Goodbye From Catherine

Catherine Pate has been an integral part of our worshipping community since our beginnings.

She has most recently served as our music director - but she has always been more than that - a pastor, preacher, co-planter, a voice for deep inclusion and deep grace, as well as being a key leader on our vision team. 

Her strong and prophetic voice around racism and sexism and corruption in the cultures and hierarchy in the church (see also  #ACCToo) has come at deep personal cost and loss of livelihood.

Below, Catherine shares her reasons for stepping back from the (institutional) church - and this afternoon, perhaps appropriately on good shepherd Sunday - with regret and grief, we send her along with all our of love.

"May God guide you through the wilderness

and protect you through the storm

may God bring you home rejoicing

at the wonders God has shown you 

may God bring you home rejoicing

once again into our doors"

(from Celtic Daily Prayer, Northumbria Community, alt.)

* * *

Dear community,

Sunday, April 21 is my last Sunday serving as music coordinator for AbbeyChurch--a role I assumed in October 2022. Please know that I'm not severing ties with the people of AbbeyChurch or Emmaus, but you likely won't see me around worship nearly as much. Rob asked me to write about as much or as little of the story of my parting as I am comfortable sharing with you.

I've served the church, in paid and volunteer capacities, more or less ever since I was a teenager (I am now approaching my mid-50s). Since I was 25, until quite recently, I have understood myself to be a church leader - someone called to exercise their baptismal covenant at least as much inside the institutional church as outside. I have been a youth pastor, a musician, a church planter, a preacher, a communications director and program director, a board member, and even a magazine editor. But the truth is, this ministry has come at a high price. 

I have, more than once, been seriously let down and hurt by the church I have loved my whole life. Sometimes the injury has been inflicted by its dealings with me, and sometimes it has been in observing its dealings with others; some of whom I call dear friends. All of them, like me, I have no doubt tried to be faithful but have been left feeling betrayed and deeply wounded. 

For many years now, it's been a challenge to reconcile the calling from within with the reluctance I have to serve an institution that has caused me such pain; an institution I believe is destined to die, so it can once again live. Please read this clearly - I am not speaking of Emmaus or AbbeyChurch specifically. I have found a safe and generous home here for almost eight years. I have made good and I hope (and pray) lifelong friends here. 

But, I'm stretched in too many directions, I'm tired, and quite frankly, I'm still hurt. This has meant I no longer feel I have the wherewithal to offer a preacher or song leader's voice and corporate worship is filled with a burden of ambivalence God has yet to lift for me.

So, for now, I need to stop trying. I need to rest. I need to create enough distance from the institutional church to remember what God is calling me to do and to be and where God can use me best.

In the meantime, I am still here, to be part of the church in the world. So come meet me there, and I will try to do the same.

Blessings as you continue to nurture all that is good about this beautiful little community of sinners and saints.