relocated our family to Philadelphia to begin a new church - a church that, like all churches, would reflect our pastoral leadership far more than any of us should ever desire! But it was an important work that was part of growing up into a greater experience of the God who sees - the God whose character it is to always show mercy - the relief that he knows us. 

Rowan Williams wrote or said somewhere, “The gospel tells us we can and must learn to inhabit our own lives and our memories, to come to terms with, and be at peace with ourselves, to remember who we are without pain and alienation, because we trust a forgiving God.” In Christ, God has opened a place for us to be seen  and known, but also transformed by an experience of his grace. We appeal to God to “cleanse the thoughts of our hearts that we may perfectly love and magnify his name,” but what is our experience of this action of God? This God who loves us in ways that we so often strain to understand? And in ways that sometimes feel strongly absent from the churches we serve? 

This year’s pre-synod workshop is focused on the topic of clergy and lay leadership health, and thus the development of healthy congregations. I will be sharing a little more of my own story and talking about the importance of soul care that takes our life stories seriously. We have also invited Dr. Diane Langberg to speak on topics related to her most recent book, Redeeming Power—Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church. Diane is a licensed Christian psychologist and has spent a considerable part of her 50 year career helping Christians, including clergy and their spouses, and church leaders find healing from all manner of abuse and deception. I hope you will join us on Friday, November 19 from 3-6 p.m. at The Falls Church Anglican for this important time of reflection and training. We are ordering our time so that there will be table discussion and a broader time for Q&A. I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

Blessings,

Tuck