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.

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.

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.