Interview with the Moderator, The Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
Summary:
In this episode of the Ministry Forum Podcast, Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls, Moderator of the 149th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, joins us for a rich conversation about vocation, change, and hope in the church today. With wisdom drawn from decades of teaching and ministry, Dr. Dutcher-Walls reflects on her calling, the evolving role of the church, and what it means to serve faithfully in a time of transformation. From seminary classrooms to cross-country workshops, she shares insights into how the Spirit is moving—and how we can listen. A thoughtful and timely conversation for all who care about the future of ministry in Canada.
Quotables:
“And that was a good influence, especially for somebody who's then going to go into teaching and hopefully model a kind of faith that's not afraid of the brain that God gave us, that I really, pretty firmly believe, that God gave us brains, and God wanted us to engage with thoughtfully, with the Bible, with our experience with God, with our experience in the world. And so my upbringing, I think, shaped how I do Presbyterianism” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“Because if you're only exposed to one way of thinking about the world, you may get a little bit arrogant about whether that's the only way to think about things, but if you're learning in a context where you have other points of view, so you're always wrestling, you're always being exposed to another way to interpret this passage” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“it's in a situation a country like Canada where any religion thrives and all religions thrive, I think we're actually healthier and better for that, and we can be better Christians by being in good communication our interfaith neighbours.” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“It's, in fact, my experience has been that being in an intercultural, interfaith situation, you actually need to know your own identity better, but you hold it lightly, and you interact with your neighbors generously, and that is, I think, then that creates, actually a civic generosity that I think serves everybody well, and that I find actually quite compatible with the gospel, that you know that that is that kind of openness, which doesn't mean we lose ourselves, but being open to the other and in fact, being aware that their experience is quite different than ours, and listening to what their experience is, and allowing that to help me think about my experience and my commitments and my values is actually important.” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“So I was reflecting on change in the church and realizing that there are many people for whom change is very difficult. They kind of have an expectation that the Church will always be there for them in the way they have always expected it to be there, that it's not going to change, because they also have this theology that God doesn't change” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“there are incredible stories and examples of people holding a space and a place for the sacred, for worship that has gone back hundreds of years, that literally, their grandparents and great grandparents built or added to or were part of. And so that legacy that trust from generations past, I think, is one of the strengths of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, that we do have a sense that really from the founding of Canada, there have been Presbyterian congregations, praying for the good of the order, praying for the good of their neighbors, building, not only buildings, but institutions and practices that shape communities. And that legacy is incredible, and it carries on so that sense of the longevity of the traditions that we hold is very precious” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“It's not impossible, but it's going to require things of us that we're not well practiced at, which is change and flexibility and just like actually trusting the Spirit to do something different among us, when all of our instincts sometimes are but this is what's worked in the past. Can't that just work now and the it's difficult to hear that, the answer is, maybe it can't work that way anymore.” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“So part of, I think, what's going to be needed is creating pockets or new communities of people where either through yoking parishes, two point charges, three point charges, amalgamations, not only within Presbyterianism, but join with the United and the Lutheran church down the street to do a new Ministry. So it's going to require creativity in in finding and creating communities that are a big enough center of gravity, in that to use that, I guess it's a physics image, to have enough energy to create something new. A tiny little church on its own is not going to be able to do that, that church, together with some other churches, whether those are Presbyterians or whatever, may create enough center of gravity that then change becomes possibility rather than threat, and that, I think, is going to be the key to the future.” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“And I said it, and I preached at Knox College last week that you know, to the students “so you're preparing for a church that's very different than the church was even 20 years ago”. And if you're you know, program at Knox or VST or PC college is good. And I think most of the they are, they're trying to prepare you for a church that's different than the one you might have experienced before. But it's equally true that the church 20 years from now is not going to be the church you're confronting today” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“what I said about the fact I think the church will look very different 20 years from now than it does today, is going to be absolutely the case, but that church, 20 years from now might actually have a lot of vitality. I think it will be smaller in the terms of fewer congregations, but the congregations that are there might be quite lively and quite engaged with their communities and quite interested in doing mission and good worship and music or, you know, kind of whatever is the kinds of expression of the life of Christ in their midst that they're wanting to pursue” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
“the need to be flexible and to realize that no matter what, no matter what confronts us or the changes that we need to take on, if we stay connected to God and listening to God and trusting the spirit, trusting that Jesus walks with us, we can do all things through the one who strengthens us, and that is going to be our best hope, is actually coming back to be a church that trusts its Lord and trusting God, following Jesus, the comfort and challenge of the Holy Spirit is what is going to be needed to move us into the future.” - Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
About The Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
Pat has been involved in service to the church throughout her career. She is an active session member and minister-in-associate with Trinity Church, a three-congregation amalgamation and transformational ministry in New Westminster and Burnaby, British Columbia. She retired as Professor of Hebrew Bible and Dean of the Faculty at Vancouver School of Theology on July 1, 2021. Several decades of The Presbyterian Church in Canada students—first at Knox College and then at Vancouver School of Theology—began their study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, drawing a map of ancient Israel and figuring out their “interpretive principles” in her introductory year-long course. During her vocation as a professor, Pat published five books on the social world and interpretation of the Old Testament, authored several scholarly articles and presented numerous papers at academic conferences. Academic administration became a consistent part of her work, and she found a happy balance as a teaching administrator, including becoming Dean of the Faculty at VST from 2013-2020.
Beyond the colleges of the church, Pat has had an active teaching and preaching ministry across the country, offering numerous sermons, adult education courses, retreats, workshops and lectures for congregations, synods, women’s groups and conferences. Other offerings for the church include articles in the Presbyterian Record and Presbyterian Connection and, more recently, web series and podcasts. Many lay people have participated in her Bible studies, using the approach of underlining biblical texts with pencil crayons to discover theological themes and share in small discussion groups, all to search out new insights of wisdom and interpretation for God’s people today.
Pat has been active in the courts and committees of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, including serving on the Church Doctrine Committee, as president of the Board of Directors of Evangel Hall, as convener with Hummingbird Ministries Council and Moderator of the Presbytery of Westminster 2020-2021. Her most recent project has been the 2023 Presbyterian Reads Advent study guide on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger Advent devotions. Pat continues as convener of the General Assembly Design Team and chair of the Strategy and Leadership Committee of the Presbyter of Westminster
Additional Resources:
As you heard, Pat is a great champion of the Narratives of Hope and Possibilities. You can learn more about the Working Group here. And if you'd like to host a DIY workshop - all the details on how to do that are found there too.
