Tag Archives: Faith

Resignation from Windsor UCC

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Dear Friends,

With a heart full of love and heavy with the weight of this decision, I write to resign as your Pastor.  I have accepted a call to serve as Interim Lead Pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Madison and Verona.  My last day serving as your Pastor will be Sunday, April 21.

Thanks to the leadership of our Church Council, our congregation has begun the work of transforming conflict into energy for growth and renewal. This work will make it possible for the congregation to agree to its mission and vision and, in time, unite to call a new Pastor.

Leaving you is a hard thing to do. I would dearly love to be with you through the next chapter in the story of the congregation.  We have been through so much together.  Though it is not the timing I would choose, now is a good time, the right time, for me to leave.

I struggle to put into words why this time feels right.  There has been such a lovely outpouring of support for my ministry with you. I can see more clearly than ever the impact of my time serving as your Pastor.  But I can also see the congregation is poised to set the course for the future. Now is a good time for us to move into the future on our separate paths.    

On our last Sunday, April 21, we will celebrate a Service of Parting, led by Rev. Rachel Bauman.  I do hope you will join me for this important time of thanking God for all we have learned, asking for forgiveness, and releasing one another from our mutual covenants.

I thank God for you and will hold you in my heart as we continue in the way of our Savior.

Always Yours in Christ,
Pr. Craig

More than a Song

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The media is playing President Obama’s singing of Amazing Grace in his eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinkney.  But the President’s eulogy offers much more than  this song: he calls us to express God’s grace today, in our world; he tells the truth about racism in the United States–about the Confederate Flag, Gun Control, the prison system, poverty–all within the context of faith.

I invite all of my friends: those who have not lost their faith in the church and who seek to express God’s grace with their lives; those who have left the church because it has worshiped its own traditions, because has been too slow to engage the movements for human dignity and justice of our age, because it has loved comfort and feared conflict; and those who see faith as weakness and belief as a sham; I invite all of my friends to watch the entire video of President Obama’s eulogy, or download the full text ( .pdf  |   .docx ): the President puts into words what I believe and what Christians in my life see as the heart of faith.