Asked to Stay

What being reappointed to the same place gives a pastor's family.

Annual Conference ends the same way every year. After the worship and the reports and the long business sessions, the bishop fixes the appointments for the year ahead. Most of us know well before that moment where we are likely to land. Even so, nothing is final until the bishop makes it so. We promise, when we are ordained, to go where we are sent, and conference is where the sending becomes official.

For our family, the word was stay. The reappointment to McPherson First did not surprise me. I had every reason to expect it. But there is a difference between expecting something and watching it become final. Seeing my name beside the church I already serve, resting in the fact that it was there, settled something I had been carrying. It is easy to overlook in a service full of new ordinands and first appointments. It landed on me anyway, more than I expected it to.