You know what it feels like when your carefully laid plans fall apart. Perhaps you’ve watched your best efforts collapse, twisted and slumped like clay on a potter’s wheel that refused to hold its shape.
This community has experienced disappointment with leadership transitions, pandemic disruptions, and the steady decline of mainline Protestantism, a trend that no amount of determination could entirely prevent. Yet standing at this crossroads, staring at what feels like failure, you discover something potters have always known: the spoiled vessel isn’t garbage, it’s potential.
Professional potters refer to that collapsed clay as “reclaim,” and it represents something precious—the raw materials for whatever comes next. You learn that every handmade vessel likely contains pieces of several failed attempts, each disappointment transformed into something beautiful and new.
The trick isn’t to dwell on what went wrong or to blame yourself for the collapse. The trick is to learn from the past while moving quickly beyond the sting of failure, working the clay in your hands until it’s ready to become something you haven’t even dreamed of yet.
“The moment of failure is very often the moment of disappointment is usually the last thing that happens before the emergence of something beautiful and new.”
Today, you stand with 160 years of successes and failures behind you, commitments to justice and welcome before you, and resources many communities could only dream about. Most importantly, you have each other—faithful people who have chosen this community at this moment in time.
You cannot change what has happened, but you can reclaim it, turning these raw materials into something creative, brave, and visionary. And as you leave your thumbprint on wet clay, you pledge to be collaborators in creativity with God, making together whatever beautiful thing comes next.
