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.

Detours

Following the path we believe God sets out for us doesn’t always take us straight where we think we are going. Sometimes we go a different way on our own and sometimes we are forced to take a detour we wouldn’t choose for ourselves.

I love physics and engineering. I am absolutely captivated by the way things work. But I’m really bad at math. I think in words instead of numbers; metaphors instead of symbols. So I naturally gravitated towards English as a major in college. Because I like to live in my head instead of the external world I added minors in philosophy and psychology. Having finally come to terms with my call to ordained ministry, this seemed like a pretty good education in preparation for seminary. What it wasn’t good for was finding a job right after college.

When my dad attended seminary I witnessed the difference between the second-career students and those who attended immediately after college. Those who had been out in the world of work and careers seemed to have a different perspective than those who had been in school their entire life. In addition to being more mature and world-wise, the second career students didn’t seem to get as caught up in the theory and theology. They seemed to be more connected to the people in the pews, so to speak; to know the side of life where church was a piece of, but not the whole, puzzle.

I decided that I wouldn’t go straight from college to seminary. I would take some time to work, to gain some “real-life” experience and to begin paying off some student loans before accruing some more. Additionally, Amy and I were getting married the summer after I graduated and she was taking classes for her Master’s Degree while working full time. My plan was to get a job in the publishing field or as a technical writer and work for a few years before going to the seminary.

The problem with the plan, I quickly found out as I began sending out resumes, is that companies don’t want technical writers with English degrees and a fascination with the way things work. They want engineers who can write well. And the publishing field wanted people with editing skills not someone who could talk about the nuances of a novel and its meaning.  This would have been great information to have prior to my graduation but I hadn’t even thought to look for it.

Two weeks prior to my wedding I was shopping for gifts for my groomsmen when I noticed a “Help Wanted” sign at a sporting goods store in the mall. I couldn’t bear the thought of getting married while being unemployed. No, that’s not completely honest. I couldn’t bear the thought of looking my father-in-law in the eye on my wedding day if I didn’t have a job. So I filled out an application, had an interview a week later, and began working as a stock boy exactly one week before I got married.

After the wedding I continued to look for a job that was worthy of a college graduate but I kept running into dead ends. The few interviews I got all ended with, “We’re really looking for someone with other qualifications.” Meanwhile, at the store, I was working 9-5 with weekends off and I could wear jeans to work and no tie. I unloaded trucks, organized the back stock and was responsible for inventory.

One day the district manager called me into the office to ask if I would be willing move out to the sales floor as an area manager. I accepted and began selling weight lifting and exercise equipment. I learned about the other departments and became a certified ski tech and a certified bowling ball technician. (That’s right. I have skills now.) Within a year I was promoted to Assistant Store Manager and transferred to a different store about an hour’s drive away. 

Working in retail management wasn’t part of my life’s plan. But it kept me out of a career where I would be working in a secluded cubicle and got me to interact with strangers on a regular basis. As a natural introvert I needed that experience. I learned management and motivational skills. I found out that people like choices but don’t want too many of them. (Next time you’re in Wal-Mart notice how they have lots of things but only a couple of choices for each item.)  I met con artists and thieves and I learned about the politics of business when the union went on strike. I learned to give people a chance to prove themselves when I hired them and I learned that some people will work harder to get out of working than if they had just done the job in the first place.

I eventually brought all these lessons with me when I started ordained ministry. And it’s a good thing because I’ve needed them all. Accepting and keeping that job in the sporting goods store was difficult and humbling for me. But in the end it proved to be exactly what I needed.

When Someone Trusts

It really is amazing what kind of growth happens when someone trusts us.

Sitting on the sparse grass and sandy soil just outside of Cedar Lodge the kickball rolled, bounced and arced its way around the circle. With each pass the name of the intended recipient was shouted.  “Brian!” “Scott!” “Darren!” “Chris!” “Scott!” “Chris!” “Mike!” “Rodney!” “Jonesy!” I keep track of who is getting the most passes and who is getting the least. I memorize the faces and try to burn the names into my memory. This is my tribe, my group, my cabin, my boys, my campers. We’ll be together for a week and the sooner we get to know each other’s names the better.

