2026-10-07
Brooke Strong
What are we installing?
Thursday, October 8, 2026
The Federated Church of Chagrin Falls
This Sunday, I will be installed as Pastor and Teacher of the Federated Church of Chagrin Falls.
Which raises a perfectly reasonable question: Haven’t you already been our pastor for five months?
Yes.
Federated called me to serve as your Senior Pastor this spring. I accepted that call, and since May we have already been doing ministry together. We have worshiped and prayed, celebrated and grieved, visited hospital rooms, gathered around tables, welcomed new members, wrestled with Scripture, dreamed about our future, and begun learning what it means to belong to one another.
So what exactly are we doing this Sunday?
An installation is not an ordination. It does not give me some new spiritual authority or suddenly make me your pastor.
An installation is a covenant.
It is a moment when a pastor, a congregation, and the wider Church gather together and publicly make promises about the ministry we have been called to share. That distinction matters.
One of the themes we have been exploring together over these past several months is that Church is not primarily something we attend. It is something we are becoming.
We have talked about the ekklesia—people gathered together. We have wondered what happens when ordinary lives and ordinary gifts become bound together into something larger than any one of us. We have asked what kind of body we are becoming.
Sunday, we make some promises about that body.
I will promise to proclaim the Gospel, teach the way of Jesus, care for this congregation, work for justice, peace, and mercy, and welcome all to Christ’s Table.
But then something important happens.
You will make promises, too.
You will promise to participate in the ministries of this church with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service. You will promise to pray for me and with me, and together to seek God’s voice and God’s will for us in our time. And representatives of the wider Church will promise to walk alongside us in our shared ministry.
Perhaps that is what an installation really installs. Not a pastor into a position, but a people more deeply into covenant.
Our Conference Minister, the Rev. Dr. Dave Long-Higgins, will preach this Sunday from Romans 12:9–21. His sermon is titled Sharing the Hum of Love. The Apostle Paul describes a community in which love becomes something people can actually experience: loving genuinely, practicing hospitality, sharing one another's joys and sorrows, living peaceably, refusing revenge, and overcoming evil with good.
Maybe that is the hum. Not a single voice makes it. Not one pastor owns it. But it emerges when many different lives begin learning to move together in love.
Sunday does not begin our ministry together. That ministry has already begun. But Sunday gives us a chance to stop, listen for the hum, and say together:
Yes. This is the ministry we have entered.
These are the promises we intend to keep.
This is the people we are becoming.
I hope you will come and make those promises with me.
Read Before Sunday
Romans 12:9–21
Questions for Reflection
- What does it mean to belong to a church—not simply to attend one?
- What promises do you think a pastor and congregation should make to one another?
- What might the “hum of love” sound like in the ordinary life of Federated Church?
I look forward to making these promises with you this Sunday.
In Covenant Together,
Pastor Michael
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