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.

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?

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.

Finding a Place

Growing up, I spent a lot of time at church. My family was there every Sunday for an hour of worship and an hour of Sunday School. We were usually one of the first families to arrive and last to leave making it an all morning affair. Later in the week, my mom would bring me and my brothers back for what we called “Midweek,” which included a class, supper together in the fellowship hall, and then children’s choir rehearsal. During the summer there was a week of Vacation Bible School and when we didn’t have school we were at the church while my mom had her weekly prayer group. My childhood life was split three ways: Home, school and church. 

It was at Calvary Lutheran that I first started to tie my identity to the church. Most of my church friends attended different schools. I always looked forward to seeing them. As a kid I was overweight and slow but that didn’t seem to matter to my church friends. When I tried out for teams at school I wouldn’t get many chances to actually play. The church, however, had teams that played in church-sponsored leagues where everyone got to play no matter how good or bad they were. For me, the neighborhood was where I lived and school was where I went but the church was where I felt I belonged.

It was also at Calvary that I was first encouraged to share my gifts and abilities with the whole congregation. I loved being asked to help and there were a thousand different ways to do it. I helped fold bulletins before worship. I served as an acolyte and did other things in worship. I set up chairs or would carry things from the supply closet to the places that Sunday School classes were taught. I helped my dad mow the church property whenever he signed up to take care of that chore. I enjoyed being asked to help out in these special ways. People would encourage me and that always made me feel more grown up and responsible.

One day, the pastor asked if I would like help with a baptism. He said that I could put the water on the baby’s head while he said the words. The baby was my Godmother’s child, my second cousin, and I was more than eager to help. I stood there at the baptismal font in my acolyte robe and awkwardly scooped water on the baby’s head as he was held over the font while the pastor said, “You are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I had never seen another acolyte, or anyone beside the pastor ever do part of the baptism.

Later, as an adult, I took a class where I discovered that I have the spiritual gift of Helping. Simply put, that means that I find meaning and purpose in doing behind-the-scenes kinds of tasks that are necessary for the life of the congregation or community. Most of the time people don’t recognize that someone has taken care of these tasks unless they aren’t done or are done poorly.

As a pastor I still spend a lot of time getting things ready for other people. I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that everything is ready for worship. I no longer fold bulletins but I prepare and proofread sheets for our worship leaders. I set up the presentation software with song lyrics and congregational responses that are projected on the screen at the front of our worship room. I still get to the church on Sunday morning before anyone else to open up, turn on lights, adjust thermostats, set up the sound equipment and other electronics and make sure that education rooms have been set up the right way.

Many Sunday mornings I feel more like a stage manager than a pastor. I worry about what's coming up next in worship and whether or not someone is going to miss a cue. But this is what belonging to a community/congregation is all about to me. It’s about making sure that details are taken care of so that people can come and find a place to belong. I know that I can’t create that place for everybody but I keep trying. The church became a place for me to forge my identity and share what I was good at. That has always been my understanding of what church is and what it can be.

The Everyday Call

The call to ministry isn’t always a thundering voice from the sky or a burning bush on the side of the road. In my case it was a slow accumulation of experiences and encouragement from people I respected. The most mundane and everyday things that people are paying attention to can contain the call to ministry.

I stood in front of my first grade classmates and launched into an incredible account of my weekend activities. It was time for Show & Tell. This was one of my favorite parts of the school day. I didn’t get to go up front every day but I did whenever I could. Sometimes I would bring something to show but most of the time I preferred to regale the class with adventurous tales of riding motorized mini-bikes through the woods, exploding firecrackers in glass bottles or attending some spectacular show that had been advertised on TV. I would talk until the teacher told me it was time to sit down so someone else could have a chance.

Had anyone been paying attention they might have thought I would grow up to be the World’s Most Interesting Man and make a living pitching Mexican beer. Evidently, no one was paying attention, including the teacher, because it would have been pretty easy to tell that I was making things up as I went along. Some might call it lying. They would be justified to do so. I prefer to think of it as the beginnings of my creative writing talents and practice for public speaking.

I found that I liked being at the front of the class or the front of the church. Of course, I was in the Sunday School Christmas program every year but I also volunteered to act in special dramas put on at the church. When I was old enough I signed up to be an acolyte for worship. The acolyte got to wear a special robe, light the candles, hand out the offering plates and collect the tiny glasses as people finished receiving communion. It wasn’t long before the pastor began asking me to help out at special services. Adults encouraged me and said that I did a good job which made me want to do more.

None of these things is particularly ground shaking. There isn’t a single one that I can point to and say, “That’s when I knew I would be a pastor.”  But when I look back at them I begin to see a pattern. I was encouraged through these things and was given opportunities to lead and serve. These were some of the experiences that led me into ordained ministry. And even though I never heard God’s voice speak to me as I did these things I can now comfortably say that God did indeed “call” me through these everyday events.

