This week, life at Bloomsbury is dominated by Simon's news on Sunday that he will be leaving us at Easter. He doesn't know where he will be going yet, but it has become clear that for the sake of the family, and for the good of ministry, it is time to look for work closer to where the family is based.
A change in a ministry is always a testing time for a church. It raises all sorts of questions, some absolutely obvious, others much harder to put into words. We wonder about what life will be like without the person who is leaving, we wonder what plans we need to out into place to take things forward, we wonder what changes we will need - and will have to - make?
And below it, we wonder about why somebody is leaving, what is "better" on the other side of the fence perhaps - or we wonder how we might feel relief without feeing disloyalty, we wonder how to make the choices that will need to be made, and we wonder who we are as a community, and who we might be in the face of such great changes.
There's a lot of wondering. We are fortunate that Simon has been able to give us a long time to adjust and to make plans. And we are also fortunate that we know, even within our wondering, that the life of the church congregation is not ours alone to sustain, but is part of the life that God is expressing in the world. The stories in the gospels, the stories of the church through time is the reminder that in our wondering as well as in our knowing, in our getting it right and in our getting wrong in making decisions, God works, and we look for the coming of the Kingdom. We have responsibilities, we need to take our roles seriously - and we can trust that God works in and through who we are, and that is our hope and our future.