First, you can watch the video:

Then, you can read the letter:

April 14, 2024

Dear Christ Pres,

I’m writing with hard news. Our family has made a really difficult, agonizing decision to move to Texas, where I will begin work in a new position as the Associate Director of Laity Lodge, a Christian retreat center in the Texas Hill Country. My last Sunday with you as your pastor will be June 2.

I know this must arrive as an unwelcome shock. Even after sitting with it for a while, it still feels surprising to us, because I wasn’t looking for a new job.

I’ve been the pastor of Christ Pres for seventeen years. It’s unusual for a pastor to serve only one congregation for the duration of his or her ministry, but I thought that might be how our story would go. And that would have been a good story, one I was more than ready to embrace.

We love our life in Richmond, and during my sabbatical in 2022, I got clarity that I would keep doing this work—and doing it with joy—unless God called us elsewhere. And it really would have to be a call—something I wasn’t looking for or expecting, something the Lord brought to us.

Well, that’s what has happened. The conversation about working with Laity Lodge came to me out of the blue, such that Libby and I felt it was worth paying attention, entering a process of discernment, and walking through whatever doors God saw fit to open. So here we are.

Nothing about this is easy, and I don’t know how to put into words all that should be said. Getting to be your pastor has been one of the Lord’s greatest gifts to me. Many of you have known Libby and me since 2007, and our lives have been woven together with yours. Many of you are newer to Christ Pres, and now it feels like our time with you is being cut far too short. I was looking forward to serving alongside you for years to come, which adds to my sense of loss. The bottom line is that I love you—we love you—and the excitement we feel about stepping out in faith toward something new (which will also, for the first time in decades, have us living close to family) is tempered by the profound sadness of leaving a church family we love. We are hopeful and heartbroken all at once.

I recently read somewhere that saying this kind of goodbye is good preparation for dying. That’s a little extreme, maybe, but I get it. The grief of this feels like a death.

However, this is Eastertide. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and that means every death can be good preparation for living. There is abundant life on the other side of this—for Christ Pres and for the Germers. In the midst of my ambivalence about this disruptive change, I know this: the Lord loves you. And most days, I'm able to trust His love for Libby and the boys and me. We’re all in good hands.

Some of you remember the story of how the Lord brought me and Libby to Christ Pres years ago. That was unexpected and good. In time, I’m trusting, we’ll be able to see how this is also good. Right now it mostly just hurts.

So it will be a tough season for our congregation. Somehow, as I’m grieving, I’ll try to keep being your pastor for a little while longer. Somehow, if and as you’re grieving, I hope you’ll let me be your pastor for a little while longer. And with God’s help, we’ll figure out together how to say goodbye.

With you in Jesus,

Kevin

If the church has your mailing address, you should receive a hard copy of this letter sometime this week..