The ball keeps going back and forth across the circle faster and faster and I am suddenly aware that six sets of parents have just dropped off their pride and joy. Some were handed over with a gush of relief and the dream of getting home to a quiet house. Others reluctantly let go of their son’s hand and would loiter around the edge of the parking lot until we hiked off towards our cabin. They would come back on Saturday morning, six days from now, to eagerly embrace their child and listen to them recite everything that happened during the week.

Every summer during college I worked at a Bible camp in northeast Iowa. 500 acres of rocky, hilly, forested terrain in the middle of corn and hay fields provided a natural playground to hike, run, explore, swim and get out of a normal routine. We would read from the Bible, tell stories, sing songs around campfires, play flashlight tag after dark, make crafts, swim in the giant pool of freezing water and talk about God and creation. Other groups, with older kids, would go canoeing or backpacking away from the main camp. We would cook over an open fire, eat trail lunches and stop at the Canteen for an afternoon ice cream cone. For six days I was responsible for keeping this group of boys alive, healthy and having fun.

Sensing that a couple of the boys were getting tired of the game we stood up and started out for the cabins at the south end of the camp. Some, who had been to the camp in previous years, wanted to know if we were going to things they had done before. One wanted to know when we were going swimming. One wanted to know when he could start a fire. I make a mental note to keep that one busy and make sure the matches are always in my pocket.

When I was a kid I was dropped off at Bible camp myself so it seemed natural for a parent to leave their kid at camp for a week. As a 19-year-old counselor, now responsible for six young lives that were not my own, I wondered how they could do that. Why would a parent leave their kid with me, a complete stranger, for an entire week?  Why would someone trust me like that?

I remember being awestruck by that realization. As someone who has taken their own kids to camp I know how hard it is to drive away and trust them to a college-aged young adult who has never met them before. But I also know how much a child can grow in one short week and how it begins to prepare them to be independent one day.

Having people entrust me with the lives of their children helped prepare me for ordained ministry. In addition to the practice I get leading worship around a campfire or preparing a Bible study or listening as a lonely child lamented the fact they were with you and not at home I also learned what it was like to have someone trust me with one of their most precious possessions. Later, in ordained ministry, I was floored by the way people would trust me with the memory of a loved one’s life at a funeral. I was honored to be brought into families at holy and sacred moments like a birth or death, a baptism, a confirmation, a wedding or anniversary. I am still surprised that people entrust me to speak their fears and longings, their joys and sorrows in public prayers and worship.

When someone trusts me like that I never want to let them down. I know that sometimes I do and at other times I live up to the responsibility.

What completely amazes me, though, is the way that God trusts me with all of creation and with the life that has been given to me. When I forget that trust is a gift and only see it as a burden, well, that’s when I tend to fail. But when I recognize that something precious has been put in my hands and that I can help nurture and encourage it towards its’ intended purpose it humbles me and fills me with the joy I need to do a good job.

For those who have trusted me over the years, Thank You. 

An Ill-Equipped Leader

As I wrote in my last post, God used a cute blond co-ed to get me to walk through the doors of the Lutheran Campus ministry at Central Michigan University. After that I started attending on my own. I’m not sure why, other than the fact that I felt comfortable and at home in a church. The people who met on Wednesday night welcomed me into their group right away. I learned that the they traveled to lead worship in churches around the state one weekend every six or eight weeks. Those trips. like the Wednesday evening rehearsals, were completely organized and run by the students.

When I returned for my sophomore year I brought a used guitar I had picked up at a garage sale. I started learning the half dozen chords needed to play the songs that we sang and stood up front at rehearsals with the other guitar players. My playing wasn’t great but it was passable. At the end of that year the people who had been leading the group graduated and everyone gathered to elect new leaders. When I was chosen to lead the group I felt honored and a bit surprised.

