Ritual of Farewell

Here was our ritual of farewell for Intern Extraordinaire, again adapted from a similar ritual found in the United Church of Christ's Book of Worship:

Opening Words
Our church family is constantly changing. People come and go. Babies are born. Children grow up. People commit themselves to one another. Loved ones and friends among us come to the end of their lives. Individuals move into our community and church life. Others leave us, moving away to new places, new experiences, and new opportunities.
It is important and right that we recognize these times of passage, of endings and beginnings. Today we share the time of farewell with a friend who is leaving.

Ritual of Parting
Pastor: This past fall, our congregation welcomed Intern Extraordinaire as a pastoral intern, inviting her to share her gifts with us, to help to lead us, and to grow in skills and faith. She has done so with grace and wisdom. But now it is time to say good-bye, to release her from her pastoral obligations and to bless her as she seeks a call in the United Church of Christ.

I.E.: I thank you all for the love, kindness and support you have shown me over the past year. I am grateful for the ways my leadership has been accepted. I ask forgiveness for the mistakes I have made. As I leave, I carry with me all that I have learned here.

Congregation: We receive your thankfulness, offer forgiveness, and accept that you go now to serve another congregation. We express our gratitude for your time among us. We ask your forgiveness for our mistakes. Your influence on our faith and faithfulness will not leave us with your departure.

I.E.: I forgive you and accept your gratitude, trusting that our time together and our parting are pleasing to God.

Moderator: Do you, the members and friends of First Congregational United Church of Christ of Red Oak release Intern Extraordinaire from the duties of pastoral intern?

Congregation: We do, with the help of God.

Moderator: Do you offer your encouragement for her ministry as it unfolds in new ways?

Congregation: We do, with the help of God.

Moderator: Do you, Intern Extraordinaire, release this local church from turning to you and depending on you?

I.E.: I do, with the help of God.

Moderator: Do you offer your encouragement for the continued ministry here?

I.E.: I do, with the help of God.

Prayer of Blessing
God, in whom we find everlasting love and trustworthy care, help each one of us to keep faith in the future that rests in your arms. The time we have shared with Intern Extraordinaire saw our laughter and tears, hopes and disappointments, learning and growing. Guide us as we hold these cherished memories but move in new and different directions. Let your Spirit guide Intern Extraordinaire as she moves to new and unknown places, and let your Spirit also guide us as we move forward in our own journey as a faith community. Help us to hope for the time when we are all completely one with you and with each other, as Jesus our Savior so taught and lived. Amen.

Presenting of Gifts
We presented Intern Extraordinaire with a gorgeous green stole, to remind her that she was with us for an extraordinary time in our mutual lives, but that we hoped she would remember us in the ordinary seasons of her ministry. (For those who don't know, in the Christian Church's liturgical tradition, green is the color used during the season of "ordinary time" - between Pentecost and Advent, with the Sundays between Epiphany and Lent also counting as "ordinary Sundays." Ordinary Time takes up the majority of the church year.) Also, it looked really good on her!

Ritual of Welcome for a Pastoral Intern

When we were hastily making arrangements to have Intern Extraordinaire come work for us, one of the many questions I asked was about rituals of welcome and farewell. The response was .... crickets. Apparently most of the contextual education placement sites at Intern's seminary don't do them.

I was really surprised. These are students learning about ministry among people, they are expected to build relationships and grow in the pastoral, priestly, and prophetic gifts ... and there is no ritual way to welcome the start of that relationship in a church? Particularly for churches that do this year in and year out, I was actually pretty disappointed. My own experience of being formally welcomed into pastoral leadership at my field education placement site in seminary was deeply meaningful, as was the ritual of parting, and I know that many of my seminary colleagues felt the same way. Ministry is not just "a job" that starts and finishes on certain dates. It is a relationship with a community of faith, and we actually have very good ways to honor relationships in the church. And I just could not believe that these relationships were not being lifted up with the congregation as a whole.

How do congregations know who this person is, and what their role is? What does the intern hope to gain from the experience? What does the congregation hope to gain from the experience? How do they honor the start of that relationship? How do they recognize its ending, as a community of faith? These are just a few of the questions that ritual seeks to embody. Perhaps most importantly, rituals help us name new realities and help usher them into deeper being.

So what did I do? I called my former contextual education professor and asked for samples or other resources that I might use. She, smart woman that she did, gave me none. She did, however, give me ideas and questions to ponder about the nature of the relationship we hoped to have with our Intern. That helped me shape a ritual of welcome for Intern Extraordinaire, albeit one rooted in the "installation of a pastor" in the UCC Book of Worship.

