Doing the Work, Trusting the Process
Reflections on the Ministry of Deacon Susan Lindberg Haley
This speech was delivered on June 14, 2026 by Congregation President David Dwiggins at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, North Easton, Mass. on the occasion of Deacon Susan Lindberg Haley’s final day as transition minister.
Over the past two years, we’ve spent a lot of time together asking questions.
Who is Holy Trinity? What is Holy Trinity? Where did we come from? What do we want to be in the future? What path will we follow to get there, and where will the resources come from?
Guiding us through all of this has been our Transitional Minister, Deacon Susan Lindberg Haley. I hope I got that right. I’ve repeatedly made the mistake of calling her our “Interim Minister,” and she has not been shy about correcting me. And for good reason.
Interim implies temporary coverage. A seat filler for a period of time. But the job Deacon Susan was asked to do was more than that. As Transition Minister, she was asked to help us ask the hard questions, and to come to consensus on answers. She was there to help us move from who we were to who we will become.
In fact, one of the lasting results of that work is the mission statement we adopted together:
“God calls Holy Trinity to follow the example of Jesus, acting boldly to build community with diverse people and to nurture creation.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about transitional leadership lately, and found myself reading about one person in particular. You may know him as played by Charlton Heston in the 1950s, or by Val Kilmer as a cartoon in the 1990s. Obviously, I’m talking about Moses.
Moses somehow got talked into leading a large, anxious, opinionated group of people through a prolonged period of uncertainty and change. Which is pretty much the job description for a Transition Minister.
He led the Israelites out of Egypt, through plagues, across the Red Sea, and toward a new future. And almost immediately the people started complaining:
- No water.
- Wrong water.
- No food.
- The wrong food.
- Leadership concerns.
- Governance disputes.
- Strategic planning disagreements.
At one point they were ready to scrap the entire leadership team and head back where they started.
At another point, they sent Moses away on a six-week mountaintop leadership retreat with God. He spent most of his time drafting blueprints for a portable worship space with really fancy curtains. (Seriously, if you plow through all of Exodus, parts of it reads like The Complete Idiot’s Guide to High Church Fashion and Decor.) Anyway, Moses comes down the mountain thinking he’s got everything figured out, only to discover the people holding a dance party around a golden cow.
Reading these stories, you begin to realize that all of these little crises are really orbiting around a much larger challenge. The water isn’t the main problem. The manna isn’t the main problem. The golden calf isn’t even necessarily the main problem.
The real challenge is helping a group of people become a community. Helping them learn how to live together. How to trust one another. How to share responsibility. How to settle disputes. How to listen for God’s voice. How to imagine a future they can’t quite see yet.
And that’s where this starts to connect back to the work of Deacon Susan. Because one of the things she has helped us understand over the last two years is that transition isn’t simply about waiting for the next pastor to arrive. It’s about preparing ourselves for what comes next.
Like Moses, she has spent a fair amount of time helping us think about structures, systems, leadership, and how decisions get made.
There’s a moment in Exodus where Moses’ father-in-law shows up and basically says, “You are going to wear yourself out. You need some help.” And together they create a new system of shared leadership and delegated responsibility.
That part of Exodus may not be as exciting as the burning bush or the plagues or the parting of the Red Sea or the pillars of fire by day and cloud by night, but it turns out to be important. Because healthy communities don’t run on good intentions alone. They require people who are willing to listen, serve, lead, and share responsibility.
Over the last two years, Deacon Susan has consistently called us to “do the work” and “trust the process.”
- She guided us through the CAT survey process and the sometimes passionate and uncomfortable conversations that followed.
- She encouraged us to listen carefully to one another in open forums, council meetings, and countless informal discussions.
- She challenged us to think honestly about who we are as a congregation and who God is calling us to become.
- She reminded us that church is not simply a building or a Sunday morning social club, but a community bound together by God’s love.
- And she repeatedly pointed us outward — to our neighbors, to the wider community, and to those who are too often left on the margins.
Through her preaching, teaching, and day-to-day ministry, she kept bringing us back to the same challenge: listen deeply, ask hard questions, act boldly, and remember that every person is a beloved child of God, equally valued and gifted for service in the wider community.
She challenged us to think not only about the people already sitting in these pews on Sundays, but about the people who aren’t here yet.
And she encouraged us to celebrate the true diversity of God’s creation, embracing the different skills, abilities, backgrounds, and experiences that each person brings to our shared life together.
As grueling as this process has sometimes seemed, it has paid off. We’ve adopted a mission statement that gives us a clearer sense of who we are and where we’re headed. We’ve committed ourselves to a Season of Discernment and Mission Revitalization that challenges us to engage honestly with questions of leadership, sustainability, and ministry. And we’ve continued to strengthen ministries that reflect the values Deacon Susan has consistently called us toward.
- Our feeding ministry with Father Bill’s and Mainspring, which prepares lunches and dinners for people experiencing homelessness and housing instability in the greater Brockton area.
- Our commitment to being a Reconciling in Christ congregation that publicly celebrates the diversity of God’s creation and embraces people exactly as they are.
- Our Red Rose campaign, which recognizes the anonymous African-American composers of many of the spirituals we sing in worship and directs those gifts as a form of reparations to support music education through Brockton’s Rose Conservatory.
- Our Green Team, which regularly challenges us to think about creation care, environmental justice, and our responsibility as stewards of God’s world.
- Our commitment to being a welcoming home for community organizations, including Bristol Trinity Episcopal Church, the Delta Community Center, Scouts, Drama Kids, recovery groups, and many others who share life with us in this building.
- Our Advent and Lenten Supper Church programs, which have encouraged us to experiment with new forms of gathering, learning, and worship.
While many of these ministries predate Deacon Susan’s arrival, her voice has helped us better articulate why they matter and how they fit into the larger story of who we are becoming. She has challenged us not simply to maintain programs, but to understand how those ministries express our calling to build community, pursue justice, extend welcome, and serve our neighbors.
Like Moses, Deacon Susan has worked to take a bunch of people headed in a bunch of different directions and help them move, however imperfectly, toward a shared vision and common purpose. In her language, toward a glimpse of God’s Kin-dom here on earth.
Of course, Moses never got to see all the results of his work. He had to be content with a glimpse of what the future might hold. His people moved forward into a new and uncertain chapter, and he was left to trust that they had learned something from the journey. That’s a little bit how transitional ministry works. You walk away hoping that the people you’ve worked with so diligently will continue the work you’ve been pushing, pulling, and prodding them to do.
And now, as we welcome a new pastor and begin a new chapter in our life together, we do so stronger, wiser, and more prepared than we were when this journey began.
Not because we’ve solved every problem. Not because we’ve finally stopped complaining. (Let’s not get carried away!) But because we’ve done important work together.
We’ve begun the process of working through our leadership challenges, our confusion, our fears and doubts, and our reluctance to let go of the past.
We emerge from this transition period with a better understanding of the work we need to do and the resources needed to do it. And that’s due in no small part to the persistence of Deacon Susan, who kept bringing us back to the hard questions and insisting that we engage them honestly.
So, Deacon Susan, on behalf of the faith community of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, thank you.
Thank you for your preaching.
Thank you for your leadership.
Thank you for your perseverance.
Thank you for challenging us when we needed to be challenged.
Thank you for encouraging us when we needed encouragement.
Thank you for helping us listen more carefully for God’s voice and imagine more boldly the future God is calling us toward.
And thank you for walking with us through this part of the journey.
May God bless you in whatever comes next, and may we honor your ministry by continuing the work you helped begin.
May it be so. To God be the glory. Amen.