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Transcript
[Introduction]
Welcome to the Ministry Forum Podcast. We're so delighted to be talking with the moderator of the 149th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Reverend Doctor Patricia Dutcher-Walls, you are in for a treat, as I have mentioned to pat on a couple of occasions, with the utmost of respect to all previous moderators, I really feel that Pat's approach to the monitorial role has been unique, and I'm hopeful that we're going to hear a little more about that as we talk to her today. Let me offer a brief introduction before I invite Pat to highlight those things that she would most like to share with us as a bit of an introduction. But let me just say that her bio, her official bio, starts in a beautiful way. It mentions that she is an active session member and minister in association with Trinity Church, a three congregation amalgamation and transformational ministry in New Westminster and Burnaby, British Columbia. She retired as professor of Hebrew Bible and the Dean of the Faculty of the Vancouver School of Theology on July 1, 2021. Several decades of the Presbyterian Church in Canada Students, first at Knox College - where I served as one of the representatives on the student search committee that brought Pat to Knox in the first place - and then at Vancouver School of Theology have probably begun their study of the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, drawing a map of ancient Israel and figuring out their interpretive principles in her introductory yearlong course. I think I missed this experience as I had taken my intro to Hebrew Bible with Dan at teasin. He was the interim Professor before Pat came. I think I had a prophets course, maybe with you pat, I'm pretty sure, but the memory is fading. Time is marching on. There is much more to say about Pat's experience in the church, and I'm confident that we will tease much more out from our conversation today. Welcome Pat, it's so great to have you on the Ministry Forum Podcast.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Thank you, John. It's great to be with you, and great to talk through the technology with the folks who listen to the podcast.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, thanks. Let's start with a little more about you. How would you want to introduce yourself? I've touched on a few things from the PCC website, but maybe there's some other things you'd want to share with our audience.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
I guess the main thing is how much my whole career has really been defined as a teacher. I just sort of discovered early on that I really loved teaching, and while I felt called to ministry, I really felt that that ministry was going to find its best expression through teaching so kind of as I was doing my MDiv and sorting out what I wanted to do when I grew up and things like that, I had a chance, actually, right after I did my MDiv to be a chaplain at a university in upstate New York. I was still in the States at that point, and I was an assistant chaplain at Colgate University, which is a great hockey team, by the way. And that job was great because it was half time ministry on the college campus. So there was a Campus Church, and I was the Assistant Minister in the church, so it was an ordainable position. I was ordained to it. But the other half time was teaching in the Philosophy and Religion Department, and they kind of had a great books course that they had lots and lots of people teach. So I had lots of I had my own classroom, and was able to actually be in that classroom and teach. And that showed me that I really loved teaching, and that was a really nice revelation, because I didn't know whether I wanted to go into ministry per se, or into teaching, and so being in a university classroom really showed me I love teaching, and that then really shaped my career, because at that point I said, All right, well, if I'm going to teach at a university or graduate level, I have to get a doctorate. And the only thing I really loved well enough to do a doctorate in was Old Testament. So I went on to do a doctorate in Old Testament and California, and at the graduate theological union in Berkeley. And that was a great experience. Lived there for 10 years, did a ridiculously long doctorate because I was getting married and having children in the middle of also putting my husband through two master's degrees. So between us, we have way too many graduate degrees and two lovely children who are now adults. And I finished my doctorate, and then my first job, my first, you know, called job as a newly minted PhD was to Knox College, and that was a fateful turn of events. My husband had previously done a degree at the Toronto School of Theology, and he knew Toronto was a great city and Reverend Dr Art Van Ceders, was the principal at that point. He for one, he really wanted to hire a woman, because Knox had never hired a woman. Helen Goggin was there, and she had come with the amalgamation with Ewart, but they'd never hired a woman into a tenure track position. And by the Charter, the person had to be Presbyterian, which I am, born, bred, raised, married, etc., Presbyterian. So that was just a lovely turn of events. We loved living in Toronto. I had a great time teaching at Knox, but both my husband and I always wanted to get back to the west coast because we had met at Berkeley, and Berkeley is like a Southern Vancouver in a way, it's kind of that West Coast vibe. So when the job at the Old Testament job at Vancouver School of Theology opened up, I applied for it, and felt very blessed to get that job. And so then I've been at VST for this of my time. So I've actually been in Canada for 30 years, which feels amazing, but that also means I've done, you know, as you say, a number of generations of students have learned their interpretive principles and drawn that map.
[John Borthwick]
So amazing. And I don't think, I'm sure I knew way back when, but I don't think I ever asked you, where were you born in the US? Like, where did you sort of grow up? What was your first degree?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Yeah, I was born just outside New York City, okay, in a suburb in New Jersey. My dad worked in the city. He was one of those commuters to the city, and it was a great place to grow up, because the culture was influenced by the city. And like when we would go on a school field trip, we go into New York City to the, you know, Metropolitan Museum, or whatever. It was great to grow up there. And my family was very Presbyterian. My dad was an elder, my mom was a deacon, they both sang in the choir. So I was just surrounded by thoughtful, faithful Presbyterians. It was a suburban kind of a church, but the Minister, I think, probably spent more time on his sermons than just about anyone I know. They were very thoughtful. And the other thing is, he spent a lot of time on his prayers. When he did a pastoral prayer, you knew he had really put his heart into it as what his how he would pray for his congregation. So that was a great influence to be aware of. So, that shaped who I am in many ways, kind of subtle ways, because it wasn't a flashy kind of upbringing. It was an upbringing in the church that valued thoughtfulness, and you know, thinking through things and doubt was okay - because then you just do more thinking. And that was a good influence, especially for somebody who's then going to go into teaching and hopefully model a kind of faith that's not afraid of the brain that God gave us, that I really, pretty firmly believe, that God gave us brains, and God wanted us to engage with thoughtfully, with the Bible, with our experience with God, with our experience in the world. And so my upbringing, I think, shaped how I do Presbyterianism. And then I found kind of a happy place in deciding that, you know, I think my gifts are best suited to teaching in a seminary. And luckily, that worked out. I had the wherewithal and the support of family and my husband to, you know, do the long slog that it takes to get a doctorate, and then my husband's a Lutheran pastor, so his job was always flexible. We could literally go where my job, because there's not that many teaching jobs. So he was willing to follow, follow me wherever I needed to go. In terms of jobs, he was delighted to move to Canada, and believe me, we have been so glad to be living in Canada, and we are even more glad right now. So we'll leave the rest unspoken, but there you go.
