My old church has issued a call to a new minister. I'm excited for them, and glad they didn't have to go through such a lengthy process this time around. It will be a different sort of arrangement, for them and for the new pastor, since they've decided to share the call with another congregation. It's a little weird to think that soon there will be a pastor of that church floating around Synod things who is not me. It's also weird to realize that I'm going to have to leave my clergy network, because it's likely that he'll be joining it, and that would just be too odd. I'm not entirely certain that I could restrain myself from giving him all sorts of completely useless advice, put into a support situation like that. I want him to have the ability to process his experience in the congregation without ears as biased as mine. So, provided he wants to join, I'll get out and make space for that.
I've found myself wondering about relationships between former and new pastors lately. One of the most helpful things in the beginning of my first call was when a former pastor (not the most recent) who was in touch with a particular family went with me when the woman died. He knew them, so he could be a better comfort to them, and I got to watch someone who had years of pastoral experience under his belt react to a difficult situation. He helped with the funeral, although he was careful about making sure that I was The Minister in the service. It was great to hear his perspective on the church - even though some of it I didn't find accurate to my time there or applicable to my mode of ministry. Hearing his points of view reminded me that the ways people sometimes acted, both good and bad, were often not at all about me.
We're discouraged from having relationships with the people who proceed us in a call (this is where the "B" word comes in), and in many ways I understand that. It would be easy to pass on negative attitudes toward certain people or programs...but that's assuming that the old pastor can't mediate the way they speak about the church, and that the new pastor is going to absorb everything the old pastor says without any sense of differentiation. Personally, I found it helpful whenever I got a chance to talk to the former ministers of that church.
I'm not going to go seeking a friendship with this new minister, and for a variety of reasons I suspect we would not be BFFs anyway. But I am going to see him around. I'm a half hour drive away. This is a small synod in a small denomination. I think it would be odd to pretend that we didn't know the same people, or that he wasn't living in the house where I once lived. It would definitely be odd to turn around and run the other way every time I saw him, which is pretty much what my predecessor did to me. So, I think I'll just be me, and see how that goes.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
On and Off the Clock
I am aware that I have one of the strangest ministry jobs on earth. People are not usually quite sure of what ministers do anyway, other than show up for that hour or two on Sunday, and I don't even do very many of the typical minister things anymore. A lot of my job involves "hanging out," being available, and trying to develop the kinds of relationships in which something significant can happen.
The funniest thing about this is that it makes my job/life boundaries even more porous than "normal" ministers. For example, there are seven days in a week; I'll give myself one hypothetical evening at home, just for the heck of it. Now, let's say I go out five nights a week, intentionally thinking of myself as fostering relationships and being a sort of bistro chaplain. In those five nights, I might not have a single thing happen that feels the least bit like something most people would recognize as ministry. I might even start to question whether the time I'm spending there is really doing what I hope it will do. Then there comes my day off, on which I decide to just go out and have a couple of drinks with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I don't plan to even talk to anyone else. Of course, it is on this night that I encounter a wide variety of people who need to talk or eat or be admitted to shelters for abused women.
Day off, schmay off.
But the thing is, I don't really mind this. I mostly think it's kind of humorous. Here I am, always trying to plan when things will happen, marking out categories of activities in my calendar. And yet, there things go, happening in whatever timing God darned well pleases. Those of you who know me in person or who have been reading this blog for a long time know that I'm no great fan of the strict-boundary system that seems to be encouraged amongst clergy. I will add to that by saying that my favorite thing about my job is that it usually doesn't feel like a job at all. If last night hadn't been a little on the tough side, I probably wouldn't even have noticed that I seemed to be doing work-like things on my day off. Most of the time, it just feels like life.
The funniest thing about this is that it makes my job/life boundaries even more porous than "normal" ministers. For example, there are seven days in a week; I'll give myself one hypothetical evening at home, just for the heck of it. Now, let's say I go out five nights a week, intentionally thinking of myself as fostering relationships and being a sort of bistro chaplain. In those five nights, I might not have a single thing happen that feels the least bit like something most people would recognize as ministry. I might even start to question whether the time I'm spending there is really doing what I hope it will do. Then there comes my day off, on which I decide to just go out and have a couple of drinks with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I don't plan to even talk to anyone else. Of course, it is on this night that I encounter a wide variety of people who need to talk or eat or be admitted to shelters for abused women.
Day off, schmay off.
