By Maureen Wright

I love the season of advent! Sanctuaries decorated with purple paraments, decorated trees, banners, and advent wreaths are beautiful – from the most elaborate and glittery to the profoundly simple. Advent is the start of the church year with all of its hope and expectation. In advent, we wait and prepare. We prepare and wait with hope, peace, joy, and love; often our advent wreath rituals focus on these themes.

Many of our homes reflect this advent waiting and preparation. As a child, my family had an advent wreath on our dining room table. Lighting one candle each week marked the wait of the advent season. When my children were young, my husband’s mother sent a wooden tree with small wooden ornaments, one for each day leading up to Christmas. Each year our family has rotated who picks an ornament for each day, marking the waiting, waiting, waiting for Christmas.

The lectionary readings for the four Sundays of advent prepare us for the story of the birth of Christ, the one for whom we wait. The gospel lesson for the second Sunday of advent this year was Mark 1: 1-8. This passage begins with “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We meet John the Baptist, the one who proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The one who first tells that while he baptized with water, the one to come will baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is an amazingly rich passage, with the reframing of the Old Testament scriptures (check out Exodus 23: 20, Malachi 3: 1, and Exodus 40: 3), calling us to “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

This passage prompts me to reflect on the question; what does it mean to prepare the way of the Lord? More specifically, this passage prods me to consider what does it mean for the Presbytery of West Virginia to prepare the way of the Lord?

As I have shared in earlier newsletter articles as well as reports at Presbytery meetings and conversations with committees, churches, and individuals – the Presbytery is on a journey from where it has been and what we know to the unknown. Our work is to leave behind our old ways of doing and being the church, to reflect on the deeper questions of our identity, purpose, and future. In other words, we are seeking to discern who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do now.

This work is the work of transitional ministry. Here is how I understand transitional ministry: it is the recognition that ministry has changed. Not changing but has changed. The old ways of doing and leading church are ineffective, stale, and unproductive. Though they often lead to conversations about change, they too often result in Presbytery leaders trying to tweak and tinker around the edges rather than to be curious and ask the deeper questions about the Presbytery’s identity and its community. It is a process for reframing ministry and pastoral leadership (regardless of role or title) to get at the deeper questions about a Presbytery’s identity, purpose, and future. (This definition is grounded in the work of Transitional Ministry Workshops.)

I repeat these thoughts and definitions, again, for a reason. The artist in me is seeking to give you images or lenses through which to engage in this work. In offering words (scripture, poems, quotes), pictures, stories, and questions I am seeking to help us to see – to discern – where God is leading.

Advent is another lens through which to view our work. John the Baptist calls the faithful to prepare the way of the Lord. What does it mean for the Presbytery of West Virginia to prepare the way of the Lord? Isaiah 40 commands that we are to “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” The reason for the command? That the glory of the Lord be revealed, and the people will see it. Advent is calling us to wait and prepare. Wait for Emmanuel, God with us, and prepare, be ready, make a highway for God in our Presbytery. God is calling us to use this in-between time to prepare and make straight – our priorities and values, our committee structures, our staffing pattern, our skills as leaders, our witness – so that the glory of the Lord will be revealed. May it be so.