[John Borthwick]
We could, we could imagine, there could be some reasons, yeah, fascinating, yeah, to see how the journey goes. You know, growing up and then thinking, seeing that discernment of your call towards teaching, and then teaching in a seminary. And then being California, A California couple, and then just have your husband having that connection with Toronto. That's amazing, because I'm assuming maybe that that wouldn't have been the first stop, but maybe VST and graduate theological union…
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
We had heard, of course, of both VST. I mean, you can't be in the theological world circle is not that big. So if you're a GT, you've heard of Toronto, you've heard of VST. I wouldn't have imagined necessarily moving to Canada, but the job was perfect, because one of the other things I've discovered about where I think I thrive and where I can teach well, is when I'm in a school that has denominational connections, but it's in an ecumenical context. I don't know that I would have been happy at a school that was only Presbyterian and, you know, kind of insular in their outlook. So I knew that that was what was very attractive about Toronto School of Theology is that you came into, I came into Knox College, which was very Presbyterian and proudly so and deeply so for many, many years. But it was right there in the middle of the university, and right there in the middle of the Toronto School of Theology, which is an ecumenical school. So I was so glad when it got to teaching like that prophets course that, yes, you may very well have been in. It was one of my upper level courses that was a survey of the Prophets. So a lot of students from the other school. So Toronto School theology has, I don't know you may remember, but six or seven different schools, and they're, you know, Catholic and Anglican and United, and they allow cross registration. So my classes would have a core of Presbyterians, of course, but then we there were always students from all of the other schools, and it was so rich in the classroom, and I realized I couldn't, sort of imagine learning theology any other way. Because if you're only exposed to one way of thinking about the world, you may get a little bit arrogant about whether that's the only way to think about things, but if you're learning in a context where you have other points of view, so you're always wrestling, you're always being exposed to another way to interpret this passage and then my own sort of predilection to make student think students think about their interpretation could really work. Because so if you're sitting there in a classroom and there's somebody, say, from Korea or India or, you know, where else who has a very different interpretation of a particular passage, each student's job is to figure out, well, how am I interpreting and then, how do I be generous with people who have different interpretations? It can't be that we go to a place like a Toronto School of Theology to shut out the world as we're learning. It's far better to go there and be open to what there is to learn from others, because, in fact, that's what ministry is going to be about. And if we spend our time at a school shutting ourselves off and then get into a ministry situation where, you know, actually, in fact, there's a mosque up the street that's having trouble with the city over the size of their parking lot, we actually may want to be in an interfaith discussion with that mosque, and in fact, we may want to work with them on some ministry in the neighborhood, and we may want to support their bid for their parking lot or their building or whatever, because it's in a situation a country like Canada where any religion thrives and all religions thrive, I think we're actually healthier and better for that, and we can be better Christians by being in good communication our interfaith neighbors. And so it's really ideal, I think, for my teaching career to have ended up in a in an urban area, in an interfaith, ecumenical kind of place, in Toronto, and then that just continued in Vancouver,
[John Borthwick]
Yeah for sure. And my own experience being in Toronto was my first call in Toronto at Rexdale, and within a few years of my early ministry, September 11th happened, and right around the corner from our church was a very significant mosque and folks in that community who were experiencing lots of you know, targeted hate crime and abuse and things like that, and so one of my first things that I did - in the days when we actually wrote letters - I wrote a letter to their community and just offering sort of a solidarity and support in the those of us in the Abrahamic faith tradition leaning into that, and I was actually invited to come and be a part of the open house and a community service of solidarity for that community after such a thing happens and I'm sure lots of folks in ministry have those encounters of you know, what do I? How do I stand alongside my interfaith brothers and sisters, but also my siblings in my interdenominational connections as well?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
I'm sure that happens elsewhere in the world. And I'm, you know, given the diversity of, say, US culture now, that would be the case, and I think it's worldwide, but perhaps, and here I'll be a little bit Canadian, we may experiment well with models on how to do that well, because it's not that one loses one's own identity. It's, in fact, my experience has been that being in an intercultural, interfaith situation, you actually need to know your own identity better, but you hold it lightly, and you interact with your neighbors generously, and that is, I think, then that creates, actually a civic generosity that I think serves everybody well, and that I find actually quite compatible with the gospel, that you know that that is that kind of openness, which doesn't mean we lose ourselves, but being open to the other and in fact, being aware that their experience is quite different than ours, and listening to what their experience is, and allowing that to help me think about my experience and my commitments and my values is actually important.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, very much so, very much so yeah, and that certainly spurred on for my entire ministry, both in Toronto and in in the city of Guelph, just finding ways of having those interconnect, interconnections, even in the city of Guelph, we, we did the first ever, at least, for our Habitat for Humanity chapter, the first ever, we called it my neighbor's house, and it was an interfaith build. So tried to get as many interfaith partners and Christian partners together to raise some funds towards building a Habitat for Humanity home in our city. And, yeah, good model. It was good stuff.
Um, okay, let's think about other kinds of discernment. Did you, did you ever think you'd grow up in living in just around New Jersey? Did you ever think you'd become the Presbyterian Church in Canada's moderator of the 149th General Assembly?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
That was my bucket list.
[John Borthwick]
Please make that happen for me Lord. I'm praying someday this would be my role. What did you think it would be like when this came into your life? And what has surprised you? So yeah, thinking about that.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
So I had thought about it for a number of years. I'd actually quite a few years ago, my name had stood one time for moderator, didn't win at that time, which, at that moment, it was like, “Thank God I didn't get it”, because I was still, I still had, you know, those moments, yeah, teenager at home, and it was just like, “Nope, this isn't gonna work”. And I guess it, I do understand it as a call that it's a particular ministry. Obviously, not many people get elected do it one a year. So it's a, you know, a small group. But I do think and thought as I was considering whether to let my name stand, I did, you know, you think, you know, can I practically fit it in? How busy am I? How will it affect my family? How will it affect the other work that I'm doing? Now I'm retired, so that certainly relieved a little bit of scheduling pressure. But I'm very, very active in my local church and my presbytery, so there was an impact. I had to, you know to say to people, there's certain things I can't do this year because I'm moderator. But I guess the thought was, “Do I have something to offer that the church might recognize is something that's worth having for this year”, but with all calls in the Presbyterian Church, as you will have heard, Stephen Farris say, a call is always a two key operation. Both the person and the presbytery have to agree to the call or the ordination, and then the call to be the church that's called the ordaining Presbyterian, and the person, and I think the call to being moderator is similar. So I may want to be moderator, and the church may not discern, and the Holy Spirit may not lead the church to discern that this is the time for this, or that I have the skills. So it was always, you know, we'll see. And I, you know, kind of held the decision lightly, because if it didn't work out, I had wonderful work to do. I wasn't going to be moping around. I had a full and wonderful life that was just going to continue of service to the church. So I was, I was pleasantly surprised when I got the call from the clerk, from Victor Kim that said yes. It was like, oh, okay, wow. That actually happened, which is, you know, both fun and a little funny and a little intimidating. So is it as I expected? Well, part of it is, since I've never been moderator before, I didn't actually know what to expect. Everybody comes to this job, this calling, without actually knowing what it's like. And for all that, the, you know, the General Assembly office is very gracious, as very much tries to, you know, prepare you for what you're going to be up against, and describe, you know, it's about like a half time job. There's travel. You don't know until you're living it, what it's like. But my family was okay with it, though, because the travel is probably thing that impacts the family as much as the most. And my husband was like, I mean, he's got his own set of volunteer work, and, you know, he's okay. I mean, he's not thrilled that I'm traveling as much as I am, but he's fine with it, and he is coming along on he did the international trip when I went to Malawi in August. And then we have an upcoming trip, or I have an upcoming trip to the Maritimes, and he'll come along on that one. So some of the longer