Institutional Grief

by Peggy Haymes. Pinnacle Associate

As others left the sanctuary, I sat back in my pew, eyes closed. That’s my favorite way to listen to music in church, letting the music surround me with no other distractions.

The postlude is one of my favorites, a traditional organ piece for the postlude on the Sunday before or after Thanksgiving. While I could never play it, I know the notes by heart.

To my surprise, this time my eyes started filling with tears.

It’s not just a favorite congregational piece; it was also the traditional recessional played at my seminary when we had big events like the opening convocation. Hearing the music on this day, I was suddenly transported to my seminary chapel as the faculty and administration were recessing, walking past me in their (mostly) dark robes and colorful hoods.

It was a small seminary community in a small town. In my mind’s eye I saw the professors whose classes I’d taken. I saw the professors whose families were part of the church on the seminary campus, as was I. We sang together in the church choir. I led their daughters in mission groups.

I saw professors who challenged me and pushed me, professors who blessed and encouraged me. I saw my childhood pastor who later became my seminary president.

My eyes filled with tears, because some of them are no longer with us on this earth. My eyes also filled with tears because my beloved seminary community is also gone. When the Southern Baptist convention began splitting, my seminary was one of the first institutional casualties. It still exists, but is a different place now.

I don’t know why the grief hit me on that day. I graduated from seminary in the mid-eighties. But that’s the way of grief, isn’t it? It takes us by surprise and startles us with its power.

Institutional grief is real.

We tell ourselves that an institution is but brick and mortar, but it’s more than that. It may be a community that raised us and shaped us. It may be an integral part of our past. We may have assumed, with every good reason, that it was going to be an integral part of our future.

This is not about where you are on the theological spectrum. It’s about the loss of a community with whom your life and your calling was interwoven.

As churches close, people are grieving the loss of a familiar pew. Not because they had ownership of it, but because they knew how the world looked from that place, how the sun came through the windows and who you could see in the choir. Such familiarity is comforting when one’s life feels turned upside down.

As churches close, people are grieving the loss of familiar connections, being able to sit next to the person who knows your son died as a teenager. Or that your husband is in a care facility. There’s so much less explaining to do in a familiar community, far fewer traumas to review.

As congregations struggle, argue and split, congregations and clergy alike feel the loss of it. Right now, United Methodist clergy are in the thick of it. District Superintendents have had to step into the midst of churches that are angry and hurting, and to do it over and over again. Pastors and staff are grieving the loss of the institution in which they'd committed to their calling, now and in the future. Sometimes they are grieving a parting of the ways when the church’s vote doesn't match their own hearts.

If you are in this situation, in any of these situations… allow yourself to grieve. You are not weird, less than faithful or overindulgent to do so.

You are a human being experiencing loss.

At Pinnacle, we’ve been growing our resources for dealing with loss. If we can help you, please feel free to contact me.

Grief ignored doesn’t go away. Like a closet crammed with too much stuff, it eventually overflows.

Even when you're grieving an institution.