Returning to school my junior year I found myself leading not only the student folk group but also the tuba section of the marching band. That gig had been handed to me by the previous section leader. I was excited about leading these groups because I loved being a part of them and I wanted to give back and support them. But I also felt ill-equipped to lead them.

Both groups were centered around music and both groups had members who were stronger musicians that me. I worried that someone would make an issue of that fact and point out that I wasn’t fit to lead.

The other reason I felt ill-equipped was because of my natural introversion. Leaders have to be in front of groups. They have to motivate and energize people to move in a desired direction. Leaders need to have really good social skills. As an introvert I prefer quiet reflection and developing strong relationships with a few people. While my passion for the groups that I lead naturally showed in what I did, sometimes my lack of social skills got in the way and caused all sorts of frustration for myself and for others.

It was also about this time that I started thinking again about being a pastor. That sense of call crept back into my mind as my peers began putting me into positions of leadership. Finding myself with the responsibilities of leadership, while at the same time feeling ill-equipped for the task, created a strange mixture of confidence and fear that continues to be with me to this day.

Learning to lead (and live) with this paranoid confidence has been the real work behind everything I have done as a pastor.  I’ve tried bluffing and bullying my way through certain issues. I’ve tried meditating and reminding myself constantly that God loves me the way that I am, telling myself to “do my best and God will do the rest.” I’ve tried delegating to others. I’ve read leadership books and journals. I’ve attended leadership conferences. So far, nothing has changed that swirling mass of mixed emotions that resides within me.

In the Bible there are many stories about people called to leadership who feel ill-equipped for the job, or at least they claim to be. The best, by far, is when Moses is called to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. Moses excuses himself by claiming that he’s not a good public speaker. The funny thing is, he tells this to God in one of the most eloquent and cleverly crafted speeches in the Bible. Then, throughout his time of leadership, Moses constantly struggles with his belief that he is ill-equipped for the job.

I wonder sometimes what the world and what the church would be like if every leader had this paranoid confidence and shared it openly. Would people still follow? Would it make for better leaders?

Returning to my sense of call meant entering into a place of discomfort and rarely feeling at ease with myself or what I needed to do. It meant that I would be discovering and rediscovering that the joy of being chosen is quickly overshadowed by the immensity of the task. And, as it turns out, it meant entering into a daily struggle between the awesomeness of being called to something bigger than myself and the dreadful realization that I will never quite be up to the challenge.

Reeled In

Even when I tried to ignore my call to ordained ministry and find another path I didn’t get very far before I found myself in church again. Fortunately, it didn’t take something as violent as a storm and spending a few days in the belly of a whale to get my attention. In my case God used something I was already focused on to lead me where I needed to go.

When I left home to attend college at Central Michigan University I made one feeble attempt at connecting to a church community. I called the local Lutheran church and asked if anyone could give me ride to worship on Sunday. I didn’t have a car and there was no bus service for the local community. The pastor told me that the congregation wasn’t set up to serve college students (I’m sure he phrased it a bit less bluntly) and that I should stick with a campus ministry organization. That was all the incentive I needed to explore what life apart from the church might be like.

I found that I didn't miss the church as much as I thought I would. If to this point in my life home was where I lived, school was where I went, and church was where I belonged, college now owned all three parts of my life. There was plenty to do simply adjusting to my new independence and responsibilities without adding the social obligations of belonging to a church. With no mandatory worship to attend each week I discovered lazy Sunday mornings and the joy of reading slowly through an entire Sunday newspaper before returning to school work. (I have a serious suspicion that this is what is meant by Sabbath and I still covet the once or twice a year when I get the chance to dwell in that kind of time.)

Sitting in my English writing class one afternoon during the winter/spring semester of my freshman year I found myself ignoring the professor’s lecture in order to gaze at the profile of the cute blond sitting one row up an over from me. She leans forward with both arms resting on her notebook. Her legs fold back under her chair. She is the model student, fully engaged, ready to participate. As I secretly admire her I feel the ball of nervousness grow inside of me. This was the day I had resolved to ask her on a date.

