Our first Sunday together was 12 January 2025, almost exactly one year ago. Anniversaries like this always render me reflective, a reality exacerbated by the installation celebration you have planned for me (and us) this coming Sunday, 11 January 2026.
There’s a song by the group The Pretenders called “Mystery Achievement.” In it, songwriter and bandleader Chrissie Hynde sings “every day, every nighttime I find / mystery achievement / you’re on my mind / and every day, every nighttime I feel / mystery achievement you’re so unreal.”
Like a lot of songs, there is some debate about what the lyrics actually mean, but most agree that Hynde is singing about her success in the music industry. She has worked and worked and finally achieved a good deal of success, but there is a kind of disconnect between the two. It’s like a mystery achievement. Lots of musicians work just as hard and never achieve success like she did; lots work nowhere near as hard and achieve success much more easily. How can anyone explain it? Hynde doesn’t try, though she admits it weighs “on [her] mind” and feels “so unreal.”
Pastoring with Community Baptist Church feels a bit like a “mystery achievement” to me in that way. Here I am granted a great deal of freedom to be myself, to explore ministry creatively, and to discover together what the future of “the church” might become.” While I have worked hard over the years, I know others in ministry who have worked harder or longer and yet have never found partners where these things are true. Likewise, I know others in ministry who seem to have stumbled into them with far less effort and in far shorter time investments.
But the reality of this “mystery achievement” is “on my mind” “every day, every nighttime.” And I at times do “feel… [it’s] so unreal.” I am deeply grateful. I want to be worth it. I want to feel like my place is earned. I want to take the “mystery” out of the “achievement” so there is less wonder and more certainty that I belong.
But maybe in the end this is all just a metaphor for grace, the ultimate “mystery achievement.” We try to earn grace and take its mystery away too, but when we do, what we’ve chased down isn’t grace after all.
So in sitting with gratitude this season, I will be trying to silence that response of the “try harder imposter syndrome instinct” and instead simply trust that the “mystery achievement” means someone else thinks I’m worth it — and that is enough.
Thanks for a year of love and grace, and here’s too many more,
Pastor Michael