trips. Now, you know, we lived in Ontario long enough, he was like, no, I don't need to go visit Ontario. That's okay. You can just go do that. So anyway, it does have an impact on the family, but he seemed fine with that. And then also does some trips with me. Was it what I'm expected to a certain extent? Yes. So you get a lot of invitations, and you know where you can work those into a trip? You do. I think one of the things that is a little bit different is, if you're a Vancouver resident, being moderator is a little bit different, because you basically have to get on an airplane to go anywhere for any of your visits or whatever. I mean, I did one trip over to Vancouver Island, which is hop on a ferry, and that was easy - that's local. And of course, I've done a couple things in my home presbytery here. But anything else, you have to get on a plane and go somewhere. So that is a little bit different than if you're in southern Ontario, there are so many Presbyterians there, you can hop in a car and within a couple hours you can visit, you know, a number of different churches for services or whatever. So what we've tried to do is bunch up invitations so that I could do a trip to Alberta or Southern Ontario or Winnipeg, or wherever it is that I'm going and have enough items bunched together on dates that work with each other, but then don't mean that I'm not on the road for, you know, four weeks at a time that just wasn't going to happen, that wasn't going to be healthy for my family or for me. So the travel has been and the General Assembly office has been very good about that. So the travel is pretty much as I expected. And because I could, you know, have some say in well, let's say no to that one, because I really can't be traveling at this point, but let's say yes to this one. So that was pretty much as I expected. The other thing that I realized, kind of almost immediately was - they just elect, they being the General Assembly. They just elected a professor. So they're going to get a professor. I'm not going to pretend to be something. I'm also a minister - I've been ordained since 1978 so absolutely, ministry is important to me, but my calling has been as a teacher. So I was thinking even early on during the General Assembly, how I could put my own calling, my own vocation as a teacher to good use as the moderator. And what I realize is that my thing, if for anybody who's ever been in a class or you know, workshop with me, is helping people learn and discuss in a way that encourages everybody's part. Participation, so that we all learn from each other, and that the best way to do that is in a workshop format where small groups get together, and I set up the learning experience in a way that is going to encourage small groups to talk to each other and then to reflect together on what they've heard and what they've learned. I mean, that's every class I've ever put together. That's the educational philosophy that I use in classes. And so I thought, “well, I'm going to bring that to the national stage”, because that's who I am. That's who you elected. So I mean, I think we'll maybe talk about a little later, the general assembly also passed an initiative through assembly council for kind of looking at the renewal and vitality of the church, called the Working gGroup on Narratives of Hope and Possibility. And that was passed at the General Assembly when I was moderator last June. And it's a year long project that the Gen, that the working group has 20 or so people from across the country, very representative, and they're working on, how do we bring vitality back to the church? What are some new models? How do we create narratives of hope and possibility for the church as a whole? and they have a national strategy that they're thinking through. And so even, even before they got really got started at General Assembly last year, I talked to the chairperson, who's Reverend Doctor Jean Morris, and then, of course, Victor Kim, the clerk, and I said, you know, if there's anything I can do to run a set of workshops that go alongside compliment the work that the national committee is doing that feels like part of my calling as a moderator, because that's something that I can contribute, that uses my gifts and skills and that might be useful to the working group, and they readily agreed, and then Jean Morris and I, over the summer, actually worked out what this workshop might be, and that's, I think, a little different from other role of other roles moderators have played partly. I mean, I have done less of the preaching at anniversaries, which is a lovely thing to do, and moderators often get lots of invitations, but because I was connecting with the church through the workshop format, I did less of the anniversaries and preaching engagements, and then created this series of these workshops as my engagement with the church, as my service, I think, to the church this year, and that has been a little bit different, I think, than other moderators, using that more workshop format to interact with people. It doesn't mean I haven't done preaching. I have, it's just, I think I've done less preaching and then added these workshops in. So that's one distinction. The other distinction, and here again, I'm not sure, but it feels like I'm doing more writing than other moderators might do. They always have the moderators write an article for each issue of connections. It comes out four times a year. But as it turned out, I already had, already other writing projects going on that happened then during this year. So a number of congregations will be using the Lent PWS&D Lent liturgies. Well, I happen to have written the Lent liturgies that people are using this year. That was a complete fluke. It was, you know, on the schedule, and I had been writing them even before I got elected moderator. And then a year or so ago, I had written the Bonhoeffer study that was the Advent Presbyterian read. And I think, you know, my sense is, and Callie Long, who's the head of the communications department, can correct me, I think they discovered that I'm a writer. It's hard to be a professor and not be a writer, because it's part of your job as a professor. So they discovered I could write, and they kind of keep saying, “well, why don't you write this”, and “why don't you write that”, and, and I've been mostly glad. I mean, sometimes it's too much, and I've had to say an occasional No, but I like writing, and I think it is, again, a service, a gift I can give to the church. So I've maybe done a little bit more writing than other moderators. But that, again, has suited what people were going to get when they elected a professor as a moderator. So that's a long answer, but there you go.
[John Borthwick]
Anything that surprised you in this role so far? Like you've still got a few more months left, there's maybe some more surprises on the horizon. But anything so far that's kind of like, wow, I didn't, I didn't think that would happen, or I never thought I'd be in this room or whatever?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Yeah, I think one thing in particular. So it was in January, and I had to write the third article for connections. So the first one was about the narratives of hope and possibility, because I wanted to introduce that idea that came out I wrote in the summer, came out in the fall. The next article, of course, I mean, just naturally, had to be about my trip to Malawi, because I had lots of pictures, and people need to hear about what International Ministries and PWS&D is doing. But then I got to the third one. It was early January. The deadline was something like January 10th or something, say, after Christmas, everybody's kind of like tired. Okay, now blank page, “what am I going to write about?” And I started reflecting on my role as moderator, and particularly what I had heard already through the workshops that I had done in the fall, and what the impact of the changes in culture and our times and whatever it's having on the church, both in terms of discouragement for some churches, how difficult it is to be church excitement for other churches, of like, wow, there's a whole new ministry here. So reflecting on that, and then my own church is an amalgamation. And you know, we haven't stood still in five years. I mean, it's been constant change, because that's what amalgamation is. You are constantly figuring out. I mean, you're like, one step ahead of whatever it is you have to do, and you know, you're trying to plan for the future, but then something else happens. So I was reflecting on change in the church and realizing that there are many people for whom change is very difficult. They kind of have an expectation that the Church will always be there for them in the way they have always expected it to be there, that it's not going to change, because they also have this theology that God doesn't change. So I was just reflecting on change, and I realized that kind of, in the midst of these reflections and some prayer and whatever, that all of a sudden, I was feeling like I was pastor for the whole church in Canada that I had become the pastoral counselor, if you will. But just the I had a pastoral charge, and that pastoral charge is the entire Presbyterian Church in Canada, which is kind of what the moderator is, when you think about it, if the if the moderator is a minister, in that sense, then the whole church is one's parish. And that was that struck me very, very deeply that I have, in some sense, and I don't want to over blow this, because it's not a on me alone, but it is the sense that a moderator's calling is to take care for and with the whole church. And that was kind of a lovely experience and completely unexpected. Now I was at a LMA meeting this past weekend, Amanda Curry was there, who, of course, had been a past moderator, and I was speaking with her, and she said, Oh yeah, she had that too, that that moment now for her, it was, I think, even more, because she was the moderator during COVID. And so she ended up being moderator for two years, and she really felt like she was the pastor to a church that, of course, was very deeply thrown off balance by the whole pandemic experience. So it was just good to hear that another moderator had had kind of that sense, because I didn't know whether I was like, you know, kind of getting too big for my britches there, feeling like, you know, taking on more than I should be. But anyway, I think that's been the most surprising thing that one can feel a pastoral concern for a group of people as large as an entire denomination. But that's what happened.