But the thing is, I don't really mind this. I mostly think it's kind of humorous. Here I am, always trying to plan when things will happen, marking out categories of activities in my calendar. And yet, there things go, happening in whatever timing God darned well pleases. Those of you who know me in person or who have been reading this blog for a long time know that I'm no great fan of the strict-boundary system that seems to be encouraged amongst clergy. I will add to that by saying that my favorite thing about my job is that it usually doesn't feel like a job at all. If last night hadn't been a little on the tough side, I probably wouldn't even have noticed that I seemed to be doing work-like things on my day off. Most of the time, it just feels like life.
Monday, July 21, 2008
A few things from the last week or so
I spent last week as the volunteer chaplain at a camp in the Adirondacks. I heart junior high students...but they are exhausting. We're up, we're down, we're nearly adults, we're still small children, we want to try everything, we're scared, we're ecstatic, we're sullen. Their reactions to me vary by the minute; one moment I'm the coolest person in the world because I'm an adult who's not their parents, and the next they realize that I'm an adult and therefore in the same category as their parents (and not all that far apart in age from their parents, for that matter - eek). Nonetheless, this is my favorite age group at camp. Their attention spans and mine are about the same, which is convenient. They're old enough to really talk about things, if you can hook into something they care about.
I've become convinced that the most formative experiences of camp come from the scary or difficult moments. When we arrived and there was a massive line of kids and parents waiting to register, it started pouring rain. Everyone was drenched. And yet, there was something about us all being soaked and uncomfortable together that shifted the mood so that we all started the week just accepting that we'd be okay and have fun, whatever may come. Much like when we lose power at church, something about not having control over basic factors of life, like weather, loosens people up. So, when a storm blew up on Wednesday and we had to haul sailboats and kayaks out of the water with great haste, everyone just pitched in. Again, we were drenched, but so what?
My other favorite thing about camp is watching kids click when they hear a particular Bible story and realize that they relate to it, and that they can see the people in it as real people not all that different from them. I'm a big fan of the Bible, so it's great to get the chance to put it in such a way that kids really get it.
On the other hand, I have realized that I am an almost completely oral/aural person. We try to do a lot of things at camp with multiple intelligences, but the fact is that I do not think visually or kinesthetically. I talk, or listen, or sing. I enjoy visuals and movement, and I do occasionally think spatially in terms of worship, but mostly I'm a sound and word person. This is a real limitation when it comes to working with kids, so many of whom are visual learners (and very accustomed to the visual stimulation of TV, video games, etc.). For next year I'm thinking of trying to recruit another minister who is more visually gifted than I am to team up with for this chaplaincy thing.
On another note entirely, yesterday was the five year anniversary of my ordination. Ironically, it was a pew-sitting day at church for me. In some ways, it feels like approximately yesterday that I was hearing my friend and colleague preaching from Amos and asking me if I were sure, taking the vows, and kneeling with all those minister hands on my head and shoulders. In other ways it seems like I've been wearing those vows and doing this minister thing for ages. I suppose that's typical. Five years is long enough to feel substantial, but not long enough to qualify as a long time. But, you know, it's a sixth of my life, and I've been working in churches for over a decade. A third of my life. I still have ambivalence about churches, but it seems that after a decade, it's probably time to admit to myself that this is where I've landed. For all their problems, I also still believe that God uses churches to embody and proclaim the Gospel. I'm thankful for these years of getting to participate in that.
I've become convinced that the most formative experiences of camp come from the scary or difficult moments. When we arrived and there was a massive line of kids and parents waiting to register, it started pouring rain. Everyone was drenched. And yet, there was something about us all being soaked and uncomfortable together that shifted the mood so that we all started the week just accepting that we'd be okay and have fun, whatever may come. Much like when we lose power at church, something about not having control over basic factors of life, like weather, loosens people up. So, when a storm blew up on Wednesday and we had to haul sailboats and kayaks out of the water with great haste, everyone just pitched in. Again, we were drenched, but so what?
My other favorite thing about camp is watching kids click when they hear a particular Bible story and realize that they relate to it, and that they can see the people in it as real people not all that different from them. I'm a big fan of the Bible, so it's great to get the chance to put it in such a way that kids really get it.
On the other hand, I have realized that I am an almost completely oral/aural person. We try to do a lot of things at camp with multiple intelligences, but the fact is that I do not think visually or kinesthetically. I talk, or listen, or sing. I enjoy visuals and movement, and I do occasionally think spatially in terms of worship, but mostly I'm a sound and word person. This is a real limitation when it comes to working with kids, so many of whom are visual learners (and very accustomed to the visual stimulation of TV, video games, etc.). For next year I'm thinking of trying to recruit another minister who is more visually gifted than I am to team up with for this chaplaincy thing.