As class ends we stand up to gather our books and bags. She turns to face me as she slides her arms into the powder blue and cream white ski jacket and begins to zip it up. She smiles and her pale blue eyes shine in the white fluorescent light of the classroom. At the beginning of the semester we discovered that our next classes were in the same building part-way across campus. We had gotten in the habit of walking together and talking about whatever happened to be on our minds. It was my plan to ask her out as we walked together.

Evidently I was unable to bear the nervous anxiety until I could slip it into our conversation casually and I blurted out, “Hey, I heard there was this thing going on next Friday. Would you like to go with me?”

This wasn’t how I had rehearsed this in my mind. Gone was the suave, casual and in-charge persona that I had secretly hoped would emerge in moments like these. In its place was a sputtering rush of words vomited out in a semi-coherent splash on the floor by my feet. Did I really say, “this thing?”

“What thing?” she asks, tilting her head the tiniest little bit.

“Umm,” I stumble, not sure whether I am being given a second chance or just being set up for a bigger drop. “It’s a party. Like a dance. But I don’t know if there will be dancing. A social kind of thing at the Student Union. You know.”

I stand there trying to look confident and certain which, in this case, would have won me an Academy Award had I been able to convince her that I was.

Then, out of some magical place where grace and goodness come forth, she says, “Sure, I’d like that.” Her eyes radiate warmth and her smile washes away the anxiety. But before I have even the slightest moment to savor this little victory, before the tiniest swell of pride begins to bloom she continues, “But I have one condition. You have to go to church with me next Wednesday night.”

“Sure. I’d like that,” I say without thinking to ask, “What church?” I know church. I can go to one Wednesday night service without getting all caught up in it. Church is easy. A simple tradeoff in exchange for a date.

I’m too excited to understand what is happening to me. I’m too involved in the moment to recognize that God has baited my path with a cute blond woman and a pair of pale blue eyes.  It would be fifteen more years before I would recognize how I was lured back into the church after my brief hiatus.

It seems like most people who are involved in a church community have experienced a time of leaving before returning once again. The impulse to return is sometimes a spouse, sometimes it’s for the sake of their children, or sometimes a tragic or life-changing event that sent them in search of meaning and community. Strangely enough, these are some of the exact same reasons that people leave the church.

I think I’ve always assumed that belonging to a church was the goal. But what if that’s not the case? What if God led me out of the church that first year of college for a reason? What if God didn’t lure me back to the church but called me forward into the church only after I had experienced a time away? And what if God is leading people out of the church now for a reason that we can’t yet see?

Soaking It In

Sometimes when we are paying the least attention we gain all kinds of knowledge and experience that will benefit us in surprise ways later in life. During the time that I quit thinking about becoming a pastor I gained so much knowledge about leading a faith community that I am still sorting out what I learned.

Moving to Dubuque changed everything about my life. The three places that my life took shape; home, school and church, all seemed to be completely reversed. Dad was now home instead of mom who was working in a department store. There was less income, a smaller house with a tiny yard and neighbors so close it felt claustrophobic. School was huge; an overcrowded limestone monolith containing more than 1600 strangers. Church was bigger too. It was more formal, less friendly and it certainly didn’t need the kind of help that I was familiar with offering.

What choice did I have but to make the best of it? That doesn’t mean that I did so happily or quietly. I remember making my family, and especially my parents, miserable at times. In those four years of high school I did my share of rebelling and of being a jerk. But I did some good things too. I got more involved in music. I explored some artistic endeavors. (Don’t ask my mom about the way I painted my bedroom. She still gets the shakes when she thinks about it.) I eventually made some good friends and learned to navigate the changes at home, the hallways and social situations at school and the very different feel of faith in the new church.

