Annual Report of the Senior Pastor (2003-2004)

It’s been a dramatic year.

It’s been a year of joys and sorrows, ups and downs, faith and fear. If I am going to put this year in context, I think immediately of the hymn: “Won’t You Let Me Be Your Servant?” The first two stanzas go like this:

Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey, we are travelers on the road;
We are here to help each other go the mile and bear the load.

As I think back a year ago, three simultaneous events, among many, shook our world at large, our world at First Parish Church, and my personal world. In March of 2003, the military campaign began in Iraq, an event which has riveted our attention ever since. The moral dilemmas set in motion at that time are ones that we continue to face ever more deeply with the escalating violence of the past few weeks and the June 30 deadline. How do we help each other and our fellow nations “go the mile and bear the load?”

Also a year ago, events led to the end of the Reverend Ben Crosby’s ministry as Conference Minister of the New Hampshire Conference. This ending was greeted with a grief which has yet to heal for a minister who served the conference long and well. The pain has been felt particularly here at First Parish Church, with our close ties to Ben and personal relationships with him. How do we continue the important task of being “pilgrims on a journey, travelers on a road” together with our sister and brother congregations? How do we minister to one another within the gathered churches of New Hampshire, when the schisms among us still run deep?

Finally, a year ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As with many difficult events in our lives, this one plunged me into cold dark waters, from which I am still emerging. I had no idea how much I had been changed by this diagnosis, until I began to receive and hear hope again and could look back with a little perspective. What I remember and cherish most deeply, however, was the way in which all of you reached out to me and supported me (a few times literally). I have prayed that I could “have the grace to let you be my servant too.”

It’s been a year of joys and sorrows, ups and downs, faith and fear.

No, let me change that. It’s been a year of joys in the sorrows, ups in the downs, faith in the midst of fear. I have felt enormously privileged to be in ministry with the congregation of First Parish Church. And that privilege has become all the more precious for some of the difficulties we have faced together.

I am so very grateful for your and my Senior Pastor, Alice Ling. She has supported and led me, both personally and in ministry, in faithful and loving ways. I am thankful as well to be working with Sue Handy – you can almost see the creativity bursting out of her. And Priscilla’s good humor and dedication are wonderful to be around. How did I get so lucky?

If I think back somewhat chronologically, I think of the first wedding I was blessed to celebrate last June. It’s a wonder how close one can feel to a couple after only a few times together before the service.

I think of the joy throughout the year of working with the Board of Christian Education, capably led by Rachel Cobban and Anne Marie DesRoches, and with all the dedicated teachers in the church school and at Vacation Church School. I feel that we have learned to work well together in ministry to the children of this church. There are so many ideas and and so much enthusiasm, it feels like popcorn popping.

I have thoroughly loved teaching the Confirmation class this year with Melanie Van Steensburg. She too has so many ideas, she keeps all of us hopping. And it has been an amazing process to watch the class come together. I can remember the complete silences at the beginning of the year. Now Melanie and I can barely get a word in.

I have watched youth ministry take on a life of its own, working first with the Youth Ministry Task Force and now the Youth Ministry Committee, with Dave Holigan as Chair and Bill Burke as Vice-Chair. As this area of the church continues to gain in direction and momentum, the excitement is hard to contain.

The Board of Christian Outreach and Mission has pursued its goal of having a Mission Moment once a month during the service, which I think is a wonderful way of bringing us closer to those we serve. It is with sadness that the Board anticipates the departure of long-time Chair, Joe Weaver. Joe, you will be missed. But Beth Hunter, the Board looks forward to your tenure.

The Safe Church Task Force has been formed and is continuing the work that has already begun to keep our church safe for children as well as adults while remaining open and welcoming. Thanks to Moira Merrill, Chair, and to all the rest of you!

Most recently, I think of our “Following Jesus through Holy Week” program in which we worshipped and reflected on the Holy Week events each day of the week. I led an adult education program on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we had a Good Friday service for the first time in a couple of years. I found myself in the events of that week in a way that I had not remembered feeling in quite the same way before.

And that Holy Week experience is what it’s all about. Our lives as Christians, both individually and in community, take their shape from Jesus’ life and ministry. When we experience sorrows and difficulties, it is within the context of Jesus’ sorrows and difficulties. And the joy we find in our life together is joy in communion with Jesus’ joy and abundant life. May God be praised!

Lucy M. Alexander