Meet the Team: Chelsey Hillyer

Apr 22

I didn’t grow up in the church.

And that meant that I had a lot to learn when I did come to Christian community: the intricately layered stories of the Bible, thousands of years of Church history, and rituals and rhythms of life.

But what I struggled most to learn was How Things Are Done. Not growing up in church meant I had no point of reference for the “good old days” that so many of my congregation members and fellow church leaders constantly referenced.

“Things aren’t the way they used to be,” they’d say. “The church is dying,” they insisted.

I did my best to take them seriously, but I was never fully convinced. Instead, words from Walter Bruggeman rang truer: “We have a moment of stunning attentiveness that the pot is being reshaped before our eyes because the form is no longer pleasing to the potter.”

I didn’t grow up in church, and so it was obvious to me that its present form wasn’t pleasing–to the potter, to people of my generation, or to those the church marginalized – intentionally or not.

The church wasn’t dying. It was being reshaped. What a time to be in ministry! I thought my call would be to create new forms of church and Christian community.

And then, I led the first two congregations I pastored to closure.

The first church voted to merge with another congregation quickly after financial viability became an issue. The second, after a confusing and painful denominational process, opted to close. In both situations, I led communities through last Christmases and Easters, through difficult conversations and votes, through grief. I assisted with the sale of the large church building in an urban area, disseminated physical and monetary assets, and presided over rituals of ending.

But even in my next church–a congregation with healthy attendance and budget–I participated in and bore witness to endings: to the discontinuation of a Sunday morning worship service, to the use of bulletins, to staff positions. And eventually, to the ending of my own ministry in the local church and to the slow schism of my denomination.

It’s easy to say, “The church is dying.” It’s harder to say, “The church is being reborn.”

Harder because it requires belief in something we do not yet know the shape of, something we sense but do not yet experience. We have options for how we occupy this time. We can scramble, over-prepare, push ourselves and congregations to the frenzied brink of burnout, where so many congregations and leaders find themselves now.

Or. We can attend to the work that cries out right now. The work of bearing witness to the end of this particular chapter (or is it only a verse?) in Christian history in anticipation of the next.

Death is no sign of failure or unfaithfulness.

Endings are not the end.

This is why I’m proud to be a part of the Good Friday Collaborative–because we seek to attend to this reshaping, trusting that, as the hymn says, “in our end is our beginning.”