An Election Lament

Today is election day. Never in my life have I been more happy to see an election come to an end. Instead of feeling patriotic and proud to participate in the election of our government leaders, I cast my vote with clenched teeth, angry and disappointed at what the process has become and wishing that I could cast a vote of “no confidence” in the whole lot.

Living With a Perfect God

There seem to be many competing images of God in the world today; a loving father, a benevolent master, a strict tyrant, a demanding ideologue, holy perfection and many, many more. Ultimately, our image of God is reflected in our own life. We see it in our expectations, in the way we treat others and in the way we think about ourselves. Changing the way we understand God can change almost everything about life.

Fullness of Time

Some days it feels like I’m supposed to be a cheerleader at a funeral.

Some days it feels like I am doing hospice work

with a patient who is unaware of their own impending death.

Holy Shit

At the end of July I developed two of my previous posts on lamenting (Lament and The Lost Art of Lament) into a sermon. As part of the sermon I invited people to write down their laments on a piece of paper that was photocopied to look like a brick. The staff at church and I assembled the bricks into a “wailing wall” that is displayed at the entrance to our worship space.

I sat down at my desk the following Tuesday and began reading through all the laments that were emptied out onto the paper bricks in worship on that Sunday morning. There were laments about the state of our nation and the political process. There were laments about the civility of our society, random violence and even specific examples taken from the news. There were laments about the aging process, health concerns, illness, broken relationships, and personal failures. And of course, there were laments about the death.

When I finished reading the laments I sat quietly for a time marveling at the resiliency of the human spirit.

The Lost Art of Lamenting

The help we need to get through an emotionally difficult time doesn’t come from people who are not suffering. It comes from the people who know the same kind of suffering and who are willing to suffer with us. When we lament together as a community we admit that we are vulnerable and, at the same time, discover that we are not alone in our pain. That discovery often gives us the strength to work through the grief and help others cope as well.

Lament

As I return to my writing after a month-long sabbatical I am struck by the events of this summer, and especially this past weekend, that have left us shaking our heads and wondering, “Why?” From the seemingly every day tragedies reported on the news shows to the extreme cases like the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the events surrounding the Penn State football program, and the disappearance of two young girls in a neighboring community we are faced with the various ways evil manifests itself in our life. Such a constant barrage of bad news leaves us in a precarious emotional state searching for some way to respond.

A Still Small Voice

There is a voice in my head that I believe is the voice of God. (See my previous two posts: The Voiceof God and Not My Voice.) One of the reasons I believe that it’s God’s voice and not my own internal monologue is that I can’t control it. I can’t will it to tell me something I want to know. I can’t even will it to speak to me at all.

Not My Voice

At first I was hesitant to believe that this voice I heard in my head was the actually God speaking to me. I’m still not one-hundred percent certain about it. At the time, there was only one way to find out if it was or if it wasn’t God speaking to me. So I started to listen.

The Voice of God

Trusting God implies that we know what God wants us to do. That’s not always so clear and it’s not hard to find different interpretations from different people. Where is that clear voice that speaks from another realm like it did for the people in the Bible?

Church Politics

Anyone who is actively involved in a congregation quickly learns about church politics. Nobody likes them but it seems impossible to do anything without running into them. As in most institutions, politics in the church does more to hamper good ideas than to help them get done.

I had been called into the senior pastor’s office to meet with the president of the congregation.

“It appears that we didn’t follow the rules to the letter when we called the special meeting,” the president said. “Nobody put the notice in the local paper.”

It had been four days since the meeting and we knew that there were people who were upset about the decision to buy a new house to serve as the parsonage. The house was located adjacent to the church property and the owner, a member of the congregation, was giving us an unbelievable deal. The house was in better shape than the current parsonage and it made sense to own the property right next to the church. The people who had been at the meeting approved the proposal to purchase the property by a margin of 60-40.

But another member, who also had property adjacent to the church, was upset by the decision because he had plans to offer the same kind of deal to the church when he retired in a few years. After the meeting he went home and combed through a copy of the church constitution and found the loophole he was looking for. The church council had made the proposal and notified the congregation of the meeting two weeks in advance by newsletter and in the weekly Sunday bulletin. But nobody was aware of the by-law requiring special congregational meeting notices to be published in the local paper. The decision made at the meeting, therefore, was null and void and the disgruntled member was threatening legal action if the congregation went ahead with the purchase.

While in seminary one of my professors had worked in a steel mill as an electrician’s assistant when he was a student. He said it was important to know how the power was designed to flow through the wires. But he said that the electricity didn’t always flow the way it was designed to flow. “It’s more important,” he said, “to know how the power really flows. It’s the same in congregations.”

I am a process person. I believe that a good decision making process helps everyone get involved and is transparent to anyone who has questions about how a decision is made. A lot of my work as a pastor has been to clarify and improve these processes. Nothing frustrates me as much as when a process is agreed upon and then decisions get made outside of that process.

An elderly colleague told me early in my ministry, “A German congregation will argue tooth and nail before a decision is made but then they will all go along with it. A Scandinavian congregation will go along with a proposal until a decision is made, then they will argue tooth and nail about it in the parking lot.”

I grew up in a congregation where the former was the rule but I’ve worked in congregations where the latter is the way business is done. It’s a recipe for hair-pulling exasperation. I’m always embarrassed when someone asks me who they need to talk to when they need a decision to be made. Do I send them to the person/s that is designated by our agreed upon policies or do I send them to the person/s who will ultimately make the decision? (These are often different people.) Do I pretend that the process makes a difference or should I just be honest about the way business is done?

It has been my experience in the Lutheran church that decision making processes that are outlined in constitutions and by-laws are not reflective of the way that decisions are really made. Talking to colleagues, I see this to be true of most congregations not just the ones that I’ve served. People often refer to this as “church politics” and it has the ability to suck the life and energy out of an otherwise vibrant ministry. Unfortunately it’s what occupies the energies of too many congregations.

In the end the congregational council had to declare the vote at that special meeting to be  invalid. The person who owned the property withdrew the offer, not wanting to create more contention within the congregation. The member who was upset had tipped his hand to his intentions and basically ruined his chances of selling his property to the church. The congregation missed an opportunity to upgrade its property and ended up spending money to repair the existing parsonage. Nobody came out a winner.

Spiritual Authority?

How do you think of your pastor/s? Do you want them to be spiritual experts that tell you what you should believe and how you should believe it? Or do you want them to help you see connections between faith and life that you might be missing on your own? Do you want someone who is an authority or someone who sometimes struggles with faith and belief and is honest about it?

