On a recent road trip, I listened to a podcast (click the sermon beside 01-17.10) of an amazing worship service at Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Mich., where Rob Bell is the founding pastor. It took place the Sunday Shane Hipps joined the church as a teaching pastor.
Let's say right up front: I know some people don't like Rob Bell, and some people don't like Shane Hipps. Christianity is filled with "don't likers." But that's beside the point of this blog.
At the beginning of the worship service, lay leaders of Mars Hill Church, where Hipps has come, and Trinity Mennonite Church in Glendale, Ariz., where Hipps was pastor, talked about the spiritual steps that led to Hipps' transition.
Laity in both congregations knew about and participated in the process.That almost never happens. And it is amazing.
Directly and indirectly, Mars Hill contacted Hipps twice, inquiring if he would be interested in joining their church's ministry staff. Both times, Hipps turned them down. Eventually, Mars Hill's "discerning committee"—the group assigned to find a new teaching pastor—contacted Hipps and told him they discerned he was the right person to fill this position on their staff.
Hipps still felt reluctant to consider leaving Trinity Mennonite. But he respected their spiritual process and engaged it. But rather than shrouding his inovlement in secrecy, he included lay leaders of Trinity Mennonite. As they prayed and wept and talked and prayed some more, they joined their sisters and brothers at Mars Hill in determining God's will supported this move.
So, Hipps accepted the call to Mars Hill. And on his first Sunday there, members of Trinity Mennonite traveled to Michigan to express their love for their former pastor as well as their love for his new church. Their presence and participation represented Christian harmony. They not only blessed Hipps and his wife and daughters, but they blessed Mars Hill. And they honored Christ.
I listened to them with a lump in my throat, overwhelmed by the Christian love and grace two churches extended to each other as they jointly sought God's will for both congregations and for a minister and his family.
If such honesty, trust and care dominated pastoral transitions, our churches would be much healthier and their pastors and staffs would be stronger and more effective.
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