Let It Go, Let It Go...

"You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again." 

Tom Petty

Saying goodbye is a universal experience. We all in some ways are saying goodbye to something everyday. We say goodbye to a family in the morning, a place of work in the afternoon, a moment in the day. Even the act of sleeping is a goodbye to another day in our lives. Goodbyes are part of what it means to be human. Goodbyes in essence leave us vulnerable to the unknown of the future. 

I am in a season of my life that has a lot of goodbyes coming up. In the next month I will leave a church that I care about, I will leave people who have allowed me to share in their joys and vulnerabilities, I will leave the security of the day to day of this routine. Even the physical act of not taking the bus to the building is a goodbye. I am in the midst of saying goodbye but not yet in the midst of saying hello to the next step of my journey. 

Some goodbyes are hard. Some goodbyes are good riddance. Some goodbyes leave you broken. Some goodbyes leave you hopeful. Whatever your experience we all have to say goodbye. 

There is a story in the Bible where Moses is saying goodbye. He goes on top of the mountain to look over the promised land that he has spent so long trying to get to. It is a land that he cannot go into but he has lead people to. He has spent most of his adult life showing people the way to this place. He by not continuing the journey is allowing others the opportunities to discover their own life without him. 

Often in life and in particular ministry we have to say goodbye. We have to walk away from people and allow them to find their own identity into the future. We have to allow people to go without us. This I think is a hard space. It is an unknown. How will these people make it? Will they become everything I hoped they would? Will they remember me? What happens if they decide that this is not their promised land? I guess it's the same as letting your child leave the nest and enter life. 

The weird thing about saying goodbye in ministry is that we work in a field that is not quantifiable. Just because you have 300 people or 10000 people in your church doesn't make you successful. It doesn't mean anything unless people are changed and the gospel really makes a difference to the worlds in which they lived. This is not quantifiable. You cannot map or spreadsheet this data. 

It's only on the off chance that 5/10/20/30/40 years down the line when you least expect it somebody says "Hey, I remember you. You made an impact in my/their life. Without you I would never have been able to enter the promised land. Look what I have become. You made a difference in shaping who I am". 

These are the moments I think that really matter. We say goodbye here but, there is a hope that we will meet again in the future. I firmly believe that's why Jesus used so many parables about farming. That we need to just be faithful to our job of nurturing the seed and allow it to grow without us. 

That's the thing about ministry, it's that you have to leave people to grow. You might never see what they become. You might never know what impact you had. But, you hold on to the hope that one day you will be reunited with the past and it will be a celebration of good news

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