Trusting that the Spirit leads us all: Evolution and the Weave Team by Jeanne Marcus and Ellie Benedict

Part 1 (Jeanne Marcus)

Good morning! I suspect that, seeing Ellie and me up here together, it may have occurred to you that the word we’re bringing could have something to do with September 14. Yes?

And yes, we will indeed talk about the Day of Prayer and Conversation, but we want to highlight that “September 14” is not just the date that we all met out at Wellspring under a brilliant blue sky, with old oak trees joining us by tossing down a super-abundance of celebratory acorns on us whenever we walked abroad.

September 14 has been all along, and still is an exceptional lively point in an entire VISION-LED PROCESS. Who knows how best to locate the beginning of this VISION and PROCESS?  There’s a strong argument for its beginning with the explorations around leadership that Seekers did in 2022. But even before that, I imagine the Spirit began to prepare us for this moment in numerous conversations over cups of coffee here and there in time and space, when conversations turned toward the question, “What If…”

For now, let’s start the narrative in mid-May, 4 months before September 14, when the vision for that day was first shared with all Seekers, from this pulpit. That day, we invited ourselves to remember that the Holy One, who called Seekers Church into being, has been with us ever since. Our God, a Very Real and Living Presence, is ever doing a New Thing, and then asking us, “My people, look! Look! Do you not perceive it?”

In response to God’s invitation to follow the Holy One toward this New Thing, the Servant Leadership Team sponsored the creation of a Working Group to begin a PROCESS for creating a community-wide visioning retreat. That group; John, Ellie, Mary Mehala, and myself, together with SLT, prepared us all logistically, emotionally, and spiritually toward the day itself. There were two additional sermons, and there were three reflection questions presented over the period of a few weeks for us to ponder individually and talk about in our small groups or with spiritual friends. And we prayed.

Some of us were open and expectant as the day drew near; others began with significant doubts and concerns. All of it– caution through excitement, has been part of the whole Process.

Most of us here this morning were at Wellspring: in fact, around 45 of us were there: some from out-of-town, and even out-of-state. As we found seats in the circle-not-quite-a-circle, and as we heard Ellie’s inspired suggestion for how we’d “stack” names of those who wished to speak, we also found ourselves settling into trust and openness. Almost everyone in the circle took the opportunity to speak.

I wonder if each of you, right now, would take a couple of moments to call up some memory, or maybe a felt sense of being in that circle of being and belonging. Maybe remember some particular things that were said or done, or that you remember yourself saying or doing.

That specific day, September 14, can serve as a touchstone for considering what it is possible for us to reach for and be receptive to as we move forward with the Process.

Ellie will now pick up the narrative of this continuing Process as she has been  experiencing it herself.

Part Two (Ellie Benedict)

After the PROCESS of the Day of Prayer and Conversation, I took John Morris’ big edit of Elizabeth McMeekin’s notes, and began to work with them in the way I tend to approach things like this, which is visual and systematic:

I wrote all the points we made that day out on slips of paper color-coded by “value”, “system that supports the value”, “challenge”, and “vision”. I then arranged these slips of paper across my wall in horizontal bands like “rivers” of theme-topics. Imagining it now, it was kind of beautiful! Then, I summarized them in the Report SLT sent you all. SLT has now built four working groups from the Areas of Action they identified from that report.

Some weeks later, when I sat in this room for my recommitment meditation, I was reflecting on how these areas of action feel very exciting and also a little unruly, like an unravelled rope would have four strands of fiber flung out in different directions. Ready to be something strong, but each individual strand is somewhat unaware of the presence of the other strands.

In my hour of silence, as I pondered my commitment to this community, I saw a need for a pair of hands or two to weave those four unruly strands together so that they can build a unified rope. I thought about how we’d need a repository for developments that come from the working groups; a centralized system of institutional knowledge so that we don’t lose track of our progress, duplicate our work, or build in contradictory directions.

I also felt a concern that there was a danger of the work at this point becoming siloed. I thought we could use someone with a view of the bigger picture to keep pulling people together, and I felt like I saw a spot where I actually had a gift I could offer to fill that need. I mean, everytime I go home, I was literally looking at the big picture of the conversation so far, laid out across my wall.

Later that same day of my recommitment meditation, Jeanne and I met up and she expressed to me the same things I had just written in my journal. I slid the journal across the coffee shop table and showed her the page where I had articulated the same feelings she was sharing with me!

This is how our idea to work together was born. After developing the idea more, we brought it to SLT and were incredibly affirmed by their excitement to give us their blessing to take on this role for the church.

These two moments of synchronicity– Jeanne and I coming to the same vision on the same day and then SLT sharing the 4 working groups structure with the community right when we were about ready to share our idea makes me feel like the Living God is being really obvious right now. Synchronicity like this is my cue that I’m on his path.

So let me reintroduce us to you- together, we are The Weave Team.

