It is with a heavy heart that I write this, my last Pastor’ s Corner article as the pastor of Pea Ridge and Brightwater United Methodist churches. My family and I have grown to love the Pea Ridge community and the churches we serve and consider the last three years to be some of the best years of our lives. Anytime we leave something, whether it be a job, a school, a community or even a church, it causes us to think about how things will be once we are gone. Will people remember us? Will the work we have done make a difference in this place?

Will the people who come behind us find that we were faithful in our work? We even have thoughts that we don’ t like to verbalize for fear of sounding arrogant like, “Will they be OK without me?”

As a pastor, I hold the well-being of the churches I pastor as one of my main concerns. As I prepare to go where God is leading, I want to know that the churches I leave behind will continue to do God’s work and grow in their understanding of God’s grace. One thing that lets me rest easy at night can best be explained in the words of one of my favorite hymns. “The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.” Those five words, “The church is a people,” remind me that achurch is not its pastor.

In fact, too often people (and even sometimes pastors) see the church as belonging to the pastor.

I hope that the people in the churches I have been serving will remember that we are each called to a life of ministry through our baptism, and we each have an important role to play in the work of God through our church. I’m proud that the two churches to whichI must say good bye are not buildings or steeples, or even a pastor, but they truly are the people.

So when people ask how there will be continuity with a change of pastors, I can respond that it is people who are the church and they provide the continuity because they will carry on the ministries of God in this place. I urge you to see yourself as the church each day of your life. I urge you to remember that you are the church even when you are at work or at the ball field. I urge you to remember that it is not your pastor’s job to be the church for you but to help you to be the church for yourself. It is not always easy to be the church, but it is always fulfilling. The third verse of “We Are the Church” says, “And when the people gather, there’s singing and there’s praying,there’s laughing and there’s crying sometimes, all of it saying: I am the church!

You are the church! We are the church together!”

So I as prepare to leave this place I love, I know that these churches will continue to be in ministry and mission because I am not the church by myself, and that the people who are the church still know the voice of God and what it means to follow that voice.

It is my prayer for you that you know that voice and are following it as you strive to be the church each day of your life.

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Rev. Matt Daniels is the pastor of Pea Ridge and Brightwater United Methodist Churches. He can be contacted at mdaniels29@ comcast.net.

Church, Pages 2 on 06/09/2010