February 28, 2010

Dear Holy Innocents Friends,

I am quite certain that this is the hardest letter I’ve ever written because I’m writing to tell you that after a lot of soul searching, prayer and conversation with Kevin and our family, I have decided that the time has come for me to move on from Holy Innocents.

When I came to Holy Innocents, first as a student in 1997 and then as your vicar in 2000, it never occurred to me that I would be here some 13 years later. As most of you have known about me before I got to Holy Innocents I would sometimes refer to myself as a ‘serial entrepreneur.’ I had started or rebuilt seven businesses one right after another prior to going to seminary. When Roy Oswald (a consultant who came in to work with us at Holy Innocents at the end of my first year) told Kevin and me that in order for me to do the work he felt needed to be done at Holy Innocents I needed to stay at least five years, and that eight would be preferable, Kevin and I laughed out loud.

I think that many of us felt that my time at Holy Innocents was likely going to be a shorter tenure with me helping this congregation heal on from a pretty traumatic and divisive time. I could help Holy Innocents get back on a firm footing and I could get “via media’ up and started, then I would leave and go do ‘via media’ full time. And, as Kevin and I pointed out to Roy, neither of us had ever been in any one place for more than seven years. It was fun to write Roy on Facebook last week to tell him that I was well into my 10th year as vicar and to report all that we have done together.

Until the last couple of years, I haven’t felt a need to ‘move on’ and do anything else. Holy Innocents has provided a wonderful, nurturing place for me to do the other work I also feel called to do in the national church. You have been generous in allowing me to work part-time and to continue developing other ideas and to grow in ways that the typical parish priest is not usually privileged to do.

One exceptionally serendipitous thing has also happened, that along the way I have become a go-to ‘expert’ on children’s ministry concerns. I certainly never thought that would happen at Holy Innocents (considering who we were 10 years ago), but that is a huge gift that God has given to our community and to me. And other churches want to know how we’ve done it and I want to spread that good news, too.

I know that the big shift happened for me and the creeping realization that I would not ‘retire’ at Holy Innocents came when our own kids moved back to the South – taking Logan and Asher with them! Until then juggling my life as part-time vicar, wife, mom, daughter, sister and grandmother, and continuing to develop ‘via media’ and my vision for how to bring even more creative and important curricula to the national church seemed possible. Our desire to spend larger amounts of time with the kids and grandkids shifted the balance so that it just does not seem workable for me any longer.

But more important, it has become clearer and clearer that with the work that Holy Innocents is doing, – growing a vibrant children and family ministry, the significant outreach into the community, the growing ministry around the environment and all that is here to be done in this amazing neighborhood where people NEED a place to come to grow spiritually – that it is time for you to have a vicar who will be able to focus much more clearly on the work to be done here.

I cherish the time here and know that these 10 years have been a gift to me and to this community. I know that what we have been doing together was exactly the right thing for that time. We have been creative with time, money and energy and have seen an amazing thing grow up here. In all this you helped give birth to ‘via media.’ More than 1000 congregations have used it across the country and it is still being used and MANY people give ‘via media’ credit for helping keep the Episcopal Church together through the trying times of the last seven years. Holy Innocents not only allowed me time to help create ‘via media’ but also gave me the vision for what the Episcopal Church could be and why we so desperately needed to get that word out.

The privilege of being in this community, you sharing your stories with me, me being able to share mine with you has been immense. Baptizing your babies, you supporting me as I became a grandmother, being with you in loss and you being with me when my mother died. EfM groups, Godly Play, the food pantry, the work we have done together to produce our amazing Holy Week liturgies, the amazing music that Bill Keck consistently produces, how does one leave a place like this? And without having a new community that I’ve fallen in love with (which is the normal path for a priest to leave) it feels almost impossible to take this step.

Yet, I find it absolutely right we heard a portion of the Story of the Great Family (as we call it in Godly Play) today. I’ve told this story at least twice before as my sermon, and it has become a big story for me, but never more than today. Abram and Sarai leave their ‘household’ where they were comfortable with their relationship with God and head out into the desert, only to discover that God was in that new place, too. These past 10 years I’ve come to find God in so many new places, most of them associated with YOU. I can only imagine how Abrahm and Sarai felt leaving where they knew God so deeply to go to a place they did not know. Yet they followed where God was leading and the blessing of God in their lives is something we still feel today.

I cannot tell you exactly what is next for Kevin and for me. It is our intention to be living approximately half time in the South by next summer, but we don’t yet know where. The first thing on our agenda after I leave Holy Innocents is to spend more time there to sort that out. We are looking at both Nashville (close to Logan) and Asheville (close to Asher) and trying to figure out what works best for us in that mix. I’m talking to clergy and bishops in both those places to see what works best for me in the church world, and Kevin is looking at airports and social entrepreneurs to see which place feels best to him. We both are both deeply involved in SOCAP, and a new business opening this month in the San Francisco Chronicle building called The Hub. Kevin has his work with Good Capital here, too, so we won’t be completely leaving the Bay Area.

Since I do not have a firm place to go, this means that I can stay for a longer than usual time to say goodbye to you all. I will still be at Holy Innocents for three more months. My last Sunday will be May 23, the Feast of Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit comes to the Church. A great day for me to move on, and for you to move more deeply into being who God has called you to be.

I also know that this community is ready for a pastor who will take Holy Innocents to the next place. That your journey is one of building on what we have done here, where all are welcome, where children are fully part of celebrating the Eucharist, and where people find a God who loves them just the way they are. You are the story of what Holy Innocents will become next and I celebrate already what God will do with you and through you.

I have asked Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain and Davey Gerhard to stay on for one more year as Wardens. They, along with the Bishop’s Committee and the Bishop, are already working on what will happen next here at Holy Innocents. That’s their story to tell, yours to develop with them, and I’ll leave that part of the work to you all. My work is spending the next three months saying goodbye to you all and helping us all move into the next stage of our lives.

This letter, even as long as it is, hasn’t said all that needs to be said. I know that many of you will have lots of questions, and the next three months we’ll have time to be together in lots of ways. We’ll continue our Lenten journey of looking at darkness and grief, which I know will be helpful to me. We’ll celebrate the Great Feast of the Resurrection together (Easter!) and live into that through Pentecost. My prayer for me is that during that time that I can come to trust more fully that God is present in my life in ALL the places I go, not just in the wonderful place called Holy Innocents.

I pray for you that you will enter into this new phase of life at Holy Innocents with excitement about the future that is coming!

With much love,

Rosa Lee+