Rev.
Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson
14751
N. Kelsey St., No. 105-384
Monroe,
WA 98272
425-268-0649
October
9, 2017
To the
Members of
The
First Congregational Church of Maltby
Dear
Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
This is
to give you formal notification of my resignation as your pastor
effective December 31, 2017. I think I owe it to you to give you an
explanation of why I have found it necessary to resign as your
pastor. The basic reason is that in recent times it has become
clearer to me than ever that we simply are a bad fit as pastor and
parish. We have ignored that reality for too long. That we are not a
good fit doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with
you. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with me.
It just means that we do not fit well together. We are sufficiently
different in our approaches to the church and to the Christian faith
that it is not tenable for me to serve as your pastor any longer. I
mean by that that it is not tenable for me. Whether or not it is
tenable for you is not for me to say, although I know that it
certainly is not tenable for at least a significant number of you.
Let me explain to you some of the ways that I see us differing so
dramatically that it is time for me to go.
I am a
very progressive Christian theologian. Most of you are considerably
less progressive theologically (and politically) than I am. There is
of course a very broad range of opinion in the Maltby congregation,
and the breadth of opinion in the church creates issues for the
pastor that I am not able to negotiate while retaining my personal
and professional integrity. Perhaps there is some pastor out there
who can do it. I am not that pastor. I am not willing to reduce the
faith to its lowest common denominator in my preaching and teaching,
yet when I preach or teach something other than the lowest common
Christian denominator some of you are offended, often powerfully and
personally offended. It is not my call as a pastor to offend any of
you, but neither is it my call as a pastor not to preach the full
Gospel of Jesus Christ as I have come to understand it through years
of study and work in the church. I have become convinced that I
cannot do that at the Maltby church without offending some of you in
ways I have no desire to continue doing. It is time for me to go.
Many of
you have a very different view of the pastor’s role in the church
than I do. I will focus on just one aspect of that difference as a
way of illustrating the point. I am convinced that the pastor’s
main responsibility is creating and leading Sunday worship,
especially in a small church like Maltby Congregational. That church
as an institution does not see the Sunday worship service as
belonging primarily to the pastor. You see it as belonging more to
the people than to the pastor. You expressed that view of the matter
when you took from me responsibility for choosing the hymns for the
service. I have resented that action of yours from the time you first
did it. I accepted it because I didn’t want to stake my ministry
with you on it, but it has never sat well with me. In addition,
recently one of you put an insert in the Sunday bulletin without even
telling me you were doing it. That act showed great disrespect to me
as the pastor. It may have been the final straw in convincing me to
resign. To me that bulletin is mine. To you it is not. That is a
difference I am no longer willing to live with. It is time for me to
go.
You
have shown disrespect to me as the pastor in other ways as well.
Recently some of you turned what I had planned as a constructive
congregational gathering to talk about the church’s identity and
mission into an assault on me and everything some of you think is
wrong with me as pastor of the church. Those who perpetrated that
assault never came to me personally to express dissatisfaction with
me or anything I have done or not done. Instead they sprung it on me
unannounced at an open meeting called for a different purpose. The
actions of those who did that hurt me deeply, not just because of
what was said but also because of how it was done. I do not need to
deal with such disrespectful conduct. It is time for me to go.
Many of
you accuse me of being too “political” in my preaching. My
response is that I am no more political in my preaching than the
gospels of the New Testament are in their proclamation of the message
and mission of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is inherently
political. It is political because it is about how God calls human
beings to live together, how God calls us to behave toward one
another, and how God wants to see human society organized. It is
about justice for the ones the Gospel of Matthew has Jesus call “the
least of these.” Many of you think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ
is only about what we have to do to guarantee that our souls go to
heaven after we die. I am convinced that the Gospel of Jesus Christ
is hardly about that at all. This is a profound difference between
many of you and me that we are not going to overcome. It is time for
me to go.
For
much of my time as your pastor I have enjoyed working with you and
getting to know you. You are good people, and nothing I have said
here is intended to deny that reality. You care deeply for and about
one another, and that is a very good, Christian thing. I pray that
you will find a way to continue forward together as Christian
community, but you will be doing that without me. God will be with
you as you go on both together and as individuals. I pray that you
will be open to the ways in which the Holy Spirit calls you in new
directions toward new life.
Yours
in Christ,
Rev.
Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson
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