I came into ordained ministry with the idea that I would be the spiritual authority for the people I served. I had been through four years of post-graduate studies and had promised to uphold the theology and doctrine of the Lutheran church. Furthermore, I found that people came to me looking for spiritual advice and many were willing to accept what I told them as absolute truth without another thought.

What I found out was that there are a whole bunch of people who know a whole lot more about life and are more acquainted with the Bible than I was. Whenever I sat down at a Bible study there was always someone who had spent more time reading the Bible than I had. Whenever I applied lessons from the Bible to daily life, there was someone present who had experienced more of life’s ups and downs than I could imagine.  

It was hard not to feel like an imposter. I was in my late twenties and had just started a family and a career. How could I even begin to talk about the relationship between faith and life? What could I tell people in their fifties or eighties that they didn’t already know deep inside themselves? I wondered how long would it take before people noticed that I wasn’t the expert that they expected me to be.

This is the tension and dilemma that I live with most days. I am trained and called to lead a community as an expert while at the same time I am certain that I am no more an expert on the ways of faith and life than anyone else. Yet every time someone asks, “What I am supposed to believe about                                   ?” I’m reminded that I am expected to be that expert.

My natural impulse in the face of this dilemma was to become even more of a spiritual expert. I didn’t want people to think that I wasn’t qualified to be their spiritual leader. Instead I wanted them to think that I was able to provide something they didn’t have. I wanted them to turn to me when they were in need of spiritual care and guidance. So in my spare time I read more theology books and attended leadership conferences. I spoke with certainty and confidence in my sermons and classes even though I didn’t feel that way inside.

That I would do this based on the fear of being discovered as a charlatan should be a clue that it is not a good impulse. Whenever I hold myself up as an expert in faith and life I sustain the notion that a spiritual life is a complicated endeavor filled with indecipherable theological thoughts and language. I also give the false impression that there is one, right way to think about God, faith and our relationship with the world. And because many people believe that what happens to them after they die depends on making sure they have that one, right way figured out (even though I was telling them it does not) I was likely adding to their anxiety at some level.

 

When religious belief is tied to communal identity it is important to believe the same thing as everyone else in the community. This is the way religion has been for ages. But up to this point in history personal identity has been tied community. Today we live in a world that is increasingly individualistic and identity is found in things other than community. (This has been a long and gradual change in the Western world but now accelerating and becoming a global shift in the way we understand who we are.) Therefore what it means to be a spiritual authority has to change as well. At best I can share with someone what I believe to be true and perhaps help them discover what it is that they believe. This is a very different than trying to be an expert.

These days I find myself straddling the line between being an the expert in faith that many people expect in a pastor, and trying to be more like a spiritual partner and guide to those who are trying to travel their own faith journey. I find a greater sense of peace surrounding those people who look to me as a partner and resource in their journey than in those who want me to be an expert. Maybe that’s because of my own place of comfort or maybe they really are more at peace. I don’t know for sure.

And that is a phrase that I am trying to become more comfortable with every day.

Soloing

Do we all crave the attention that comes with being great at something? Does everyone have the desire to step out on stage and solo? Or do we simply think “my way is the best way” and long for a chance to prove it?

After serving in my first call for three years I was eligible to receive a call to another congregation. I wasn’t in a hurry to move to a new church but I started getting phone calls from other congregations asking if I would be interested in interviewing to fill a vacancy. I was also recruited to undergo an assessment to determine whether or not I would be a good candidate to start a mission church from scratch or to lead a small congregation in a rebuilding effort. Both of these requests required that I fill out denominational mobility papers describing my ministry style and experience which, in turn, brought more requests for interviews.

Many people believe that church work is like the corporate world. They think that pastors start out as associates or at small churches and then work their way up to a medium sized church as a solo pastor. Eventually they move on to a larger congregation as a senior pastor. To be honest, that is the path many pastors follow. Fortunately I enjoyed my work and my colleague and didn’t feel compelled to move. So I did some interviews when a particular call intrigued me but never really felt called to any of them.

It was somewhat of a surprise in my fifth year of ordained ministry when my colleague and senior pastor called me into his office and told me that he had accepted a call to a congregation in another state. Many people in the parish I served assumed that I would become the senior pastor but there were two things that stood in the way of that transition: The church governing body prefers that this kind of “promotion” doesn’t happen and, after talking things over with Amy, I felt that I wasn’t called to be the senior pastor of the parish. Instead, I would serve as the only pastor while the parish looked for a new senior pastor.

Doing the work of two pastors was difficult. That year I presided at 14 weddings and 23 funerals instead of doing only half of those. The parish scaled back to three worship services every weekend and they invited pastors from nearby towns to fill in one Saturday evening service each month. I doubled the amount of time I was in the car driving to hospitals and doing visits since there was no one to split these duties with.

But in some ways the job was easier. The buck stopped at my desk now. I was responsible for the day to day running of the parish and didn’t need to consult with someone else. There was a certain amount of freedom to shape my ministry the way I believed was right for me and for the parish. It was also a relief from the hard work of doing joint ministry with a team of pastors. While I was (and still am) committed to the benefits of shared ministry it can be a frustrating and fatiguing endeavor. Having a year to be a solo pastor while the parish searched for a new senior pastor was a great experience.

What I discovered about the church and about myself in that year of solo ministry is that congregations tend to be shaped by whatever pastor or team of pastors is leading them. They tend to take on the personality of the pastoral leadership. I also learned that this is the exact opposite of what I believe should be the case. I believe that a congregation should define their ministry and seek a pastor that can help them do that ministry. at one point in the year I even mentioned this in a sermon, pointing out that it seemed the congregation only participated in programs as long as the pastor pushed them. But when the pastor left there didn’t seem to be any interest in continuing the program. Someone actually told me, “It’s nice to see someone finally figure it out.”

In the years since this discovery I have become more convinced that congregations relinquish this responsibility to their pastors who willingly accept it as their own. Congregations are thus shaped in the image of their pastor. Sometimes this is referred to as the pastor’s “vision” for the congregation. But no matter how well intentioned a pastor is, it’s difficult not to structure things in such a way as to ensure that the power to shape a community is retained in the office of the pastor. Pastors working together with congregations in a healthy, mutual ministry is not as common as those in the church would like to think.

Having a year as a solo pastor opened my eyes to see the way this works in my own life. I have no doubt that I could be a senior pastor or lead my own church. And I like to think that I would do a good job. But I can also see the ways in which I would arrange things for my own benefit and I’m not interested in leading a congregation just to prove that I can do it.

