In response to inquiries as to the events of our last Sunday, I offer the following:

Sunday was a nice day as last days go. Worship service was intensely moving as Paul and the team led us in some of my favorites. At one point I sincerely felt what it must be like to witness your own funeral. Everything was ‘bill’s favorite’ this and that. It was an awkward but kind gesture and I truly appreciated it. He’s a fabulous worship leader, an excellent communicator, and though we haven’t always seen eye to eye, he has been a solid support to me and has been a pleasure to work with. Angela (Thomison) Jones had made a request to sing on my last day and I was thrilled to agree to it. She’ll likely never know how glad I was that she sang because, in a rare twist, I was not anxious to start preaching. Which is probably why I didn’t. When I stood behind the pulpit.....I felt somewhat overwhelmed at the gravity of the moment.
I recalled the afternoon when Mark and Slim and I were up at the church before the first service in the new sanctuary. We were hooking up the sound system and putting it through it’s paces. Rather than sit there and say ‘test’ for fifteen minutes, I quoted some scripture. This past Sunday, I started to do the same thing. For some reason, my prepared sermon seemed to fall far short of what the moment called for so rather than rely on my words, I went to the Scriptures. I don’t know how much I quoted or how long it lasted but after it was all said and done I had Mark, the elders, and deacons step to the edge of the stage and led the congregation in a prayer of blessing for him and his family. We finished it up with the whole church reciting the Lord’s Prayer during which I stepped down and swapped out the microphone with Mark who, without missing a beat, stepped behind the pulpit and finished it out. We went to the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the church that night. Entirely on their own, three youth group members put together a simple but hilarious human video about the ‘preacher man’. CWC truly has some thoughtful and wonderful teens and I really appreciate them. We stood in line, ate some good food, chatted with some good folks, and called it a night. No fanfare, no speeches, no sentiment, no matter, just done. When I arrived here in 1993 our first exposure to the people of CWC was over a meal. Appropriately enough, my tenure in ministry here ended with the same simplicity with which it began.
I woke up Monday morning, sat in my chair with my Bible, and something felt different. I’ve become so accustomed to studying for the sake of the message that I realized that I’ll have to get used to studying for the sake of study. I prayed for Mark, realizing that his study habits would be taking a shift too. I loaded the family up late in the morning and we headed up to the church where my kids helped me clean out my office. A final glance through the records displayed a good number of weddings and a greater number of baby dedications, one often being the result of the other. I realized that some of those I had dedicated were now old enough to have an intelligent conversation with. Some of them think my first name is Pastor and my last name is Bill. When I recently visited my buddy, Caleb Iversen (and his parents), at their new home in Phoenix, I was reminded that to him, this is who I will always be. When the Buford kids (every one of them beautiful) say “Pastor Bill, pick me up! Hold me!” I dare you not to. Those hugs are real. When Riley says in her broken 2 year old vocabulary, “I love you, Pastor Bill” it’s pure indescribable joy. Whatever love I have left in me, those kids have had a way of finding it.
When the office was finally empty, I stood in the doorway and scanned the shelves and walls, turned the lights off, and walked out. I found my son in the sanctuary, alone in the dark. “Ready to go?”, I said. He didn’t answer. After some silence he began to list all of the things he had helped me work on when we were building the church. The lifts, the framing, the smell of sawdust, the late nights. Finally I say, “It’s time to go?” No longer a question, it’s now a statement that I have come to accept as truth. I can see this is all beginning to sink in for him. This is the only church family he’s ever known and it’s all changing. I’m tempted to bring the whole family into the church and up to the altar to have a moment of prayer alone before we leave. I had, over the years, had an unwritten custom of praying over folks up at the altar when they were facing a transition. The thought of praying over ourselves was a little odd. So I decided to break with tradition, dispense with the self blessing, and call it a day. With that, it was over. A decade of ministry come and gone. What did I like best? It’s a toss up between preaching the word, Joan’s weekly hug, and Mom Reece’s éclairs. What would I do different next time? I may spend the next 10 years answering that question.