While I was preoccupied with my particular strain of teenage angst and ignoring any sense of call to ordained ministry two things became everyday events that would shape my understanding of ministry. First, my dad took a part-time job as custodian of the church we attended and he invited me to join him. I emptied wastebaskets and cleaned floors in the evenings and on Saturdays. I witnessed all the behind-the-scenes activities that keep a church going. I got to know the people on staff; the pastors, the secretaries, the youth director and some key volunteers who were frequently present. I found the people who work at a church to be ordinary people. They had lives outside of the church. They struggled with family issues, grief and stress. They showed up to work exhausted because there was so much going on in their lives. They had good days and bad days. They lost their temper when things weren’t going well and they could be very forgiving and encouraging too.

The second thing that happened is that my dad started processing what he learned at seminary as we sat at the dinner table. He told us about conversations in which he and his classmates speculated on different subjects. What if Jesus had gotten married? What if he had died a different kind of death? What if Mary wasn’t really a virgin when Jesus was born? For the first time I was becoming aware that open-minded speculation about some of the hard and fast doctrines of the church was okay. Suddenly, faith became something that I could participate in beyond memorization and regurgitation. Faith was something that could be tested and explored. God became bigger than my Sunday School lessons and catechism explanations. It was as if all the recorded scripture and theology was a leaping off point instead of a landing zone. It was there to help launch us into a life-long experience of finding God wherever we find ourselves to be physically, emotionally or spiritually.

The lessons I learned when I wasn’t paying attention have done more to shape my understanding of ministry than any class in seminary. They are the places I fight the hardest to maintain my sanity and dignity in this calling. They are the issues that cause me the most heartache and joy. Perhaps being an ordinary person willing to explore extraordinary possibilities is what we are all called to in whatever ministry we serve.

Dubuque

I really can’t talk about my call into ordained ministry without talking about my dad’s call into ordained ministry. For the first 14 years of my life my dad worked at Oldsmobile as an electrical engineer. The summer before my 8^th grade year I learned that this was going to change.

Normally during the summer our family would spend a week or two vacationing in a pop-up camper at a state park somewhere in Michigan with a nice lake and a sandy beach.  We also spent the 4th of July week in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a family reunion on my mom’s side of the family. The announcement early that summer that we were going west on vacation to see the Mississippi River made me excited to see something that I had only seen in books and on TV. But it also raised some suspicions. Why now? And why were we going to Dubuque, Iowa to see the river there?

To be honest, Dubuque in the late 1970’s was not a vacation destination for anyone.  I’m sure we must have done some touristy things but I don’t remember much about the vacation. The one “highlight” was visiting Wartburg Seminary. The limestone block buildings, the classrooms, the library and the chapel were like nothing I’d ever seen before. The statue of Martin Luther holding a Bible in front of the small campus and the well-kept grounds reminded me of the university buildings I had seen during cutaways from Saturday afternoon football games on TV. We walked through married campus housing which consisted of a trailer court and a couple of old Victorian houses that had been converted into apartments.

I didn’t quite understand why we were visiting the school you attended if you wanted to be a pastor in the church, nor why it was the highlight of our vacation. Staying in a hotel room with five other people was a new experience but I missed the beaches and campfires. I fell asleep to the loud drone of the hotel air conditioning instead of the muffled sounds of other campers settling in for the night.  This didn’t really alarm me or upset me, though. It was just one more of those weird things that my parents did which my middle-school self didn’t understand.

A month or so after we returned from that vacation mom and dad gathered me and my brothers together and told us that we were going to be moving to Dubuque the following summer. They told us that dad was going to leave his job at Oldsmobile and go to school to become a pastor. They told us to keep it a secret and not tell any of our friends. I’m not usually good at keeping secrets but for some reason I didn’t want to talk about this.

Throughout the coming year we would talk about moving in quiet little snippets. My grandparents were concerned that we would be living so far away and that my dad was quitting his well-paying job. My brothers and I were concerned about being the new kids in school and about leaving friends behind. I wondered what High School would be like and how I would get along in a class of 450 instead of 30. I hate not knowing that to expect and there was no way I could know what was coming with this move.