Learning to Preach

We all try to fall into a groove where life becomes more manageable and we can be comfortable. But then something happens to move us out of that comfort zone and we have the opportunity to learn and grow. When that happens we are faced with a choice: Do I return to the old way as soon as possible or do I take a risk and open myself to a new way of being in the world?

At the three-point parish where I started ordained ministry, the senior pastor and I presided at four worship services every week. One of us would lead worship at the two churches in town on Sunday morning. The other would be at the Saturday evening worship in town and then drive to the country church on Sunday morning.  We would do this for a month and then trade. This rotation meant that I had to write and deliver a sermon every week. Most associate pastors don’t get to preach that often or even close to it. Since I enjoy preaching it was a great opportunity to do something I felt I was good at. The frequency also helped me get better.

Coming out of seminary I worked hard to craft each sermon, carefully choosing phrases and editing my words until they were just right (or until I ran out of time and couldn’t work on them anymore). Having put all that time into them I would print them out on the dot-matrix printer connected to my computer, double spacing them so that I could easily read from my manuscript as I stood in the pulpit. I would rehearse by reading through a sermon two or three times before worship, making sure I was able to look up from my text and make eye contact with the congregation. This, I was told in preaching class, made it more personal for the people in the pews. At the end of the first service I would greet the worshipers at the back of the church, pack my bible, sermon, and whatever else I needed into my briefcase and take it all with me to the next service.

If I was in town for the month the drive was just six blocks to the next church. If I was going to preach at the country church it was a beautiful, winding drive through the hills, valleys and farmland of western Wisconsin that took between 15 and 20 minutes. It was, of course, one of the days when I was at the country church that I arrived for worship and discovered that I had left my sermon manuscript sitting in the pulpit after the Saturday evening worship.

I dug through my briefcase one more time hoping that it would miraculously appear. Looking at the clock I did the math with the sickening realization that I didn’t have time to run back into town and retrieve my sermon. It occurred to me that I could send someone from the congregation into town but there was no guarantee that they would be back when it was time for the sermon. I either had to explain to the congregation what had happened and tell them there would be no sermon that day, or I would have to preach from memory. I chose to risk the embarrassment of preaching from memory, possibly forgetting part of the sermon over the embarrassment of admitting that I was unprepared.

When it was time for the sermon, instead of stepping up into the pulpit, I descended to the floor in front of the congregation. In that old, country church the pulpit was a raised platform that jutted out from the front wall above the congregation. Whenever I stood in the pulpit my feet were at eye level with the worshipers sitting in the pews. The architectural design was meant to be impressive and authoritative. Stepping down to be at the level of those in worship had a very different feel; definitely more casual but more intimate too. Instead of being someone who stood over them I was standing among them. I realized the symbolism and significance of that gesture immediately.

As I preached that day without manuscript or notes I discovered a sense of freedom. I had been using my manuscript as a crutch. I knew what I was preaching but was too worried about the exact way in which I said things. I knew the points I wanted to make and the illustrations that I had chosen to make those points. I had been telling stories by memory for years and a sermon is simply a story of how we understand something written in the Bible. By stepping away from the manuscript I sounded more like myself. Preaching became a personal thing, a way of sharing what I understood about the text, faith and life.

The encouragement I received after the service caught me off guard. The sermon I preached was not as concise as my regular sermons with a manuscript, but it seemed to have struck a chord with those in worship that day. Sheepishly, I admitted the real reason behind the change in preaching style while in my mind I committed myself to making the change a permanent one.

Noted media professor Marshall McLuhan said that “the medium is the message.” Preaching a sermon from the heart, without notes, sends a message to the listener beyond the meaning of the words. For me it meant more work rehearsing what I wanted to say. It also brought a change to the way I prepared sermons. I no longer spend time fretting over exact wording in front of a computer screen. Instead, I spend time listening to the words that come out of my mouth, wondering how I would hear it if I were sitting in the congregation.

Had I never left that manuscript in town I might never have discovered the style of preaching that works so well for me. In the years since then I have continued to experiment with that style, searching for my voice in a world that is ever changing.

Speaking for Others

A colleague once pointed out to me that pastors speak to the congregation as the voice of God in sermons and we speak to God as the voice of the congregation in liturgy and prayers. I still fight within myself to do these things with any sense of honesty and integrity.

“Pastor, would you mind giving the blessing?”

“Pastor, could you open our meeting with a prayer?”

“Pastor, when you go to the hospital can you stop and have a prayer with               ?”

At first it feels like an honor. People turn to me for something they want and it feels good to be of service. I am valued and looked up to. People wait for me to say something to God, to ask for something from God and I like it. It’s what people expect a pastor to do. It’s what I’ve been trained to do. And it doesn’t seem to be that hard. At first.

There are Psalms and prayers written in the little books that pastors keep in their pockets. There are prayers for blessing a house, for losing a job, for relocating, for people who are sick, people who are dying, people who are getting married or divorced or having a child or just about anything else a person can experience in this life. All I have to do is find the right page and insert the person’s name in the blank as I read it.

But sometimes this doesn’t work. These specifically generic prayers don’t quite speak to the exact issues at hand so I begin to develop my own prayers. I learn to ad-lib. Good sounding petitions get repeated and before long I have a list full of phrases that can be mixed and matched to sound like fresh prayers straight from the heart. This, by and large, seems to work. It might not be completely genuine but it becomes my “style” of praying.

I begin to wonder though, “Why am I the only one who prays out loud in a group setting?” I’m aware that my prayers reveal one perspective; my own. Where is the voice of elderly wisdom? Who is giving voice to the feminine viewpoint? How can I speak the grief of someone who’s child or spouse has died when I’ve never experienced that? I can ask God to be with and bless these people but how can I ever truly be their voice?

It seems right to let others pray too. But when I ask for a volunteer to pray on behalf of a group that is gathered, there is a moment where it feels like I’ve requested a volunteer for a suicide mission. The problem with public prayer is that it is extremely self-revealing. When we pray out loud other people get a glimpse into our soul, into our most personal and private beliefs. When we pray in front of others we risk exposing our deepest doubts, fears, longings and joys. And the truth is, we don’t like being exposed like that in public.

I realize that as a pastor I’ve learned how to hide behind the prayers I say in front of other people. I’ve learned how to construct prayers that are theologically correct but not true expressions of my own feelings. I’ve learned how to create formulaic prayers that sound good to the ear but never speak to the heart. I’ve learned how to pray with bold confidence but have never been willing to pray with the uncertainty that lurks below the surface.