[John Borthwick]
yeah, well, and I think it bears out Pat related to, you know, the world of secondary traumatic stress or vicarious trauma. You know, if your approach is to, I'll speak about, sort of my experience sometimes with, with now being somebody who does pulpit supply. When you go and do pulpit supply in a place, yeah, you're gonna have chats, and you're gonna have some interactions, you could even have a really heavy interaction at some point, like, with somebody, just because you're a person who's a minister type, and you did the sermon that day, or you were a part of leading worship, but, but then there's sort of a release of like “okay, see you later, I might never see you again, It's been great”. But I think when you open yourself up as you have to bear witness to people's experiences, and using the lens of the Bible, where, where, sometimes, when we talk about the Bible, I'm sure you'd be all over this, it brings up stuff for us, and then, and then you're making those connections with folks around their experience, of their church, experience and the future of the church and their faith and all those things. And you're just holding space for that and, and you're inviting that through your writing. And so yeah, I could easily see how you would be taking on that extra, maybe perhaps weight as a part of that and, and so what a gift you've given to the church. But of course, you know, take care of yourself as you do that, and decompress from that in the in the coming months ahead, but, I think that's a great gift to the church as well, to have that sense of that you are almost processing through and certainly sharing through your writing and sharing through your engagement in meetings and the connections with the Hope and Possibilities Working Group, what you're hearing, and transferring that where you go, and so you're sort of the conduit for that, and also the messenger for that.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
And thank you. And I think that's a good way to describe it. And, and I think it really is being a servant to the church. I mean, it's service, and that's fine. That's actually a good way of describing the job of moderator. So I'm glad that it's worked out that way. I didn't you know when I said to Jean Morris, let's let I'll do a workshop that's like, didn't you know? You never quite know. Because if you do a workshop, well, you actually don't know what's going to come up. You don't try to direct it. You kind of create a container where people can explore their own thoughts, and you don't, at least, I don't try to direct what those thoughts are, because I think that would be a betrayal of the trust I'm trying to create in those workshops. So if you're trusting the group and it can go, you know, one way or another, it's like you got to be ready for anything. Keep you flexible. There's no doubt about that. But if you do it well, in that sense, you do become a facilitator of people's thoughts and questions and hopes and dreams and discouragements, and that's a pretty much a sacred, that is actually a pastoral, sacred kind of role where I always have The sense that, yes, it's me in the room doing the leadership, but in these workshops and in interactions with people, it's also the spirit being invited into that space and becoming part of those conversations, so that people are free, I think, in a way to say things that they might not say in another context. And I think that freedom in the spirit to actually express how it is we see the church today, our church, our home congregation, the future of the church at large, or for the Presbyterian, or whatever it is that those are holy conversations and the Spirit is present. We invite the Spirit in, and we do well to do that, because it's, it's, you know, this is Christ's church, not ours. So let's just, you know, let the Spirit go where it will, and kind of go along for the ride and actually keep open to listening to each other, which I think is one of the ways the spirit actually moves, is when we listen to each other well, and it's not so much the Spirit isn't necessarily directing what people say, but the Spirit is enlivening the openness in the room to hear what other people are saying in a way that's not just analytical, but it kind of includes the whole person. So it's your hopes and your dreams and your emotions and your discouragements and your excitement, and that is then creates a holy conversation, and that the Spirit is very much present in that so to be the servant of that is tremendously honoring and just, I just have loved that role.
[John Borthwick]
It's amazing that you've been able to see it that way and hold space for folks in that way. We'll get to hope and possibilities in a sec, but maybe just in your experience thus far, and you're going to, I think you'd said you're going to the Maritimes in the month to come, or in the coming months, and just from those conversations that you've been able to have, or what you've seen in the spaces you've occupied within our denomination, what kind of insights have you gleaned? What is the what does it look like out there, in the out there, in the field, from your vantage point? How are we doing?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Yeah I mean, what I did an interesting exercise where I sat down and actually read the acts and proceedings in the section where they have the list of the Presbyteries, and they talk about all the pastoral charges, and who's the minister there, etc, who's the clerk of session, etc, and how many of them are vacant? And I read through the whole like, you know, however many of them there are many, many, many pages, and it's a sobering realization, how many churches are vacant, and how many Presbyteries are small, And the Presbyteries for itself is getting smaller as churches close. How many you have a sense that you know there's more vacancies than in a particular Presbytery, perhaps than there are ordained ministers to be interim moderators. So some ways of looking at it, we the church is thin on the ground. That said, there are incredible stories and examples of people holding a space and a place for the sacred, for worship that has gone back hundreds of years, that literally, their grandparents and great grandparents built or added to or were part of. And so that legacy that trust from generations past, I think, is one of the strengths of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, that we do have a sense that really from the founding of Canada, there have been Presbyterian congregations, praying for the good of the order, praying for the good of their neighbors, building, not only buildings, but institutions and practices that shape communities. And that legacy is incredible, and it carries on so that sense of the longevity of the traditions that we hold is very precious. That said that legacy is now up against cultural changes that are making it very, difficult to keep that legacy alive if it's dependent on a building that's the same age as the legacy and getting to be in the hundreds of years, or even, you know, less than that, and the building itself is saying, “you gotta pay attention to me” “I need a new roof”, and “I've got a leak”, and I've got a this and that that, instead of becoming a legacy, it becomes a burden. And that is an incredibly difficult transition, because the buildings in which many people invest a lot of their identity in their building, and in some cases, that's because, literally, their family story is invested in that building of their grandparents or whatever. And it's very, very, very difficult for people to see how a church survives without the building that they love, or without the building in a particular way. And then that's where the perception that change is difficult really comes clashing up against what may be some of the necessities for the church surviving, and that church is not necessarily a building. That church is the witness and work of Jesus Christ in the world, which is facilitated sometimes by buildings. It's facilitated by groups of people working together. It's facilitated by people called to ministry, either as teaching elders or as ruling elders, in the case of lay people, which may or may not have anything to do with the building. So when the building becomes a burden instead of a literally something that facilitates. Then churches have very difficult situations. So that's one piece that I've seen kind of happening across the country. The other is that there are generations now around us, our kids. And our grandkids and whatever, who maybe didn't grow up in church, or maybe have only a cursory awareness of church, and they don't have the kind of need for joining. I mean, I talk to my kids, and I talk to folks in their 20s and 30s, and joining something isn't necessarily a plus for them being a part of something. I mean, they do talk about wanting to be in community, but a membership list doesn't necessarily - unless it's like to the gym. You know, you might become a member of a gym. So I think there's a lot that's changed. Others have said this better than I'm saying it. You know, the culture is more secular, so that, I think, combined with aging buildings and then aging congregations in a secular culture, is a difficult time of transition for the church. It's