One of the luxuries of being a retired pastor is that I no longer have anxiety about the annual meeting of a congregation. Annual meetings used to be a time of significant stress in part because they are unpredictable. Actually they are fairly predictable given enough experience, but when one is the pastor of a congregation the decisions of an annual meeting become pretty personal. The congregation votes in open meeting on the pastor’s salary and the pastor’s salary is one of the biggest items in the budget. Any member can make a motion to amend any portion of the budget. Again, such changes are rare. In the span of my career, I never saw an annual meeting alter a budget that had been carefully prepared by church leadership. Budgets were changed, but not in ways that had a negative effect on my leadership.

However, I’ve found that annual meetings still seem to be able to raise a certain level of anxiety for me. I still care deeply about the congregation to which I belong.

The annual meeting of our church is a week from today. Today there is a special meeting after worship to review the proposed budget. The meeting is not set to make any decisions, just to give members information about the proposals developed by church leaders and approved by the church council.

Our congregation has experienced significant decline in recent years. Prior to the Pandemic the church had a program staff of 3 full time and one part time ministers. In addition, there were full time office and janitorial staff as well as three part-time musicians and a part-time nursery worker. The proposal that will be considered today is for a program staff of one full time minister and one part time minister. Support staff will be reduced as well. I don’t know the exact numbers of members and worship attendance, but I do know that numbers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

I know, from visiting with colleagues, that such decline is not uncommon in mainline congregations. Recently, when attending the annual gathering of the Association of Partners in Christian Education, I spoke with several colleagues whose positions have been eliminated in recent years. Here in the Western region of the United Church of Christ there are very few congregations who have paid education staff. Full-time education positions are becoming rare in our denomination.

Knowing that we are not alone, however, doesn’t make the change easy for our congregation - or for any congregation. I know that there are others in our congregation who are hesitant about the rate of change and who have visions of different approaches to staffing than have been proposed by church leaders. I also know that a week can be a long time in the life of a church - at least a lot of change can occur in one week. The current round of cuts is not yet carved in stone. Additional gifts will likely appear before next week’s meeting. Today’s meeting is likely to stir additional generosity. Other ideas will circulate.

The challenges of all of the changes in congregations life are significant. In a way we are lucky to have begun our retirement during the pandemic before the congregation that we were serving at the time experienced a period of rapid decline. Congregations that we served faced big challenges and tough decisions during our time of leadership, but for the most part we were able to serve congregations that experienced significant growth during the years of our active careers.

I have a colleague who is significantly younger and is still decades away from retirement. She has told me that when she turns fifty she plans to be on vacation during the annual meeting of her congregation. That date has not yet come, and whether or not she will actually take vacation at that time remains to be seen, but the idea is definitely floating in her imagination. Taking vacation that spans the congregational annual meeting is something that I never contemplated. I learned to trust the congregations I serve and their leadership, but I also believed that my leadership was essential at certain times. I never took Christmas or Easter as vacation and I only once took a week off during Lent during my 44 years as an active minister. I felt that part of my responsibility was to plan vacation times with respect for the cycles of congregational life. I never missed an annual meeting.

My style of leadership, however, is not the only way for a pastor to behave. I have a lot of colleagues who have made different decisions than I did. Maybe taking vacation at the time of the annual congregational meeting is an expression of trust in the processes of congregational leadership. After all, our denomination has a strong tradition of lay leadership. The annual meeting of a congregation is an expression of local church autonomy and of the leadership of lay people. The role of a pastor at an annual meeting is one of supporting lay leaders rather than one of directing the action and decisions of the congregation. We believe deeply that the church is most healthy when it is led by laity.

Furthermore, a church is a voluntary organization. While a few church members are called and set aside for ministry by being paid to work for the congregation, the bulk of the work of the congregation is carried out by volunteers. The size of a church’s staff is not the only measurement of its vitality or its faithfulness.

There are a lot of dynamics at play in any congregational annual meeting and although I am a bit nervous about this particular season in the life of the congregation to which I belong, I am confident that there is still a call to ministry in this place and that our congregation will still find ways to respond to that call in meaningful ways. And, as always, we need to be open to the calling of the Spirit in the decisions that lie before us. Our future is not set in stone, but is a dynamic and changing entity.

This is a season for me to trust that God is still speaking and leading our church.