What would that be like?

What if a pastor stood before God and spoke out loud the uncertainty of faith; the doubt, the wonder, the speculation, the hope and the disappointment of the congregation? How would it be received? How would it change the pastoral role in the community of faith? Would it make things better? Is it even possible?

Thin Places

There are places and times when we feel a deeper connection to all of life; past, present and future. I was once told that the Irish call them “thin places.” Births, deaths and ritualized transitions like weddings and baptisms often bring us to those thin places where we experience pain, wonder, hope and joy all at the same time. As a pastor I have had the privilege to be present when families invite me to be with them in these sacred moments.

The first memorial service I ever did for someone was at the request of the deceased’s girlfriend. When I sat down with her to talk about the service I learned that her boyfriend died in a car accident while running from the police because he was on parole and there were drugs in the car. He was on parole after serving time for setting a local church on fire to hide a robbery. When I finished the service I thought that was the strangest funeral I could ever imagine.

Not even close.

The next one was for an elderly man whose grown daughter had Down’s Syndrome. Her brother had wrapped their dad’s ashes in a gift box so as not to upset his sister. Instead, she thought the present was for her birthday and she spent most of the service begging to open it and throwing a fit when her brother wouldn’t let her.

Another time I was asked by one of three sons to preside at his dad’s funeral. About half-way through the service, at the conclusion of the sermon, the eldest brother stood up and said, “Dad didn’t believe in this bullshit but he loved his beer. We’re takin’ this celebration down to the bar.” And they did.

At another funeral the cement vault wouldn’t go all the way into the grave. The funeral directors and I spent 15 minutes jumping up and down on the vault to get it to settle below the surface after the family had gone back to the church for lunch.

And it would have been nice if someone had told me that when a person dies it doesn’t always happen like it does on TV and in the movies. Involuntary muscle contractions sometimes cause the lungs to gasp for air for up to two minutes after death. Nobody wants to hear the grown man in the clerical collar scream like a little girl in the peaceful and solemn moments after grandma passes away.

I’ve presided at weddings where the rings were left in another room and more at more than one where the Unity Candle wouldn’t light or ring bearers and flower girls refused to walk into the church. At one wedding, the bride looked at me during the vows and I thought she was going to run. At an outdoor ceremony the Unity Sand was missing so the bride’s aunt walked to the parking lot to retrieve it and then tried to sneak it into place behind me during the service while everyone watched what she was doing instead of paying attention to the couple as they said their vows.

I have seen grandparents act like paparazzi, standing in front of the congregation with cameras flashing to capture the exact moment when a grandchild is baptized. I’ve seen parents of baptized infants stand like stone statues while an older child distracts everyone, exploring the front of the church.

You might think that these are not sacred thin places but they are. We long for moments when we experience the eternal. But even when things go exactly as planned we still bring our humanity with us into those moments. Sometimes our fear and insecurity cause us to balk in the presence of the eternal. Sometimes our excitement and joy can’t be contained. But most of the time it’s simply because we are human and we have no choice but to bring our humanity into these thin places.

The fact that our human foibles can’t ruin these thin places makes me think that perhaps there are way more of them than we realize. Maybe we encounter thin places every day and we just miss them because we are too caught up in the drama of the world around us.

What thin places have you experienced? Will you run into one today?

A World of Expectations

We are born into a world of expectations. People expect us to think and behave certain ways because of who they think we are. There are expectations based on our culture, our gender, our social status, financial status, educational level, age, occupation and religion. When we try to break out of these expectations and discover who we really are we can cause great distress for others.

Recently, in front of a large group I was asked what I disliked the most about being a pastor. My response? That I’m always a pastor wherever I go. People treat me differently because I am a pastor. Some treat me with more respect than they show other people and some treat me with less. Usually the only time people treat me like a regular person is when they don’t know I’m a pastor.

When I first started my life as an ordained pastor I tried to live up to all of the expectations. I dressed like a pastor, wearing shirts with clerical collars on Sundays and other official occasions like weddings and funerals or when I would visit homebound members. I was careful to not have a beer in public or to swear when something went terribly wrong. I worked hard to keep my emotions in check and appear to be in control at all times. As a brand new pastor I also made every effort to convince people that I knew everything there was to know about faith and theology.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I didn’t want to live like this, nor could I. People where getting to know Pastor Kevin but not me. Then one day I realized that God didn’t call Pastor Kevin to ministry but that God wanted Kevin. If God was okay with who I was and called me to ministry then it would be okay to be me and in ministry.

That’s when things started getting a lot harder.

It turns out that people don’t want their pastors to be ordinary people. They want their pastors to be shining examples of virtuous living and paragons of faith. And furthermore, they will go to great lengths to make sure you live up to those unrealistic expectations or they will make your life miserable.

One Sunday morning I was preaching a sermon about spiritual gifts teaching about the gift of Mercy. A person with the gift of Mercy has the ability to recognize when someone is hurting and is able to empathize with the hurting person and find ways to comfort them. Many people have this ability, including people who aren’t religious. As an example I told a story about another pastor I knew who was able to look out over her congregation during worship and identify those who were suffering. She would then quietly say something to them after the service or would be sure to call them the following week. I, on the other hand, do not have the gift of mercy. I tend to be oblivious to the signs and the depth of people’s pain. I shared that I was a envious of this other pastor’s ability but I believed that there were people in our own congregation who had that gift and God was calling them to use their gifts.

The following week I met an elderly woman who had been caring for her disabled husband for years as he continued to decline. By and large she seemed to be a rather timid person but on this particular day she attacked me with the tenacity of a mother tiger protecting her cubs.

“Don’t you ever say that you don’t have the gift of mercy,” she said,  wagging her finger at me. “Pastors are caregivers and if they aren’t then who can be? I don’t want to hear you talk like that ever again.”

At first I thought that she was afraid that I was being too hard on myself. As I tried to assure her that it was okay and that I had been given other spiritual gifts she interrupted.

“No! Don’t say that,” she pleaded. “You are a wonderful caregiver and have been great to my husband and me.”

That’s when I started to realize that she had to believe something that was not true about me in order to allow me to serve her. She couldn’t bear to think that she was getting less than the best care in the world.  It was the wrong time to correct her false image of me. But playing along meant that I wasn’t free to be the flawed person I am. It meant I couldn’t live in the truth of who I was.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident. I, and other pastors I know, are constantly bombarded with expectations to be someone or something we are not. Fighting those expectations takes energy that we would rather put into helping people. So too often, we take the path of least resistance and put up a façade and play along with the expectations until we either begin to believe them ourselves or until we are burned out. Either way it leads to a bad end.

Pastors aren’t the only ones caught up in a world of expectations. The only way out is to be honest with ourselves and live with integrity and openness until those who try to make us into something we are not face the issues within themselves that cause them to mold us in their image.

Two Themes

When we find ourselves struggling with something in life it’s both amazing and a little depressing to realize just how long we have been dealing with that issue. Two themes that I thought were recent developments in my ministry turned out to be present even before I was ordained.

My first call as an ordained pastor was to a parish of 800 members that was made up of three individual congregations that worked together. Two pastors served the congregations. (The Senior Pastor had been called to the parish just a month before I was interviewed. I was to be the Associate Pastor.) There were two churches in town, just six blocks apart from each other. The third congregation was located about seven miles from town  and was surrounded by dairy farms. Each congregation had their own budget and leadership councils. There was also a parish budget that each congregation contributed towards based on their membership as well as a parish council that had representatives from each church.

In the Lutheran church each congregation issues a call to a qualified pastor. This is done after a series of interviews. During the on-site interview I was given a tour of the town, was walked through the parsonage (church owned house) that would be our home, and was shown each of the three church buildings. The first church was the largest of the three and hosted the parish offices for the two pastors and the part-time secretaries. The second church I visited was the country congregation and the third that we visited was the church that owned the parsonage in which we would live.

At the country church I noticed a large portrait of a man and a woman in the fellowship hall. By their attire the portrait looked to be about twenty years old and I assumed that it was someone who had donated something significant to the congregation. At the third church we visited I noticed the same portrait hanging in an overflow area where it could be seen by all those who were in worship. But this time I wasn’t left to guess who it might be.

The 72 year-old man who was showing us around walked me right over to the portrait and said, “This is Pastor Urberg and his wife. He and his father served as pastors to this church and several others for 80 years. The parsonage was built the year he was born and he lived in it all his life except when he went to college and seminary. He was the mayor in town and the street outside is named after him. He died while still serving as pastor, just like his father, and his widow still attends church here. The last pastor we had didn’t think this picture should be hanging here. What do you think?”

At the time I knew that I was being tested. It was obvious. And I was aware that the test wasn’t about the former pastor or their loyalty to him. It was about whether I would accept them the way they were or if I would force them to become something else. I don’t recall my exact words but in my answer I tried to honor the tradition and the path that particular congregation had travelled. 

What I didn’t realize then was that this episode would introduce two themes that I have struggled with throughout my ordained ministry. First is the theme of tradition and legacy. As a pastor, I stand on the foundation of more than 4000 years of recorded thought, debate and reflection on the meaning and purpose of life. This accumulation has been passed on to me through ritualized tradition and theological education. The problem is that the rituals and the way of thinking about the essential Truth that is contained in the tradition are not as timeless as the Truth itself. New rituals and new ways of thinking about and expressing the Truth are needed in order for what is True to be passed on.

The second theme highlighted by this episode is my struggle with what it means to be a pastor. Pastors are servant leaders, which means a congregation has to take ownership for its own ministry. The congregation has to determine what its purpose is and how it will function in the wider world. Unfortunately, most congregations are willing to let the pastor decide. Charismatic personalities can grow large churches because they are able to convince people to follow their “vision.” But there is danger in letting one person, no matter how well-intentioned they are, define the identity and purpose of a whole community.

As I continue retracing my journey into ordained ministry these themes will loom ever larger in my thoughts to the point where they are of great concern to me today. Hopefully this task will take me closer to some kind of resolution or at least give me some insight about where to go next.

Approval

Is there anything harder in life than realizing your fate is in the hands of someone else? Whether it is an illness that can only be treated by skilled physicians or a jury that can vote you up or down, we all face times when we have done all that we can and then have to trust that someone else will do the right thing.

Every candidate for ordained ministry in my denomination has to be sponsored by one of the local synods of the church. (Synods are geographical groupings of churches in which a Bishop is given oversight to help them work together.) During my four years of seminary I met annually with two members of my Candidacy Committee. The meetings are meant to be encouraging and supportive, and they are in many respects, but it was also stressful. Knowing students who had been denied approval for ordination after four years of seminary and all the other requirements made the process that much more nerve-wracking.

Additionally, two members of the faculty would be brought in to meet with the student and the candidacy committee. Their job was to vouch for the academic success of the student. They asked probing theological questions about the connection between what we were learning in class and how we would apply that in ministry. In my case, the faculty members liked to play good cop, bad cop. One would ask convoluted questions about ministry that I could barely understand and the other (my academic advisor) would rephrase my convoluted answers so I actually sounded pretty good. I don’t know if this was everyone’s experience or if I simply had one good member of the faculty and one bad.

At the end of my time at the seminary I was faced with one last hurdle. I had to appear before the entire candidacy committee and the Bishop. The meeting took place at the Synod office and I was one of about four or five candidates that were being interviewed that day. Because it was a two hour drive to get there, I had arrived at the Synod office early. As I sat in the reception area and waited I thought about the way my entire future and everything I had worked for the past four years was in the hands of a roomful of people who barely knew me.

Forty minutes after she was scheduled to begin her interview, one of my fellow candidates came out of the conference room pale and sweating. She sat down and slumped with exhaustion. When I politely asked how it went she replied, “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever been through. Good luck!”

Yikes! That was not what I needed to hear. But it felt like I would be prying if I asked her anything else. So I nervously sat with her as the committee discussed her approval among themselves. In a few minutes she was invited back into the room to hear the verdict. All I could do was wait for my turn.

When the door to the conference room opened the Bishop quietly escorted her to the front doors of the office and spoke quietly to her. She nodded, turned and left the building. The Bishop then faced me and said, “Are you ready Kevin?”  and bounded across the room with his hand extended to welcome me.

Inside the conference room I was shown to a seat directly across from the Bishop on the long side of the table. The rest of the committee members were getting to their seats after bathroom breaks and coffee refills. The Bishop introduced everyone at the table and briefly outlined the procedure.

The first question came from the seminary faculty member on the committee. I kept my answer brief. If he wanted more he could ask a follow-up question but I wasn’t going to hang myself by talking at length. The second question came from a committee member I had never met. Something in my answer prompted the seminary professor to ask for clarification. As I felt myself beginning to sink under the waves of judgment, and before I could respond, the Bishop interrupted.

“Let’s cut to the chase. Kevin, we know we’re going to approve you for ordination. What we want to know is if you can serve in the same synod as your dad. I’d like to have you be a pastor here in this synod.”

“My dad and I get along well,” I said. “I think it would be best if I wasn’t in a neighboring town so I can develop my own style of ministry. But I know I would enjoy seeing him at synod assemblies and conferences.”

“Well then,” the Bishop continued, “I don’t see why we need to take up any more time with this. Why don’t you have a seat in the reception area while we make this official and we’ll call you back in here in a few minutes.”

And with that, I was approved for ordained ministry. I can’t describe the relief and elation that I felt. It had been a long journey from the first day I sensed the call. And it would be several more months before I would actually be ordained. There were a few hoops left to jump through but they were minor.

I can see the importance of having an approval process for ordained ministry. Not everyone who feels the call is right for the job. And I’ve personally heard the call to ministries that, in the end, I haven’t been chosen for.  I always try to see how my involvement in the process can be beneficial to me and also help those who are responsible for choosing the people to lead those ministries.  But nothing ever feels so good as having that sense of self validated, of having someone else say that they see in you what you hope is really there.

Something Completely Different

Some of the hardest things in life to see are the incongruities that we have been taught to overlook. Life is filled with actions, symbols and meanings that contradict the things we claim to believe. Becoming aware of these contradictions and resolving them can be both heart breaking and liberating.

The seminary is an accredited institution of higher learning. Pastors graduate with a Masters of Divinity degree but the seminary can also grant other Masters degrees as well as Doctorates. So in the spring of every year, those who have fulfilled all the necessary requirements get to participate in commencement exercises.

 My graduation from seminary took place at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis. Central is a huge, cathedral-like building with gothic architecture, ornate wooden carvings and magnificent acoustics. It’s a church building that was meant to inspire the worshiper and magnify the wonder of God. The seminary used the church for graduation ceremonies because it was one of the few churches in the area that could hold all the graduates, faculty and guests.

Because I played tuba in a brass ensemble that performed at graduation, I had been to the commencement ceremonies in the past. One of the traditions of the ensemble was to let the graduating seniors choose a song from the group’s repertoire that would be played as part of the prelude. As a tuba player I love John Philips Sousa marches and, since there were a couple in the collection of songs that we played, I requested “Liberty Bell March.”

When we got together to rehearse for graduation I was not surprised to be informed that my request had been turned down. I was, however, annoyed by the short, but stern rebuke from the campus pastor who sat next to me in the group and played baritone.

You see, Liberty Bell March is the theme song from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Most people don’t know it by name but when you hear it you immediately think of the irreverent comedy show. Someone on the worship planning team caught it and didn’t see the humor. Not only did my request get rejected but as a punishment I wasn’t allowed to make another request. I remember something being said about the seriousness of the occasion, apparent disrespect to my classmates and the whole seminary community, and disappointment that I would try such a prank.

I thought about playing dumb at that point but I didn’t really care.  It would have been so amazing and more than fitting, in my mind, to hear the strains of the Liberty Bell March echo through that august sanctuary right before my graduating class processed in. The only thing that would have made it even remotely better would have been to shout “And now for something completely different” immediately before we launched into the song.

To me this was more than a prank. It was a statement about everything I had been through in seminary. It was about the hoops and hurdles. It was about the seriousness with which the church and its leaders tend take themselves. It was a statement about the silliness of the whole commencement exercise compared to what we were being asked to do as pastors. It was about the incongruity of graduating in a building that was the showpiece of 19^th century, urban church architecture and the reality of being sent to serve in rural churches with cracked walls, crumbling foundations and mildew issues. It was about the sheer audacity to put on this show of pomp and circumstance highlighting our mastery of a theological education without the slightest hint of irony in claiming that we were going out to be servants.

There are other places where the symbols of master and servant clash in the church . The stoles that pastors wear over their robes represent the yoke of Christ and are a symbol of a servant. Clerical collars that peek out from under the same robes are modernized versions of the collars professors wore in centuries past to symbolize their authority and learning.  We are taught that these are symbols of the “office” of ministry so we overlook the way they contradict each other. But you can’t be both master and servant at the same time.

I am frustrated by the incongruities and the lack of clear vision within religious systems. And yet such uncertainty seems to hint at much greater liberty for individuals and communities than most of us expect. Opening our eyes to the contradictions between our personal (and corporate) actions and beliefs, being able to laugh about them in a forgiving way, and making adjustments to resolve them is the way towards peace.

A Prophetic Voice pt. 1

There are times when we think we are joking around but in reality we get glimpses of deeper truths.  Perhaps this is just a way for us to become aware of ideas that are too much for us handle at the time.  Returning to that deeper truth later can be less daunting because of the non-threatening way in which we were introduced to it.

My third year of seminary education was a year-long internship at a congregation in Marin County, California. Working full time in parish ministry I hit my stride and knew that all the hoops and hurdles of seminary that I had to go through were going to be worth it.

It was the winter of that internship year that I received a phone call from a young woman representing the Alumni Relations department at my college alma mater. They were putting together an Alumni Directory that would, they claimed, help graduates of the university to stay connected. It was, of course, a thinly disguised effort to collect information that the university could use for promotional and fund-raising purposes.

Four months earlier I had filled out a questionnaire for the directory and this was a follow-up call to make sure they had all the right information. She verified my address, the year I graduated, and my major. But when it came to my occupation, instead of telling me what I had written on the form she simply asked, “And what is your occupation?”

I smiled, remembering what I written on the card. I didn’t want to say that I was a student. I wasn’t a pastor yet either. I was serving as a pastor but I wouldn’t be ordained for another year-and-a-half. So on the blank line behind the word Occupation: I had written, “Prophet.”

It was a smart-alecky answer that I knew wouldn’t fit into any of the categories the university would publish publicly. There were no pictures of prophets in the catalogs or brochures the university sent to prospective students. When people think of prophets they conjure up images of street corner nut-jobs dressed in dirty clothes, pointing fingers, waving a Bible and making dire predictions about end-times through a megaphone. I had also hoped that this would lead someone in the alumni relations department to put me on a list of people who were unlikely to be a source of charitable revenue.

The young woman hesitantly asked me to spell it, as if she wasn’t sure she heard right. More likely she was concerned that she was on the line with one of those nut-job, college campus doomsayers who somehow managed to squeak out a degree between his lunatic rants in front of the library. “P-R-O-P-H-E-T,” I obligingly spelled out for her and then listened to concerned silence from her end of the line a thousand miles away.

Have you ever said something in a completely innocent way, goofing around actually, and when you hear it spoken out loud you become aware of the truth buried in the words?  That moment on the phone felt like one of those transparent moments in a Stephen King novel or an episode of the Twilight Zone when the main character makes a remark that will be taken to drastic extremes sometime in the near future with chilling effect. I remember having this vague thought that I was playing with fire.

Writing “Prophet” on the card that I had sent in didn’t seem like such a big deal. Saying out loud and it over the phone to someone made it more real. It took on a certain weight and seemed to actually materialize there in the world. A little voice inside my head asked, “What if it’s true?” I stopped pacing through the kitchen and realized that it might be true and not true at the same time. The seed of truth was there but it was not yet fully grown.

Today I am wondering if it’s time to revisit that premonition.  What would it look like to be a prophet in this day and age? What message would such a prophet bring? Is it possible to be a pastor and a prophet at the same time? Twenty years ago I wasn’t ready to wrestle with these questions. But the idea has been germinating for a while now and it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it once did.

A No Win Situation

    Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation in
    which there is no possible way to succeed. What
    are we supposed to learn from those experiences?
    To avoid them? To endure them? To make the best
    of them? Or is there another lesson lurking in the
    failure?

One of the hoops that I was required to jump through in seminary was a 10 week stint as a chaplain intern at a hospital. Clinical Pastoral Experience (CPE) was designed to introduce us to working with people who were sick and/or dying. But CPE was also used as a means to expose each intern to the personal issues within us as we ministered to people. In addition to meeting patients and serving their spiritual needs, six of us would meet with a full-time Chaplain to review our work. The goal, it seemed to me, was to have each intern break down and sob in front of the group so they could be lifted up and supported. Definitely not my learning style.

 I didn’t like being a chaplain. I didn’t like going into a room and asking if someone needed some kind of spiritual tending. I am extremely thankful for the men and women who do this kind of ministry every day in the military, at hospitals and at care centers. But for me it seems too impersonal. It’s spiritual care based on the model of medical care in our culture. Each component of a patient’s health (mental, physical and emotional/spiritual) is handled by different teams of experts that are each trying to fix what’s wrong with the patient. Maybe I didn’t understand what was really expected of me but it seemed like I was being asked to join in a team effort to treat what was wrong with each patient.

Feeling ill-equipped for this role I spent my days  doing the bare minimum to pass my CPE course. I would see the people who requested visits and chart anything I thought was significant to help the doctors. I would meet the new patients on my assigned floors. Then I would hide out in the medical library or a visitor’s lounge and write verbatims (word for word transcriptions of visits I did with patients) for my group of peers to pore over and critique.  

 I feel bad about hiding when so many people needed help but I was certain that a 10 minute chat with a seminary student wasn’t going to do much more than calm them down for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe that was enough for that moment but I could see they needed more. Most patients on my floors were dealing with life-threatening ailments like cancer, brain tumors, diabetes or emphysema. Whenever I entered a room I frequently sensed two competing expectations: One was the expectation that I was there to heal them. The second was that I would do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. What they wanted was a  quick fix. What they needed was a healing presence that lasted more than 10 minutes. Very often, what they needed was for someone to walk with them slowly through their suffering.

The trouble was that I wasn’t able to do either of these things.

I have seen the power of grace at work to calm and relieve an anxious heart instantly so I know that spiritual healing can come quickly. But all too often a carefully chosen quotation from the Bible can come across as trite and meaningless, especially to someone struggling with their faith. We tend to use Bible verses and theology like spiritual Band-Aids when the patient is hemorrhaging.  We want them to work like magic because we are just as uncomfortable in the presence of suffering as the person to whom we seek to give aid. While I was comfortable reading scripture to those who requested it, I didn’t have a go-to verse that miraculously set everything right.

Neither did I have the time to sit and chat about seemingly trivial matters and let the bonds of companionship grow. I know I can’t be all things to all people. But I met a lot of people who had no one in their lives who truly knew them. Sometimes it was because the person who did know them passed away. Sometimes it was because they were guarded and didn’t ever let anyone get to know them. Sometimes it was because they had been abandoned by family and friends for various reasons.  All I know is that I couldn’t give them the time and attention they needed to feel loved.

In CPE I was put in a situation where I was set up to fail. It was not possible for me to give people what they wanted the most and what, at some level, they needed the most.

I thought that parish ministry was the answer to that dilemma. In parish ministry I would be able to take the time to get to know people. But I am finding that the conditions that existed in CPE now exist in the congregation. The demands of my job restrict the time to truly connect with the 1300 people in my congregation or even a significant fraction of them. And while applying scriptural Band-Aids is all that many people seem to want; something to patch up their spiritual dis-ease, I don’t feel comfortable leaving it at that. I don’t believe faith is meant to work like that.

So is there some lesson that I’m missing in all of this? 

Hoops & Hurdles

One of the frustrating things on the road to achieving our goals is that there always seems to be some sort of requirement that needs to be fulfilled to satisfy someone else. While these requirements are often put in place with the best of intentions they can easily become bureaucratic hoops that take more time and energy to jump through than they are worth.

The report from the chair of the Evangelism Committee took less than a minute of the council’s time. “Most of the people in the neighborhood are either black or Indian, and they have their own churches they like to go to, so there isn’t much for the Evangelism Committee to do.”

I sat up in my seat, ready to take the chair of the Evangelism Committee to task for missing the whole point of evangelism. Besides, there was a less-than-subtle hint of racism buried in his observations. The pastor of the congregation, who was sitting next to me at the table, pressed his hand against my leg to get my attention. He silently mouthed the words, “Not now,” and shook his head ever so slightly. Reluctantly, I held my tongue.

For my Contextual Education class I had been assigned to an urban church on the north side of Minneapolis. It had thrived in the city expansion of the post-war 1950’s. But in the 1960’s and 70’s an exodus of people to the suburbs started a steady congregational decline. The people who moved into the neighborhood didn’t look or live like the affluent suburbanites that returned to their home church every Sunday morning. By the time I was assigned to the church in 1989, the beautiful sanctuary that was capable of seating over 400 people, regularly hosted about 60 every week. Most of the Sunday school rooms had been repurposed for special groups since only four of them were used for their intended purpose. The gymnasium echoed with emptiness every time I passed by in the hallway.

The point of contextual education is similar to teaching practicums for people who are studying to become teachers. Even though everyone has been in a classroom as a student, being the teacher is quite a different experience. Sitting in a pew every week and teaching a Sunday school class is different than being a pastor. Since the seminary is responsible for training qualified pastors, making sure that people know exactly what they are getting into is important. Contextual Education is the way to do that.

But Contextual Ed assumes that a person has never been on the business side of the church. For many people this is true. But some people came to seminary with years of experience in congregations. They were aware of the behind-the-scenes squabbles, the infighting and the politics of local congregations. They had years of teaching and leading experience. Yet they too were required to work with a church.

I was probably somewhere in between. I had experience with the inner workings of a congregations having spent so much time in churches. What I needed was experience leading the leaders. Leaving someone unchallenged when they were so clearly in the wrong about the church and about the people who lived in the neighborhood was not the kind of training I needed. This was a teaching moment for everyone at the table. It demonstrated the kind of thinking to which so many churches adhere. Unfortunately, the chance to inspect the speck in our own eye, so to speak, silently slipped by.

With any experience in life there is an opportunity to learn. I met some wonderful people in that congregation who were genuinely loving and worked in unofficial ways to reach out to the surrounding community. But there were some in my class who didn’t need Contextual Ed experience because they had it before they came to the seminary.

I will admit that some requirements for certification or graduation that felt like hoops at the time ended up being valuable learning experiences. I don’t always know what’s best for me at the time. But creating one-size-fits-all models of education can waste a lot of valuable time and energy as people find themselves jumping through hoops and fulfilling requirements that don’t teach what they are meant to teach. It’s simply a way of making it fair to everyone. Creating individual learning programs for students is more work for the educators but it is not impossible.

Maybe it’s time to stop putting hoops and hurdles in front of people and calling it faith development. Maybe we, as a church, need to find ways to let life teach its own lessons if we are willing to learn.

The Harrisville Incident

Have you ever made a mistake so grievous that you were certain you messed up your life forever? These kinds of mistakes can gauge our resolve in continuing along the path we feel called to follow.

It was one of those mornings. We had moved to St. Paul, Minnesota so that I could begin my seminary studies. The first course was a summer-long class to learn ancient Greek. I had made it through two-thirds of the course but was struggling with this last part. On this particular day I overslept and awoke with just enough time to throw on some sweats and a baseball cap and hurriedly walk to campus to get to class on time.

When I got to class the professor returned the quizzes we had taken the previous day. I looked at my score and thought to myself, “This is why I took the class pass/fail.” I had no trouble learning vocabulary but the syntax and grammar of the language stymied me. I was frustrated at my inability to do better no matter how hard I studied.

At the conclusion of class I debated over whether I should go home or attend the daily chapel service. I could return to my apartment, shower, dress and be back in time for my next class (a second helping of Greek) but the idea of going to chapel appealed to me too. Maybe I would find some peace there. Maybe God would speak to me through the music or the sermon so I wouldn’t feel like I was messing up my chance to be a pastor. The lure of holiness triumphed over cleanliness and I followed my classmates towards the chapel.

Sitting in the softly lit chapel I close my eyes and listen as the organist dances his fingers and toes across pedals and keys, piping out a new arrangement of a old hymn. I feel the stress of Greek class begin wash off of me and I’m glad that I came. It was the right choice.

A harsh voice from somewhere near me interrupts my meditation. I open my eyes to see an old, unfamiliar man one row ahead of me staring at me as if I had just insulted his wife. Two women in their mid-twenties stand  next to him.

“Excuse me?” I ask, not sure that I heard what I thought I heard..

“I said, ‘Take off that hat.’ Don’t you know where you are?”

I’m suddenly aware of the baseball hat that I threw on before leaving the apartment. I completely forgot that I was wearing it. Personally, I never understood why it was okay for women to wear hats in church but it was disrespectful for men to do so. The practice has more to do with cultural expectations than with spiritual guidelines. But I don’t want to cause anyone to be upset.

“Oh, thanks,” I say. “I’ll be sure to take it off before the service starts.”

He leans over the pew in front of me putting his hands on the back of the polished wood seat. “Take it off now or I’ll take it off for you.” His eyes began to bulge behind his wire rim glasses. His face was getting redder by the second.

“Who is this old man is and what he’s doing in chapel?” I wonder to myself.  I imagine he lives in the neighborhood and doesn’t have anything else to do on a summer day in August except come to the seminary and grouch at the state of pastors-in-training.

“Jeez. Don’t get you underwear in a bunch,” I tell him. I look him in the eye as slowly reach up to take off my hat and then place it carefully next to me on the pew. “I’ll take it off just for you. Have a seat and relax.”

I can honestly say that I’ve never seen anyone so apoplectic in all my life. He can barely contain himself. I look at the women standing next to him. I watch as their expressions change from fearful disbelief to insulted dignity. Who are these people and why are they bothering me? They sit down in front of me and I can tell they are fuming. I spend the duration of chapel looking at the backs of their heads, annoyed that they ruined whatever chance I had at finding some peace.

Following chapel I pick up a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and find a table where some of my classmates have gathered. I sit down and tell them about the crazy old man and this threats. I tell them what I said. When I see that he is sitting at a table across the cafeteria with the two women, I point him out.

“That’s Professor Harrisville,” someone at the table whispers. Now everyone at the table has that look of fearful disbelief that the women had in the chapel. “You said that to Harrisville?”

Professor Harrisville had a reputation of being one of the toughest professors at the seminary. It was then, and only then, that my Greek-fried brain connected the dots between an “old, white guy at a Lutheran seminary” and “Professor.” How could I have missed it? Now I understood the looks on the women’s faces. I was an idiot who had just shortened his career at the seminary by four years. It was over before it even began.

I wish I could finish this story by telling you that I faced my mistake and went to ask forgiveness. But I didn’t do that. I was certain that this incident would be the topic of discussion in the faculty lounge and that every professor would have their eyes on me. A phone call to my dad convinced me to stick it out for a year and see how things went. I spent that year, and the next, fastidiously avoiding Professor Harrisville. My third year I was away from campus on internship. By the time I returned for my senior year he had either forgotten the incident or didn’t realize that I was the impudent student who suggested that his crankiness was caused by wedged undergarments.

My unedited remarks to a stranger on a bad day made following the call to ordained ministry more difficult. Even though it felt like a monumental mistake at the time, it turned out to be mostly just an inconvenience. Finding the means to go forward, even in a cowardly fashion, was better than giving up.