The thing I couldn’t talk about was the way I thought my dad was taking my call away from me. I suppose there is a time in every kid’s life when the last thing they want to be is like their parents. Because I look so much like my dad I was accustomed to hearing how I was exactly like him and I was tired of it. Now my dad was laying everything on the line to become a pastor, the thing I secretly thought was my calling. Never mind that I hadn’t mentioned that dream to anyone or that I didn’t completely understand it myself. It just felt that if I became a pastor it would be one more way that I was like my dad. So I stopped thinking about being a pastor. It would be another five or six years before I admitted to myself that I was indeed sensing a call into ordained ministry.

Stranger in a Strange Land

At some point the charms of suburban living began wearing thin on my parents and they started talking about moving again. I was too caught up in riding bikes, building forts and joining my friends in tormenting neighborhood girls to pay attention to what my parents were going through. Even if I had paid attention I imagine it was one of those “grown up” things that I wouldn't be able to understand for years to come..

When it was all said and done my parents bought an old farmhouse and forty acres of land about 25 miles from the subdivision. Neatly landscaped lawns and paved streets were replaced by cornfields and a dusty, gravel road. Instead of being surrounded by similar looking homes the farmhouse was encircled by barns and sheds. The closest neighbor lived over a quarter mile away. The nearest town, and the place I would attend school, was five miles away but the bus ride to get there was over an hour long.

The farm held all kinds of new experiences for me: There were trees on the property that were actually big enough to climb. There were barns to explore. There were fields to play in. The old house still had a coal-fired furnace. Every morning in the winter my dad or mom would go down to the damp and dirty basement to shovel coal onto the fire so the house would warm up for the day. My parents began remodeling almost immediately. Walls were knocked down, a stone fireplace was installed and we started living in what would become and endless construction zone.

Moving from a suburban culture to a rural lifestyle and having to make new friends was difficult enough without having to adapt to a second cultural change. Our new community was predominantly populated by the spiritual nemesis of Lutherans around the world: Catholics.

Evidently 480 years hadn’t been enough time to forgive each other for insults spoken during the Protestant Reformation. There was (and still is to some extent) a fear among parents that conversion was a real possibility and would result in eternal damnation if not eternal parental shame. For five centuries the animosity has run so deep that even today I still get surprised looks when I acknowledge that my Catholic friends are indeed Christians. Nobody was hostile towards us but there was always a sense of awkward wariness.

 The most surprising part was just how Catholic the new community was. I was one of only four kids in my grade who were not released to participate in religious education and attend weekly Mass (and whenever there was a feast day if I remember correctly). In fact, the public school system arranged for the middle school classes to be held in the school building owned by the Catholic parish that stood adjacent to the elementary school. I can’t imagine such an arrangement in today’s climate of church/state separation but it worked out well enough for the community back then.

I learned a lot from my new friends. I learned that they got bored during church services just like I did. I learned that they also wondered why church doctrine seemed so important to adults. I learned that, like me, they weren’t supposed to talk about these things but were to obediently attend worship and learn the rules. What I really learned is that we are more alike than I had been led to believe.

In the Bible, as people move to new places there is a dynamic tension between being integrated into the culture and maintaining a strict separation for purity reasons. (Since each group had its own god/s it’s hard to separate the racial and spiritual reasons for maintaining this separation.) It seems that no matter how strong the urge is within us to meet new people and learn from them there is always someone (sometimes ourselves) telling us that it is dangerous and that we should stay apart.

What I am learning is that I enjoy life a lot more when I can find the similarities between other people and myself. It’s easy to spot the differences and to be captivated by them making us wary and afraid. Seeing the way we are similar is harder. It often requires looking deeper into ourselves as well as the other. And when we see similarities it often reveals things about ourselves that we would rather not admit.

Moving to a new place always puts us in the position where we need to decide if we are going to stick with the habits and ways to which we have become accustomed or if we will expand what we know about the world and ourselves. The fact that God so frequently calls and leads people to new places makes me think that perhaps there are more blessings to be found for everyone as we learn from those who are different from ourselves.