Four years ago, as this parish was making a challenging transition to calling a new rector, a remarkable gift was sent by God. That gift was Chris Wittrock. Good Shepherd was seeking a new parish administrator, and Chris was one of the applicants. As the newly-called rector, I was invited to be part of the interviews for candidates, and it became quite clear to me after meeting with Chris that she was the right person for the job. Not only was she abundantly qualified, but she was deeply interested in Good Shepherd and seemed to have a real heart for ministry. That ended up being an understatement!
Part of my deep affection for Chris as a person stems from our shared experienced in ministry. Chris came into the parish administrator position just as Good Shepherd was trying to find a new lease on life, after years of struggles and turnover in staff. Chris was handed a job description that included almost everything you can imagine! She was staring down significant deferred maintenance on our property. But working closely with me and other staff, Chris weathered all these challenges with enormous grace and aplomb.
Because Chris has engaged in ministry so quietly and effectively, it might be easy to overlook all that she has done in her four years as parish administrator. Working closely with Don McCown, our Rector’s Warden, she has helped us stabilize the care of our vast amount of buildings and property. She has patiently stuck with us as we moved the parish office first from the Choir Room (where it was located before I arrived) to the first floor of the retreat house and then to the second floor and now to its original location in the Parish House. When Chris was hired, we had no vision yet for a retreat house, but when we discerned that God was calling us to open one, Chris was fully on board. She and her husband, Bob, participated in campus cleanup days and painting days in the retreat house, and they’ve recently graciously donated a new refrigerator to our retreat house. Chris and Bob are truly generous people, and I can only begin to enumerate the ways in which Good Shepherd has benefited from their gracious spirit.
In short, Chris has all the right gifts we’ve needed over the past four years to enable ministry to expand and flourish at Good Shepherd. While Chris’s many gifts made this possible by God’s grace, Chris’s own personal faith and love of Christ allowed everything she did here to shine with love and care. Chris and I frequently laugh at moments in ministry early on in our time here. In those moments, perhaps things were not quite so funny, but in hindsight, we can rejoice that we endured rocky moments for the sake of the Gospel. I really don’t know what I would have done as rector without Chris’s can-do, entrepreneurial spirit.
This Sunday, after Sung Mass, we will celebrate Chris’s time with us before she and her husband, Bob, relocate to upstate New York. Our new parish administrator, Renee Barrick, began work this past week, and Chris will continue to work with her and train her in the coming week. (We will officially welcome Renee on Sunday, June 23 after Sung Mass.) Chris and Bob are also staying in the retreat house for a few more weeks before their move to New York, so, they aren’t leaving the area quite yet! But after Mass on Sunday, we will officially thank Chris for her dedicated and faithful service to the life of this parish. I know that Chris and Bob will remain Friends of Good Shepherd, and I’m grateful for that.
Sunday is also Trinity Sunday, a Principal Feast of the Church. It’s fitting that we honor Chris on Trinity Sunday, because an encounter with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inevitably brings us to an encounter with God’s mission in the world. God the Father has sent his Son into the world for its salvation, and the Son has breathed the Spirit upon the Church for her to be sent into the world. To worship a Triune God is to be implicated and incorporated into God’s mission. Appropriately, this Sunday, as we recognize Chris’s enormous contributions to life at Good Shepherd, we will send her and Bob into the next phase of their lives with our blessing and love. I will look forward to seeing you at Mass on Sunday!
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle