Michelle over at 33 Names of Grace has a really beautiful post up about how we love congregations, and how congregations love pastors, and about how both can continue to open their hearts to love again when their is a change of pastoral appointment. She writes, "Whenever anyone says to me, "I'm glad you are here" they pretty much say immediately after that "But I loved my previous pastor, too." I usually just listen but would it help if I said this: I loved my previous church too. It is a strange thing to be a pastor, to have a job that invites you to love a people and then be ready to leave them, and to leave them completely enough that they can connect to the new person whose job it is to love them, and so on. It is privileged and odd work, and it is the work to which I have been called. When I became Zane's mother, I was once going on to my spiritual director about how completely he filled my heart. "I can't imagine having another child,&qu
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