not impossible, but it's going to require things of us that we're not well practiced at, which is change and flexibility and just like actually trusting the Spirit to do something different among us, when all of our instincts sometimes are but this is what's worked in the past. Can't that just work now and the it's difficult to hear that, the answer is, maybe it can't work that way anymore. Doesn't mean the Spirit's not at work, but maybe new ways of expressing our mission, our faith, our connections with the neighborhood are going to be needed. And my sense is the congregations, or amalgamations of congregations, or the whatever you know, patterns that can create a center of gravity large enough to have the energy to cope with the changes that are needed is going to be key, because when a church gets too old and too tired, they're just literally, are not the bodies and there's not the energy to cope with what is going to be required. And that's when your local congregation runs the risk of just not, you know, the roof goes and they're done. They don't have the money, they don't have the energy, they don't have the wherewithal to confront it. So part of, I think, what's going to be needed is creating pockets or new communities of people where either through yoking parishes, two point charges, three point charges, amalgamations, not only within Presbyterianism, but join with the United and the Lutheran church down the street to do a new Ministry. So it's going to require creativity in in finding and creating communities that are a big enough center of gravity, in that to use that, I guess it's a physics image, to have enough energy to create something new. A tiny little church on its own is not going to be able to do that, that church, together with some other churches, whether those are Presbyterians or whatever, may create enough center of gravity that then change becomes possibility rather than threat, and that, I think, is going to be the key to the future.
[John Borthwick]
Wow, that's, yeah, that's a lot to think. I've got so many things that are popping in my brain. I'll just mention that in the on the Ministry Forum Podcast, we get a chance to interview Dr. Sandra Beardsall from the Prairie Center for Ecumenism - amazing conversation, just talking about those shared, ecumenical, shared ministries. And I'd agree Pat that, you know, we have to look at we also sometimes might have to look at different new dancing partners, even if the other Presbyterian church in town, if there is a second one isn't the partner that wants to dance, if there's others that want to dance, then go for it. And then other communities that she was talking about where there are no other you know, of your of your team around, but there's a variety in a town or in a region that could work well together. I know you'd when you visited Knox College, you said something about stump the professor. That's not the intent of what just came into my brain. But I wonder, and I'm not even sure what I'm formulating, but there's a there were three sort of key things you talked about in that answer you were giving. And I just, it just jumped out to me, like: As a professor of the Hebrew Bible, I'm seeing a sort of a thought around for a people in the Hebrew Bible who place and building and temple were so very important to them, and disruptions that occurred when those things, when they were pulled away from those things, or those things were destroyed, not just temple, but even just, you know, when the Ark gets taken away, you know, just this sort of sense of, you know, the holiness of place and space, and that we go back to the well where our ancestors had possession of this well, and that means such has such great meaning within the story of the Hebrew people. The other one that came to mind was, teach your children, you know, the deuteronistic stuff around, teach your children this stuff and the interconnected to that, knowing some, I mean, I'm not a not a Hebrew scholar. I'm just going with the pieces, the gleanings that I've had as a good pastor over the years who's read my Bible and tried to preach this stuff to people, if, if that was formulated a little more or even tightened during the exile experience of the people of Israel, and then the last one was like the aging generation. And again, I think I'm connecting all these things to exile, but, I'm wondering if even there's other percolations within the story of the Hebrew Bible that sort of says, as a people of faith, within the big story of God, we've been here before, in a variety of different settings. So I wonder if you could throw down in your Hebrew Bible Professor ways, and just sort of give us that maybe those percolations of hope that come from knowing that, hey, you know, people have been here before. People of faith have been here before, and here's where they came.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
I mean, I think there's that's, that's a great question. I think there's one way of looking at the Hebrew Bible, and I would continue it into the New Testament as well, because there's never a time, or rarely a time, let's put this there's rarely a time when everything's so settled that you never have to worry about things again. And at the point where that happens, you begin to get arrogant, and then things go wrong, you know. So they, you know, say, with under the monarchy, there is lots, I mean, kings like to think they've got it figured out, and so they can rule, and everything will be hunky dory, and their power will be assured. And then they get arrogant, and they start thinking that they're actually the whole show and again and again in the Hebrew Bible, God has a message for kings, often delivered by a prophet, that says, actually, you're not in charge. You need to remember that you're not God. It's like, you know, not you, and I'm in charge. I'm God, so you need to learn to hold your power lightly, and then you need to remember that same thing about teacher children, that the law was actually there for your instruction. So it's not an accident in Deuteronomy, that the law of the king is not actually all the details of holding power the law of the king is, you will read the law that is the king's main responsibility. In the law code of Deuteronomy is in Deuteronomy, 17, what the law, what the king needs to do is hold the law close to their heart, because the law in that sense, in the Hebrew Bible sense, the law is God's gift for how the people of God live out what it means to be the people of God. So when people, and particularly kings, people in power, are most tempted to do this, and in the New Testament era, it was absolutely the Roman Empire, but it was also the leaders of the Jewish community with they were trying to cooperate with the Romans, which, on one level, politically smart don't get the Romans chopping your heads off. That's not a good idea. But any holding on to power is often fatal to listening to God. And so whether it's Old Testament, New Testament, the listening to God has to come first. And when one does that, then the institutions that you know, you have to set up temples and monarchies and village structures, etc, all of those need to be in the service of being God's people. Listening to God, following Jesus would be the New Testament metaphor for that, because nothing is, in fact, ever going to stay the same, that you are going to be living in a world, certainly in the ancient world, where empires come and go. And the little peoples and the little states that are under those empires are going to be impacted by those empires, and going to have to always make decisions on how do we survive and whatever, and if we put our own understandings of power under that Imperial section, you know Imperial reality, we're going to be tempted to forget God and think that we can figure it out on our own, and God comes along and says, Nope, you're not going to be able to figure it out on your own. And in fact, if you go down that path, and this is really the case study, really is Jeremiah, because the monarchy in Jeremiah's time was kind of hell bent on ignoring God's word and trying to figure out how they were going to, you know, negotiate the incredibly complex Imperial politics of the day. And Jeremiah keeps standing up saying, No, you gotta listen to God. No, you gotta listen to God. And the Kings keep saying, no, no, no, no. We got this figured out. God's on our side. Don't worry about it. We got it figured out. And then the whole thing comes crashing down because they weren't listening to God. That was only one moment - that was the most abrupt change, but that was certainly change all of a sudden, literally crashing down on top of you. And then the elites are carried into exile. The poor people stay on the land trying to, you know, farm the land for their new masters, which happen to be Babylonians, for a while. But even after that point, so after the exile, they are returned by the Persian Empire, I might say, returned to Jerusalem. But that does not become heaven on earth. That becomes just another context where they need to keep listening to God and so the next, you know, so they kind of start coming back to Jerusalem 500 or so, and but the next 500 years are constant change. Are constant “you have got to keep listening to God”, because