This week marks the transition from Summer to Fall. Many of you just completed your summer courses last Friday. Now, you have one week to catch a breath, perhaps, and then we launch into the Fall term next Monday.

Allow me to take this moment to breathe deeply with you and reflect on two important lessons I learned over the summer.

Lesson One: Life is precious, short, and fragile, so cherish each moment.

I was reminded of this lesson in two ways this summer. On the macro level we were all reminded of it as we share in the collective trauma of the shooting at Annunciation last week. We grieve with all the families of those children in Minneapolis as we also continue to watch the terror of children in Gaza and around the world who suffer at the hands of violent adults.

I was also reminded of this lesson on a personal level with the death of my 9-year old great nephew. It was an unexpected and shocking death. We are never prepared for that kind of news.

Hug the children in your life today. Cherish each moment of this gift called life.

Lesson Two: Leadership is Facilitation

Another lesson I learned came from our experiment with the Super Simple Summer Service of Sacrament that we held each Wednesday in July and August. The original plan for the summer was to have no chapel or communal practice of any kind. The Chapel Staff and I needed a break. The more I thought about that plan the less I liked it. We needed something.

Honestly, the alternative plan was originally born out of self-preservation. I thought, “How can I offer communion each week, but not have to be caught up in the weekly grind of worship planning?”

I wanted it to be easy. The Latin word is facilis.

So, I thought, we have a Cranberry Hymnal (The ELW) that has everything already printed. The purest form of Lutheran Worship is: Gather, Word, Sacrament, Send.

Each Wednesday we gathered in the Chapel at 11:00am. We shared in Confession and Forgiveness (p. 94), read the Psalm (in a lectio divina style) and the Gospel from the Revised Common Lectionary, prayed through the categories prescribed in the ELW (I simply named the category and invited people to pray out loud or silently), gathered around the table for bread and wine, and then I sent them with a simple blessing. No music. No sermon.

It was simple. It was quiet. It was short (25 min), but also spacious.

It was facilis.

And, for me at least, it was very meaningful.

It wasn’t about the leader. It wasn’t about creative planning. It wasn’t about amazing music. It wasn’t about pomp or show.

It was the people of God gathered around the Word of God and the Sacrament of Communion.

This experience led me to reflect on power and the role of the leader in Christian community. Having a title/position in an institution automatically gives a person positional power. This is a neutral fact. The power exists. The challenge for every leader is how we use the power given to us.

By the grace of God, and my desire for a facil summer, I learned an experiential lesson about power. The power that I have from the position of Dean of Chapel allowed me to name the time and decide on the structure. That is an important aspect of power. Someone one has to be able to make decisions. Then my job as the leader was to get out of the way. My job was to simply open up the space, submit to the liturgical structure, and trust that the Holy Spirit will move and engage with each person in the way they need to be engaged.

My job was to make that process easy for everyone. To make it facilis. To facilitate.

Thanks be to God for lessons learned this summer.

Blessings on your inbetween week.