On another note entirely, yesterday was the five year anniversary of my ordination. Ironically, it was a pew-sitting day at church for me. In some ways, it feels like approximately yesterday that I was hearing my friend and colleague preaching from Amos and asking me if I were sure, taking the vows, and kneeling with all those minister hands on my head and shoulders. In other ways it seems like I've been wearing those vows and doing this minister thing for ages. I suppose that's typical. Five years is long enough to feel substantial, but not long enough to qualify as a long time. But, you know, it's a sixth of my life, and I've been working in churches for over a decade. A third of my life. I still have ambivalence about churches, but it seems that after a decade, it's probably time to admit to myself that this is where I've landed. For all their problems, I also still believe that God uses churches to embody and proclaim the Gospel. I'm thankful for these years of getting to participate in that.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
It's 3:00am. I have church in seven hours. I leave immediately after church for camp. Am I packed? No. My laundry is still drying. Do I have my planning for camp done? No, of course not. Am I feeling even remotely ready to leave civilization for a week and be the camp chaplain? Nope. Good times. I'll probably be out of the internet circuit for the next week, so you'll all just have to soldier on through without my randomness.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The Saga of the Change of Cars
As my last post might have suggested, I bought a new car this week. A NEW new car. Some of you will recall that I have said on multiple occasions that I would never buy a brand new car again. They're too expensive, they depreciate the second you drive them off the lot, blah blah blah, etc. Nonetheless, I now have this 2008 Hyundai Accent parked outside the church.
I was quite loathe to give up my old car, a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, despite its many issues. It had nearly 180,000 miles on it, and those were my 180,000 miles. I bought it in 1999 as a graduation present to myself, when it had eleven miles on it, six of them from my test drive. It has been a reliable car for nine years, but it's been going rapidly downhill for the last six months of so. I reluctantly started searching for used cars, but found nothing in a reasonable price range that was as comfortable, fun, or fuel efficient as my car. It seems that everyone is currently looking for used, small, fuel efficient cars, and therefore the prices have been jacked up into ridiculousness. The financing terms they were offering were pretty ludicrous as well. Maybe it's just me, but buying a car on credit card-like interest didn't seem like such a hot idea. After several trips to car lots that involved me sitting at a desk and asking, "Are you kidding me?" I gave up and decided to try putting some money into the old car instead. Good idea, right?
Yeah...no. Two mechanics informed me that I'd have to drop at least $2,000 for my car to even be safe to drive. Back to square one.
Through a series of miscommunications, I ended up at a dealership to which I did not intend to go - a dealership selling only new cars. Hrm. Ah, what the heck, I'll test drive a few and see what I like. A few spins around the block and one really remarkable deal later, and I left the lot with my brand new car, which was cheaper than most of the used cars I looked at, and has a crazy warranty and much, much better financing terms than any used lot was willing to give me. I'm pleased, even though I was told that it's a "minister car" (sigh), and even though I discovered today much to my irritation that it doesn't have cruise control, which is what comes of buying a car quickly and unexpectedly. But I can deal with both of those things, because it's cute and kicky, gets fabulous gas mileage, and the manual transmission means I can drive it like a race car wannabe.
I was quite loathe to give up my old car, a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, despite its many issues. It had nearly 180,000 miles on it, and those were my 180,000 miles. I bought it in 1999 as a graduation present to myself, when it had eleven miles on it, six of them from my test drive. It has been a reliable car for nine years, but it's been going rapidly downhill for the last six months of so. I reluctantly started searching for used cars, but found nothing in a reasonable price range that was as comfortable, fun, or fuel efficient as my car. It seems that everyone is currently looking for used, small, fuel efficient cars, and therefore the prices have been jacked up into ridiculousness. The financing terms they were offering were pretty ludicrous as well. Maybe it's just me, but buying a car on credit card-like interest didn't seem like such a hot idea. After several trips to car lots that involved me sitting at a desk and asking, "Are you kidding me?" I gave up and decided to try putting some money into the old car instead. Good idea, right?
Yeah...no. Two mechanics informed me that I'd have to drop at least $2,000 for my car to even be safe to drive. Back to square one.
Through a series of miscommunications, I ended up at a dealership to which I did not intend to go - a dealership selling only new cars. Hrm. Ah, what the heck, I'll test drive a few and see what I like. A few spins around the block and one really remarkable deal later, and I left the lot with my brand new car, which was cheaper than most of the used cars I looked at, and has a crazy warranty and much, much better financing terms than any used lot was willing to give me. I'm pleased, even though I was told that it's a "minister car" (sigh), and even though I discovered today much to my irritation that it doesn't have cruise control, which is what comes of buying a car quickly and unexpectedly. But I can deal with both of those things, because it's cute and kicky, gets fabulous gas mileage, and the manual transmission means I can drive it like a race car wannabe.
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