every time you turn around, something is changing. But you can still be God's people if you keep listening to God. And so you have the stories of people like an Esther, who is trying to survive as a Jewish people in a context which is terribly dangerous for Jews, and she finds a way to be faithful and then basically saves her people. And the phrase there, you know you are the right person for such a time as this, that's a phrase I think we need to remember, because it automatically indicates for such a time as this might be a different time than what's going to happen two years from now that's going to be its own such a time as this. And I said it, and I preached at Knox College last week that you know, to the students “so you're preparing for a church that's very different than the church was even 20 years ago”. And if you're you know, program at Knox or VST or PC college is good. And I think most of the they are, they're trying to prepare you for a church that's different than the one you might have experienced before. But it's equally true that the church 20 years from now is not going to be the church you're confronting today. So and I think throughout the Hebrew Bible, and I would say the New Testament, if read with the proper with good interpretive principles that is not looking for. What do we establish for all time in all places, but rather, how do the people of God keep adapting? How do they keep following God? How do they keep listening? How do they keep being sensitive to the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives? Which is what Jesus promises us, you will have a comforter that is going to accompany you. I will always be with you. That if we actually trust that, then every moment when we're confronted with something new or a different decision or change or whatever, it doesn't depend on what we were in the past to respond. It depends on how are we following God now? And that we actually trust that the Spirit is in the room with us, that Jesus is praying for us, that that Jesus is still leading the way, and that trust means that, literally, we could be ready for anything, because if you're not, you're not going to survive. So there's some little nugget of biblical wisdom for you.
[John Borthwick]
I love it. I love it. Yes, absolutely. Well, maybe for such a time as this, since. You use that expression. It's one of my favorites, you've referenced hope and possibility, the narratives of hope and possibility a few times, I don't want to put you in any spot to share anything you know outside of school that you may be aware of being the moderator, because I'm sure you're aware of some things that not all of us are in the Ministry Forum Podcast are aware of, but we're looking forward to hearing in some iteration over the coming months. But for such a time as this from what you've gleaned, maybe, if you want to locate it solely in the workshops you've had and the material you've come out with, or what you've been sort of picking up along the way, what's your hope for? The narratives of hope and possibility for our denomination for such a time as this?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
I don't, I haven't read that. What even the draft of the final report yet? I know it's going to Assembly Council, which is meeting this week, and I haven't read it, just I didn't have time, so I can't tell you anything about what they're reporting because I haven't read the thing, and it's just a draft that. So I really only can talk from the experience in the workshops, which is really my thing to do. I did deliberately did not - I was not on the committee was not on the working group. Didn't want to be, didn't I mean, that would have been like, nope, too much. I got my own things to do as well as I think the my doing these workshops as an independent voice was, I think, very useful, although we coordinated, but it's like parallel paths that are in coordination with each other, and so when I would do a workshop, I always got good feedback from the workshop. I would save it, but I'd also send it to the working group. So Jean Morris got all of the feedback from the small groups, because that, I think, has been helpful for them, what's out there, like on the ground in the churches, and that was very important for them to know. So I have no idea what they're reporting. I do know their mandate, so that was, you know, read that from the General Assembly was to deal with all levels of the church, so local congregations, Presbyteries, Synods and the national church, the national office. And I was not trying to do that. My workshops were necessarily focused on local congregations and maybe Presbyteries, because I was always trying. When I gathered these workshops together, I always encourage and most of them were This, however, many churches and local presbytery or a couple of Presbyteries wanted to gather together for the workshop. So what I can see from the workshops is very similar. So what I was talking about, you know, getting enough of a center of gravity together, I think is one of the gleanings of the workshops. There are absolutely a number of congregations out there that are terribly discouraged and very frightened about what their future is going to be. They're wary of whether somebody's going to come along and force them to shut down. But even besides that, I think they know, even if an outside force doesn't do that their own folks are going to get to the point where they're too old and too tired and too small, and of those things, the too tired may be the one that does us in there does in a particular congregation. Because if you think about the volunteer base of a congregation, a healthy congregation will have quite a few volunteers in leadership of one kind or another, and that volunteer base will be across different ages and different groups and different people. But when a congregation gets too small, the volunteer base becomes the same six people doing everything, and that's just a recipe for stress and exhaustion, and that, in my experience, is where a congregation, regardless of the outside forces, the congregation gets to a point that says we are too tired to continue so and I think there are congregations that either see that already or are very afraid that that's soon in their future, and I think they're being realistic, that that is in fact, and that they can't just say, well, it's not helpful to say, “well, if we only had a youth group”, because you may not have the wherewithal to have a youth group. So there is definitely out there in the church, and I've you know, in the workshops that I've done, I've seen that and listened empathetically, compassionately to people express that. I have also, however, seen that there are a lot of initiatives out there. There are some congregations that are absolutely thriving. There are congregations that are enlivening one little piece of ministry that may, in some cases, be a legacy, maybe from before a COVID time, but they're trying it in a new way and realizing, Oh, this still works, or we can change it this way and that way, and it's still a good thing to do. So there are lots of sprouts and seedlings searching for metaphors here. Sprouts and seedlings of new possibility innovations. Let's just try something if it doesn't work, we'll try something else. So I'm not by no means hopeless about the future of the church. However, what I said about the fact I think the church will look very different 20 years from now than it does today, is going to be absolutely the case, but that church, 20 years from now might actually have a lot of vitality. I think it will be smaller in the terms of fewer congregations, but the congregations that are there might be quite lively and quite engaged with their communities and quite interested in doing mission and good worship and music or, you know, kind of whatever is the kinds of expression of the life of Christ in their midst that they're wanting to pursue. The other thing, I think, is absolutely the case. None of that is going to look like anything else that there could be lots and lots and lots of different ways to be church, lots of different ways to be faithful to the call of Christ, lots of different ways to do mission in today's world that there absolutely we do not need to think that there is one solution that fits everyone, and that's then circling back to the need to be flexible and to realize that no matter what, no matter what confronts us or the changes that we need to take on, if we stay connected to God and listening to God and trusting the spirit, trusting that Jesus walks with us, we can do all things through the one who strengthens us, and that is going to be our best hope, is actually coming back to be a church that trusts its Lord and trusting God, following Jesus, the comfort and challenge of the Holy Spirit is what is going to be needed to move us into the future. And that is not a future we're going to be able to predict. It's going to be a future that is particular to different contexts, but in those contexts, amazing ministry can get done. And so I'm very hopeful about the future of the church, as long as people are realizing it ain't going to look anything like what it is now, and it ain't going to look like anything like what it used to look like. Why would we expect that?