The Bible is full of stories where people hear God’s voice speak to them. Is it possible that God’s call came to them in one of these everyday events and when they looked back at what had happened they could “hear” what God was saying to them? What if the places where God speaks to people in the Bible were more common than we assume they were?

God spoke to Abraham through three travelers that he hosted by the Oaks of Mamre. Who hasn’t hosted someone in their home and found themselves in conversation late at night only to reflect on what it meant later? While Moses paid attention to a burning bush that appeared not to be consumed, God spoke. Who among us hasn’t seen some phenomenon that boggles our mind, makes us take a closer look and wonder aloud at what we are seeing? Yes, words came out of Balaam’s ass (I could say it was his donkey but the play on words here is way too rich) while Balaam was trying to go someplace and was frustrated by his animal’s refusal to move. Who hasn’t been frustrated at the roadblocks (often put in place by someone who resembles the aforementioned animal) and the inability to get around them, and then spent time wondering what to do next. God speaks to the prophets, to Peter, to Paul, to John of Patmos and to so many more through dreams and visions. Have you ever awakened with the memory of a dream so vivid that you return to it over and over again during the day and ask, “What does this mean?”

I’m not disputing that people actually heard words they understood to be from the voice of God. I’m simply saying that God doesn’t always come to us in big, grandiose ways but frequently in the everyday moments that are easily overlooked. God doesn’t always come in the earthquake or a whirlwind but instead comes in the still, small silence that takes shape when we take time to listen and reflect on what we have been through

Called to Ministry

In the church we like to talk about the way God “calls” each of us to ministry but we don’t often talk about what that means or how we discern the call. In the days ahead I want to share my experience of being “called” and how that led me to where I am today and eventually where I end up in the future.

The question comes from a middle school student in a large group discussion at Bible camp: "How did you know you wanted to be a pastor?"

Instantly a picture forms in my mind. I see the line of large box elder trees to the south side of my family’s house near Fowler, Michigan. A rope swing hangs from a limb in the tree closest to the road. A scrap-wood fort is nailed among the sturdy branches of the tree farthest back.  It’s the summer before my seventh-grade year and I’m riding the old Wheel Horse mower across the front yard. I drive into the shade under the canopy of braches and cross the two-rutted path that wraps around three-quarters of the old farmhouse and connects to the gravel driveway near the milk-shed. On the other side of the ruts the lawn continues for about twelve feet and ends where we let the grass grow tall.  It’s the one field on the 40-acre property that is not defined by a barbed-wire fence. The dark-green tips of small evergreen trees, planted in rows just a few years earlier, poke up above the wavy grass. 

"I don't know," I begin, "But I remember this time when I was a kid mowing the lawn and I noticed something about the trees and the short grass of the lawn and the tall grass in the field. I remember thinking that what I noticed would make a great example for our pastor to use in a sermon. It would help to explain what he was trying to teach us."

"What was it that you saw?" someone else in the group wants to know.

I shake my head, "I don't remember exactly. I just remember having the sudden realization that what I saw could be used to help people understand more about God. I think I knew then that I would be a pastor but I didn't admit it for a long time.”

The conversation moves on to another topic and I sit for a time, half listening to the conversation around me and half thinking about that day on the lawn mower. At the seminary I was asked about my call to ministry on several occasions. It was a question I had to answer in my application essay. I was asked to answer it again for the Candidacy Committee of my sponsoring synod and again to faculty panels who were charged with determining my fitness for ordained ministry. Never once in all those opportunities did I mention or even think about that day on the lawn mower.

Now, when someone asks what led me to ordained ministry, I retell this story of mowing the lawn and conclude it by saying that after that moment, “I just knew.” In all honesty, though, it wasn’t as if the clouds parted that summer day and a booming voice told me that I would be preaching in front of a congregation someday.  It’s my earliest memory of a growing knowledge, that eventually became a certainty,  that I was being led in a particular direction.

Sometimes people talk about being on a path in life. There have been many days when I wish the path was more clearly defined, days when I have cried out to see what lies ahead of me. Reflecting back on where I have been I realize that I have not been led down a path at all. It has been a direction. It’s like walking through a field of tall grass. I can only see a path when I turn around and see where I have been. 

It’s funny that the image of a field is what comes to mind as I describe my life’s journey. To a farmer with livestock a field of tall grass is known as a pasture, a place for the animals to graze and be fed. The word pastor is derived from the same word for pasture. A pastor is one who feeds the flock.

My entire life I have been moving towards and within the field of ordained ministry; into the pastoring field if you will. My identity as a person has been formed inside the church. For 23 years (19 years as a pastor and 4 as a seminary student) this identity has been centered specifically around my call to be a pastor. As I look back on the trail I have made I see that it meanders and wanders through the field. But I also see that the meandering has moved me across the field, away from where I was and towards something that lies beyond.