A Change in Direction

There’s a line from T.S. Eliot that has accompanied me for several years now. It comes from his 1941 Poem “Little Gidding” and it goes something like this:

 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

 

I have carried it with me around the world and back again, multiple times over. It has spoken to my own love of exploration and sense of wanderlust. Now, however, it takes on a different kind of resonance – that of a homecoming of sorts. For, you see, after 8 years and 31 days, 342,000 miles flown, and countless cups of chai, impromptu dance breaks, and “Bwana Yesu Asifiwe’s” my time as Director of Bega Kwa Bega on behalf of the Saint Paul Area Synod will be coming to a close in a few weeks’ time.

 

There’s been a change in direction. I’ve received a new call.

 

This past weekend the people of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church in Apple Valley, Minnesota voted to call me as their next ‘Learn Pastor’ – tasked, as I describe it, with accompanying the congregation as they intentionally seek to learn with and from one another, their local/global neighbors, and God’s story that enfolds us all. After careful and prayerful deliberation, my family and I have agreed to move forward in this new direction.

 

If you know me and my story, you’ll know that SOTV is one of my homeplaces. It is the location of my first ‘real’ job out of college as a youth worker. It is the community that surrounded us when Jenny and I were married, when our daughters were baptized, and when we mourned the passing of our elders. It was there, with them, in 2002 that this current journey of exploration I’m on began. The world has shifted – I’ve shifted – in the intervening twenty years and, while I hesitate to call this next step ‘the end of all exploring,’ this is a time to arrive where I started and a chance to know the place for the first time.

 

Shepherding the relationship between the Saint Paul Area Synod and the ELCT Iringa Diocese these past several years has been a joy and an honor. It has also been a lot of work – work that has been meaningful and well suited to the questions and curiosities I carry as well as the sense of purpose and values that drive me. Stepping away from this role and seeking a new place in this international network of relationships is no easy task. As I prepare to move on, I know I do not walk alone.

 

At its heart, Accompaniment is about those places where our lives intersect – where gifts to the world that one has to offer meet the needs of another and vice versa. During my time as Director of Bega Kwa Bega I’ve been privileged to share life space with so many: committee members and congregational representatives; students and volunteers and engineers and doctors and teachers and pastors and on and on and on. Americans and Tanzanians, companions on a journey, sharing the best of what they have to offer for the benefit of the other. My life has been changed as a result of each of those encounters. I hope and trust and pray that what I have had to offer has been to their benefit as well.

 

There will be more in the weeks to come. For now, however, I’m filled with gratitude for the journey we have shared -and continue to share – and the unexpected places and ways in which God’s Holy Spirit beckons and calls. All thanks be to God.