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, it's almost like similar to what you were talking about were maybe around power, a little bit with power. So what comes along with power sometimes is, you know, the financial stability, membership stability, growth and things like that. And I think many of the people in the church, and what was formulated in the for the church, say, from the 1950s into the early 2000s perhaps, was a sense of like, this is how you do church. And so all of our structures were designed to serve that kind of model. You know, I've known with no do disrespect to the Presbyterian Church in Canada there is a sense, because I hear it from people in congregations who say, you know, a church that's vacant. Well, there's 20 of you who come to this, this building every Sunday. It's not vacant. Yeah, when we don't have a minute, we're not a real church. We don't have a minister, we don't have this and yeah. And so when, when we fixate on all those things that are the definitions, there's sort of a sense of like, all that's been broken open. Maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe, I think there's some good people, like Dr Stuart McDonald, who would say this has been breaking open for a very long time. We just took a long time to to actually hear it, to listen to God. We just weren't listening. We were thinking, Oh no, it's going to change like because when I started, when I started in ministry in the late 90s, we were talking then about, the church is losing its Christian memory. You know, people don't people are losing their Christian memory. But in my time in in ministry, I couldn't use those words now, there is no Christian memory that doesn't exist in the same way, and even the people in the church. So the thing I used to use in the in the congregation that I served the longest was the ladies parlor. It was, it was called the ladies parlor, and I used to every so often I'd be sitting in that room and some of these naughty, naughty elders of the church decided that we would have wine and cheese in that sacred room, parlor, exactly. And it would be mostly women of the church at a Bible study or at a book club or something like that. And every so often it would just come to mind. And I'd be like, when they would talk about change and the way the church was, and I'm like, friends, we are sitting in the ladies parlor drinking wine, and you all are wearing pants and no hats and gloves and nothing like this. Like can you imagine if your grandparents or even your parents were in this space right now? This would not be the appropriate way to be in this church or in this building, and so change has been happening all along. We just don't always pay attention to it. As we wrap up, Pat this episode, we hope to release on April 1, which is a special day in the PCC, not only because it's April Fool's Day. It's that wonderful day when moderators get told, or future moderators get told, “hey, giddy up, it's you”. So I'm confident that you've marked this day on your calendar quite intensely as the day that your life was transformed, but also as the day when all this ends, begins to end, and is insight. Yes, the end is the end is nigh. So any advice for the new moderator, if they're listening, any thoughts you'd want to share, even for the church, of how to care for a moderator or support or encourage a moderator in their roles? Yeah, you've said that as a moderator, you've felt like you're carrying the whole the whole PCC is your congregation, so that's a lot to carry. How would you Yeah, would you both encourage a new moderator and encourage the church to take to look out for their moderator?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Yeah, I guess I mean, kind of picking up on some ideas. We said earlier, be ready for anything, it's going to be probably at least a little different than you expect. I think the impact of the working group of on Narratives of Hope and Possibility will impact the moderatorial ship of the next several years. So be ready to work with that. I think is important. But the other thing is to know absolutely you are not doing this alone. So I mean, that impression where, you know, I feel like, oh my god, I have the burden of the whole church, that's it's absolutely not. I mean, you do, there are structures that actually help the moderator tremendously. The General Assembly office is incredibly helpful, as are other folks at the national staff offices, and then there is just so much good will in the church for the moderator and the role that they play, and so many good people welcoming you when you visit and setting up lovely meet and greets, and you know, receptions and conversations, and it's just you are not alone in the work you have to do. You are well supported by lovely people who really, really want to hear what the moderator has to say, but also are really there to support what the moderator does. It's a peculiarly Presbyterian thing, but the church still recognizes that moderators are playing a role, and that it's kind of good to support them, and, in fact, kind of delightful to support them.
[John Borthwick]
So I guess that, yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Pat. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you were hoping I would?
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
No, I think we have talked about the kinds of things that, in my mind have been actually a nice kind of review of the year, which is kind of nice that it kind of falls at this point, because I'm, you know, three quarters of the way through the year, and it's nice to have a moment to reflect on it. So I want to thank you for inviting me to Ministry Forum.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, thanks, Pat. And enjoy your time in the Maritimes. I've, I've had the pleasure of being down there for the Senate of the Atlantic provinces a couple of times now, just a great, beautiful community of people serving in varieties of different situations. And certainly, hospitality is key.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Yes, you'll be well, I'm looking forward to lobster. Yeah. I don't even know if it's lobster season, but I'm looking forward to it anyway.
[John Borthwick]
I'm sure they'll find some kind of lobster for the moderator. They've been saving it all year for you all year, right? Yeah, who knows? Who knows? Pat. Thank you so much for everything you do in the church and all the spaces you've turned up to throughout your calling in life, and we're delighted that you are our moderator of the 149th General Assembly. And you know, on a personal note, I'm I'm also happy the way in which you've fully demonstrated being a servant of the church, servant of Christ, in the in everything that you've done. I'm grateful that you also have it. You'll also be invited into a season of laying that down or resting from that, and I'm sure you'll pick up many other things, but still resting from this piece and this season of ministry in your life, such a gift you've been to the church. So thank you.
[Patricia Dutcher-Walls]
Thank you so much for the Ministry Forum and this chance to have a good conversation. Take care. Awesome.
[John Borthwick]
Awesome.
[John Borthwick]
Thanks for joining us today on the Ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology, and our team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues tell someone, please don't keep us a secret, and of course, please subscribe, rate and leave a review in the places you listen to podcasts, your feedback helps us reach more ministry leaders just like you. And honestly, it reminds us that we're not alone either. And don't forget to follow us on social media at ministry forum, on all of our channels. You can visit our website at ministry forum.ca, for more resources keeping up with upcoming events and ways to connect with our growing community.
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