At dinner with friends last night the conversation drifted in and out of many different topics. We never are at a loss for things to talk about. We spoke briefly of our church and of what shape leadership might take in the future. We’ve all been involved in the church long enough to know that some projects and missions rise to prominence for a while and then fade as priorities and leaders change. We know that the church of the future will have a different shape and require different leaders than our current configuration. At the same time, there are things in which we have invested a lot of energy that we’d like to see continue into the next generation and we wonder about the leadership that will emerge.

I’ve never had a gift for accurately predicting the future. Sometimes I make wild speculations about what might happen and often as not things turn out in a completely different manner. It isn’t as if everything in life is unexpected, but there are still plenty of surprises ahead.

It was, however, an easier conversation than some that I have had with church leaders. There are conversations that are more tainted with worry and fear about the future. The changes that we have witnessed lead us to a certain level of anxiety about what it next. In the past few months, I’ve had a number of conversations with church leaders about the occasional thoughts I have of retirement. Reactions have ranged from “I don’t want to talk about it!” to “We need a succession plan!” I suspect that the church will find its future somewhere between those reactions. It is prudent to be realistic about the simple reality that none of us go on forever. In a multiple-generation adventure such as the church, we know that leadership changes. To pretend that we can go on as we have always gone is unrealistic and naive. But part of the nature of leadership and the church is that we always need to allow for the movement of the Holy Spirit. When we try to tightly control the future, we find that there is so little that we can control.

Here is what I know. God has always provided the leaders that the church needs, even when it seems like there are no new leaders in sight. God will provide the leaders that our church needs in the future. Investing time and energy in a “succession plan” seems like a waste of time and an invitation for disaster.

I’m fairly confident that I’ll have energy for more adventures as pastor of this congregation, but there are no guarantees. Every hour that I live I stand closer to death than I did the hour before. But unless a serious accident or illness comes along, I’ll continue to be fairly unaware of the span of my time. I’ve been around enough people who have died to know that the timing of the end of life and that way it is embraced vary widely. Some die with fear and trauma. Some die with expectation and anticipation. Some feel that the end has come too soon. Some feel like death was too slow and lingering was too prolonged.

When I speak with people about life and death, I try to remind them that these are things with which our people have wrestled for millennia. Abraham and Sarah were surprised and overwhelmed by the events of their aging years. The future took a long time to become clear and both died without fully understanding the promise of God that was yet to be fully fulfilled. Moses, that incredible workaholic who provided dynamic leadership for an Exodus and four decades of wilderness wandering, could not go on forever. His style of leadership wasn’t what our people needed as they made the transition from nomadic to settled lifestyles. David might have united the monarchy, but was the wrong leader to build the temple. Solomon consolidated wealth and power in Jerusalem, but left too many of God’s faithful people on the margins of his consumer society. The story of our people is a story of leadership that comes and goes and new leaders that emerge - sometimes in unexpected places. Jeremiah himself believes he is too young for the role to which he is called. Jonah tries to run away from the responsibility and when he does succeed in his mission he gets depressed and pouts.

We are an institution of humans and that won’t change even when our time on this earth has become a distant memory.

And our memories are far from perfect. We tell the old stories, but we keep discovering new meaning in words that we have known all of our lives. Some of the truths of our stories only reveal themselves after years of trying to understand.

We come from a mystery that is not fully understood. And we will return to mystery as well. Between those mysteries are the moments of our lives - many filled with delight and beauty. I still wake with anticipation for the events of the day. I can sense that there are things that are worth investments of time and energy. I have unfinished projects that command my enthusiasm.

In a few months I’ll have another birthday. We count the years and are easily able to report our age until our memory starts to fail us. But that is only one kind of a measure. For the number of years ahead are harder to count with any sense of accuracy. I’m fairly certain that I won’t add 100 to my present age, but 30 is within the range of possibility.

Thirty years is 10,930 blog posts. At my current rate of writing that is nearly 11 million words - certainly enough to bore even the most faithful of readers. Since I am already prone to repetition in my writing, it is a bit hard to say which of those words will be fresh and meaningful.

At this point I’m comfortable with now knowing how the future will unfold. For now it is sufficient to find delight in the present and trust the future to God.

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