THE GHOST OF PASTORS PAST

It’s now been a year since I came to this church, and nearly two since my predecessor left.

It’s been a good year. Attendance and giving have increased (following trends already in motion); the men’s group shows encouraging signs of life; we’re expanding our weekday program from half days to full days. And yesterday, one long-time member said she senses an attitude of caring here the likes of which she can’t remember. She even said it publicly.

Then there’s what happened at last month’s fish fry. The emcee noted I had just bought a car shortly after a rather strident sermon on pledges and tithing. The audience was delighted. Carl Dudley of McCormick Seminary says you’re accepted “when they start to tell stories on you.” By the end of the evening, I could have used a little less acceptance.

One of God’s blessings here has been a predecessor who has deliberately not “come back.” Jim, if you’re reading this from your new perch, know that I am grateful.

If a pastorate is like a marriage, then relocation is something like divorce. And if things have been going well (as they were with Jim), the congregation left behind often feels the pain of an abandoned spouse, and the aftershocks include any of the stages of grief.

Here, for instance, one family who had suffered through an agonizing death showed great anger at being left in the middle of the struggle. In others, denial showed up in one of two forms. Some insisted the old was gone, the new had come, and there was no sense looking back. They shut the door on the memories of Jim, claiming it would be easier for us all.

I made it clear that Jim’s memory did not intimidate me and, in fact, mattered a great deal. Most who wanted to “forget Jim” were only trying to protect me. When they saw nothing needed protecting, we could get on with the real new beginning, which included the past.

Another variation of denial, though, has proved more difficult. It shows itself in the member who not only remembers “how Jim did it” but who calls him once a week “just to chat.”

We ministers have to expect some of that. The pastor who followed me back in New Orleans has faced it, too; for several months, I got calls asking for pastoral advice and insight on church matters.

Clergy-parish relationships are a strange mix. On the one hand, clergy are surrogate parents: we tell our folk right from wrong, the true meaning of life, comfort them when the situation warrants, and bless their celebrations. In short, we become God’s stand-in.

To complicate things, we also serve as surrogate children/siblings. In us, older members see many of the traits they hoped for in their children. One of my former officers once told me, as we went to lunch, that of course he would get the check; after all, he was old enough to be my father, or even my grandfather. Others talk to us as they might to brothers or sisters. None of these relationships automatically ends just because the moving van rumbles over the horizon.

Ideally, they metamorphose into once-close-but-now-distant friendships. Most of them do. But some need help to make the shift. In fact, it is predictable that some former parishioners will continue to seek pastoral attention as surely as Faye Furillo on Hill Street Blues keeps popping in at her ex-husband’s precinct office.

How do we handle that? Carefully, gently, remembering that while those problems once laid claim on our lives, they now belong to someone else, even if the new pastor has yet to arrive.

And we handle it with pain. When I got word that the flock I left wanted to blow a lot of money on an unnecessary capital expense, I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to respond pastorally when the president of the women’s group died. The idea of performing a friend’s wedding made my mouth water, even though I knew I could not.

I had to stay out of things.

Somewhere in the Midwest, according to Lyle Schaller, a pastor retired after years in a parish and stayed in town. When his successor came, board meetings continued on the first Monday of every month at 7:30.

It was not until several months had passed that the new minister learned quite by accident that board members were gathering in the former pastor’s home that same night at 6:30. Those meetings, of course, were “just a time of fellowship.”

Would you like to guess which meeting was the real board meeting?

Or, take the case of a minister who had been serving a church for about a year when some discussion arose about the physical plant. When she asked about the architectural drawings, her board chair responded, “Dan’s got them,” referring to the former minister, who had been gone nearly three years. Ellen, the pastor, wondered why the church would leave the plans with a minister now some eighty miles away.

“He always takes care of those things,” came the reply. Notice the present tense.

When a pastor keeps the old ties after moving, bad things happen, no matter what the intent. Obviously, the authority of the next minister is undermined. If the former pastor comes back for weddings or funerals, it leads the new pastor to the almost inescapable conclusion of being unworthy to handle the “important” pastoral duties.

It also confuses everyone: the new pastor about his or her role, the people of the church about who to turn to, the former minister about his or her real task (the new work), and the new church-if it knows-about the whole situation.

I’m not suggesting that phone calls, Christmas cards, and even occasional visits are in and of themselves destructive. But we need to take care that they remain positive.

One of our families recently spent a weekend with Jim and his family; they chose to rendezvous at a resort about 100 miles from here. When we went back to New Orleans for a visit, we stayed with non-church friends across the river and limited our contact with former parishioners. Surprisingly little discussion about the former church occurred, except for updates on people we could not see.

It is possible to maintain friendships over the years. The trick is to do so without submarining the work of the people who follow us.

-Ed Gouedy

First Presbyterian Church

Alexander City, Alabama