Since our time with Intern Extraordinaire has ended, I thought I'd share with y'all the rituals of welcome and farewell that we used. Maybe if you ever have an intern, you won't use this resource, but use it as a springboard to figure out how you and the church you serve want to welcome this leader-in-formation into a pastorally appropriate role, so you can shape your own liturgy. (Or ask me to!)

Here was our ritual of welcome:

Words from the Moderator
Today we celebrate a new beginning in the life of our congregation. By welcoming Intern Extraordinaire as our pastoral intern, we are opening ourselves to a new experience of God’s power and presence in our midst. Intern Extraordinaire has some clear goals she wants to achieve in our time among us – including leading adult Bible Study, learning about what a visitation is, participating in ecumenical partnerships, and to experience ministry in an Open and Affirming congregation. We do not know all the ways that this relationship will be lived out between now and May, but we move into this new relationship with joy and excitement, looking forward to the ways God is still speaking to us through this experience.

Words of the Covenant
Moderator: As a representative of the board, I covenant to help Intern Extraordinaire grow in her gifts and skills for ministry. We promise to provide her genuine opportunities to do pastoral work, to offer her appropriate feedback when requested, and to help guide her and her supervisor, Pastor LiturgyGeek, as they learn and grow together.

Pastor: As the pastor of this congregation, I covenant to mentor Intern Extraordinaire, to guide her towards growth in ministry, to pray with and for her regularly, and to offer her appropriate feedback. I promise, with the help of God, to lead by example and to model faithful ministry work in this congregation. I also recommit myself to my own covenant with you, the congregation, and promise to continue to labor alongside of you in the ministry of reconciliation and extravagant welcome to which we have been called.

I.E.: I covenant to work faithfully to the best of my abilities, to offer you myself and to receive you as brothers and sisters in Christ. I covenant to be accountable to the work of pastoral care, worship leadership, ecumenical work, and Bible study, and to learn and grow in faith. I promise to take on the authority of my position as pastoral intern with grace and humility, and to receive your feedback as faithfully as possible.

Congregation: We covenant to learn from you, Intern Extraordinaire, to introduce you to others in our community and to the story of who we are, to open our hearts to what you have to teach us. We covenant to offer loving and gracious feedback to you in order to help you grow. When we offer criticism, we covenant to do so only when asked and with appropriate care. When we offer praise, we covenant to do so honestly and generously.

We give thanks for the ministry Intern Extraordinaire begins in our midst this day.

ALL: May God surround all of us with grace to accept the gifts of this new stage on our journey, and the courage to act in faith and hope, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen!
Prayer of Blessing

Presenting of Gifts
(I remember giving her a gift certificate to Soul Desires, a great religious bookstore in Omaha; maybe there were other gifts, but I don't remember them....)

I Can't Even Write a Farewell Ode to Our Intern

Over the past seven months, our congregation has been blessed with a terrific intern, Sam.  It's kind of a long story as to how she got to intern with us in SW Iowa when she was going to seminary in St. Louis, but suffice it to say that it was grueling for Sam to commute between the two places.  (Did I mention she was pregnant during this year, and just gave birth to an adorable baby girl 10 days ago?  "Grueling" might be too gentle a term.)  Yet she was, pretty much literally, a "super-trooper," and I never heard a word of complaint.  The children of farmers, she is incredibly practical and this was just something she had to do.

Our congregation was hesitant at first to take this on, but with an anonymous donation from a member toward her stipend as well as scholarships from our association (where is was in care) and conference, we were able to make it financially viable.  And though we are a small church, we found plenty for us to do together.  It was a great experience for both of us; I think I did a fair job as a supervising pastor (and would definitely be better with future opportunities), and Sam and I had terrific conversations about the practice of ministry and whatnot.

The congregation, not surprisingly, took to her leadership well.  They know how to love, support and challenge a minister and a minister-in-training, and she learned a great deal from them.  Most importantly, there was deep and mutual love between our church and Sam, which covers a multitude of sins.

Today we had to bid farewell to Sam, as her time with us came to an end.  She is graduating on Friday and her profile is just about ready to be sent to congregations and conferences.  As part of our farewell ritual, we adapted the "Ritual of Farewell" from the UCC Book of Worship - which I will post when I am next at the office computer.  We also gave her a gift, a beautiful stole (and I'm not at all biased, even though I bought it myself) from Soul Desires in Omaha.  The green complements her coloring, but more importantly, we hope that she will remember the uncommon time we spent together, our church and her, during the ordinary seasons of her ministry with other congregations.

Farewell, and God's blessings, Sam!