Event Spotlight: Ministry Amidst Grief and Hope
As we prepare for ElderLink later in a couple of weeks, we want to whet your appetite for our time together. At ElderLink North Carolina, we’ll be focusing on ways we can lead amidst the great griefs of recent years while holding on to the hope we have in Christ. We recently sat down for virtual conversations with our keynote speaker (Don McLaughlin) and our breakout session leaders (Cheryl Bacon, Eddie Sharp, Dennis Conner, Omar Palafox, and Carson Reed).
For Don McLaughlin: Your keynotes will point us to a “holy trio” of Christian concepts: faith, hope, and love. For some of us, that may seem like a well-worn path, but you’re going to bring us new insights in a new context. What is it about faith, hope, and love that keeps us coming back for more?
Don: I experience joy, inspiration, and encouragement when I witness authentic faith, hope, and love. I see faith in a college student who was baptized during COVID. He is on fire for God, sharing his faith on his college campus. I see fresh hope in a new member of our church who lost her husband of over 50 years shortly after their wedding anniversary, and who then moved here to be near family. Now she has a new church family, and she is thriving. I see the power of love in a young professional from Asia in our congregation. He moved to Atlanta for a job. He came to church knowing no one, but now I see him flourish in friendship. I believe the church is at a crucial inflection point where there is great opportunity for growth. The restoration of faith, hope, and love is the most important felt need in the church and in our world.
For Cheryl Bacon and Eddie Sharp: Your breakout session will focus on ways that we, as leaders, can and do respond in times of grief. Why do you think that it’s so important that we acknowledge and name our grief when we are struggling?
Eddie: Post-pandemic life comes at us with crisis after crisis, challenging us to understand and respond to what we have been through since March 2020. In this time of great grief, it is tempting to push past the loss, change, and trauma of the recent past. Instead, to move toward healing, we need to identify the symptoms of unresolved grief in ourselves and in our congregations: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Responding to these behaviors will mean stopping for seasons of solitude, silence and prayer, listening to each other’s stories of loss, and then moving forward together in step with the Spirit.
Cheryl: Churches and Christians have always dealt with grief and faithfully walked through the shadow with those who have suffered loss of loved ones, loss of health or family peace. It’s part of our call. But today, churches are grieving losses of a different kind—loss of place, loss of meaningful traditions, loss of sufficient membership to maintain and pursue the ministries that matter most. When churches close or merge or reinvent themselves in order to persist they experience pain—even when the changes brought by such loss are good. And leaders, who often feel these same losses themselves, must find ways to move forward while recognizing and bringing healing to a body that may feel empty and forgotten.
For Dennis Conner: I love the title of your session—not because I love exhaustion, but because it rings so true for what we’ve been going through in recent years. Without giving too much away about your session, can you give us a little foretaste about how you think we can endure in those times of exhaustion? What is one spiritual key that you’d point us to?
Dennis: Shepherding a congregation is difficult and challenging under normal circumstances, but the stress of the past two and a half years—making hard decisions about whether or not to meet, learning and pivoting to new technologies, trying to get people to re-engage—has left those in ministry simply exhausted on every level. It's so easy to get caught up in a spirit of competition with other churches, or to spend a lot of energy trying to go back to where you were pre-COVID, or lose sleep over finances and attendance and paying the bills. Trying to deal with everything all at once feels almost impossible. One key is to refocus on a kingdom mindset instead of on church growth alone. It isn't just about our congregations; it's much bigger, it's about the kingdom of heaven! The numbers for your congregation may never reach pre-pandemic levels again, but there is satisfaction and comfort in knowing that you're pursuing the things that mattered most to Jesus.
For Omar Palafox: I’m so looking forward to your sessions because, in a lot of our churches, we don’t spend a great deal of time in Revelation, even though there is so much value there. What drew you to Revelation in thinking about ElderLink and the churches in the Mid-Atlantic region?
Omar: It is unmistakable that Jesus' victory over adversity, whether in the context of today's society or in the first century, is a message of inspiration for the church. I selected these verses in Revelation because many communities are redefining their mission and core values due to the struggles they are experiencing. The diversity in the Mid-Atlantic region is similar to some Latin American countries that, despite their brokenness, remained faithful to Jesus because of the hopeful message they found. The book of Revelation encourages anticipation, and it focuses on Jesus' function as a Slain-Lamb who was able to open the seals. Jesus' victorious brokenness can lead to worship, prayer, and the universality of His Lordship in today's adversity.
For Carson Reed: You win the award for the best vocabulary word in a session title this time around. Can you tell us about the concept of “liminality” and why it’s so important for leaders?
Carson: Ha! Liminality is simply a fancy word for the space under a door. When you leave one room and begin to move into another, you cross a threshold. In many aspects of our lives, though, we can find ourselves in that middle space for some time. I recently sat with a man who had lost his wife of 60 years a few months ago. As he spoke about his loss and the uncertainty of the future, I recognized that my friend was in a liminal space—he had left one season of life and was moving toward another—but he was not into that other season just yet. So it is with many of us as church leaders. The past two years of the pandemic have closed one chapter of life and we find ourselves moving toward a new chapter, but we aren't fully sure of where we are at. Leadership in liminal spaces requires the practice of faith in fresh ways, and we will explore all of this at ElderLink!
We hope you’ll be able to join us later next month!
ElderLink is open to adults engaged in congregational ministry, including elders, deacons, ministers, spouses, and ministry leaders of all types. We would love to connect with you at ElderLink North Carolina on September 16-17, 2022. Contact Renee Paul at elderlink@acu.edu with any questions or needs. Be sure to register by September 8 to secure early pricing.