We see our purpose as being to serve by:

• Acting as a place to check-in where folks could come with ideas and we could tell them who else is thinking along these lines, connecting them to each other
• Being a repository for sermons/reflections/thought pieces and updates from individuals and mission groups on this topic so that we could track its progress
• Using all this organizational/institutional knowledge to keep a finger on the pulse of the spiritual development of this project, being prepared to encourage or activate as necessary.

Along with serving in those ways, we are here to weave connective tissue between all elements of this work,

• Between ourselves and the groups
• Between the groups and SLT
• Between the overall woven rope of the project and the entire congregation, perhaps via newsletter!

Imagine all these groups are spinning threads of good work, but sometimes the threads run parallel to each other. Sometimes we might find a knot, or a gap in what we’ve woven. The Weave Team is here to support the creation of one cohesive and bountiful tapestry of the many activities and directions of this greater, nebulous project of change and growth.

So that’s our work together, and now I’ll invite Jeanne to share how her eyes are on this “bigger picture”

Part 3 (Jeanne Marcus)

One quirky moment at the very beginning of my involvement with this whole process was to get a special spiral to keep all my notes and lists together. For the first time ever, I got a spiral custom-designed just for me by the high-end stationery purveyors: Shutterfly.

Here it is:
“FLAMINGOS TAKE OFF SLOWLY BUT THEY TAKE OFF TOGETHER”

I found it again last week, and using it again has been a light-hearted way to observe that I continue to live into the same amazing process that’s been ongoing now for many months. And its mantra reminds me of my commitment to attend to the inclusion of everyone in our work together.

And while it’s true we’re engaged in an ongoing Process, it’s also true that we are at a Threshold right now. Thresholds are very interesting: they recognize that there is a kind of suspension, an in-betweenness between the coming to the end of one situation and the onset of another. But thresholds don’t invite us to passivity: their true nature is as moments where opportunities for liberation, discovery, and awakening are the most powerful, and as invitations to bring our fullest, clearest attention.

ALL of us—the four working Groups that are forming, the SLT, the Weave Team—but also each of our Mission Groups, and our Ministry Teams, the Stewards, and ALL of us individually—are at that kind of potentially powerful moment.

What happens next? How are we going to do this?

How are these groups going to coalesce and decide what to do first?

How will they work around the questions of leadership? Will it be individual or collective? Maybe this time, can the group turn to someone who is not as close to the center?

How will the New Groups interact with the current Mission Groups and Ministry Teams during this threshold period? (THIS is an important question!)

How will the Weave Team work to keep everyone “in the loop”, and informed?

How will we remind ourselves that we want to ground ourselves in the VALUES that underlie our practices?

HONESTLY: We don’t know yet—NONE of us knows yet!

And HONESTLY: If we’re going to do a Deep Dive—deep enough to root ourselves on the banks of the River of Living Water, then we as a community are going to be at this for many months.

At the beginning of the Day of Prayer and Conversation, we opened with a Reflection from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

.. trust in the slow work of God.
We are impatient being on the way to something unknown,
something new, and yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability–
and that it may take a long time.
…Give the Holy One the benefit of believing that the Spirit is leading us,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

One last quote, this one from the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, –and then I’ll turn it over to Ellie again:

Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else.
Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.

Part Four (Ellie Benedict)

In front of us, we have an opportunity to walk together. Everything we do is grounded in our shared value that all our voices get heard to shape our future. I’ll remind you that the action areas of the working groups are direct from what was said at the gathering on September 14th– that means that they came from you! And I sincerely hope that everyone joins one of those groups to contribute their voice.

For me, working on the Day of Prayer and Conversation Planning Team was an unexpectedly affirming experience. I actually was originally drawn to Seekers because of the line about cooperative leadership on the website because that is something I’m passionate about.

Part of my call has always been to work with groups to become communities, part of my skillset is organizing people, and of course my passion is for exploring the many expressions of God. The work we are doing now, as a church community, is nourishing me on all of those fronts. I’m finding “place” more than ever before, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that right now.

I want to bring what I have as an offering to this church, like the Stack method we used– that’s just one small thing in my bag of tricks from my experience. I think this work will be strongest if we all show up, bringing what we each have to the table, and for me that is a community-centric and faith-grounded excitement about organizing. 

If we do all bring what we’ve got to the table, I foresee that one beauty of this work will be differences of opinion. At Seekers, we acknowledge that God is speaking to each of us all the time and in different ways. As Peter said, that’s why I’m even allowed to be up here right now!

But I want to suggest to you some ways we honor this from the other side of the podium:

• For yourself: honor God’s voice in yourself by allowing your mind to be changed sometimes.
• For others: acknowledge, truly believe, and honor that everyone around you is bringing you the word as they hear it. Bringing this benefit of belief to others will create a place where it’s safe to be bold, to experiment, and to change!
• For between us: consider that giving and receiving feedback, when everyone is coming from a place of God’s word, is a spiritual and devotional act.

I want to close by saying thank you– thank you for seeing me, both in what I can offer and what I could grow into, and for bringing yourselves earnestly to the project we have all been leaning into this year. I am really excited to take off with you– like flamingos– slowly but together!