Four years ago I left a stable, highly organized parish in Virginia to become the senior minister of an old, once powerful, chaotically organized pastorate in Los Angeles. My wife and I spent an exciting three years there learning to think West Coast instead of East Coast, dealing with almost inner-city problems, and ministering to the most widely varied assortment of individuals we had ever met.
At the end of that period, however, we were both physically and emotionally exhausted. When I received an exceptionally attractive invitation from Samford University, we prayed long and hard about whether we should stay or move. The leading, I must admit, was not overly clear, but most of the signs pointed to the advantages of moving. Hugging and crying with our many friends, we took our leave and began a new period of our lives, this time as “private citizens.”
I have a wonderful position now as a sort of university professor, with the privilege of teaching courses in any area I wish, and time for writing and speaking. The long summer vacations are a godsend. And we have made many delightful friends. I do research in the library. I grade papers. I see students and occasionally converse with other faculty members or administrators. Few people observe what I’m doing. I am no longer under pressure.
But to tell the truth, I was not prepared for how much I was going to miss the pastorate. My newfound freedom is almost oppressive. For six months I thought I would die from grief, and I am still trying to sort through my emotions to say what it is I miss so much.
The Discipline of Preaching
The thing I missed most during the first months was the organizing discipline of writing and preaching a weekly sermon. I hadn’t realized how much this discipline formed the spine of my existence each week.
Meditating on the possibilities for the message, zeroing in on one, musing my way through it, sitting at the typewriter and actually getting into it, feeling the exultation as it took shape, passing it through my system until I was ready to preach it, and then, as the climax, climbing into the pulpit on Sunday morning, looking at all the upturned faces, and delivering it as honestly and forcefully as I could-all that had become the core of who I was.
I was fine the first few weeks out of the pulpit, as I always had been on vacation. But then my life seemed to turn to jelly, and I wanted the discipline back. I yearned for it. I thought I would never be anybody again without it.
I tried writing sermons without my congregation to preach them to. It was awful, and so were the sermons. I felt like an athlete turned out to pasture, his muscles growing daily more flabby, his responses more sluggish, his sense of command over, his energy and timing lost forever.
Now, after a year, I think I am beginning to hit my stride again. I can sit at the typewriter (actually, it is a word processor now) and feel something of the old adrenaline, the old mastery. But I am convinced there is nothing like the weekly responsibility of having to say something meaningful to a congregation and say it well to call forth the best in a preacher.
The Privilege of Prayer
As the months go by, I find I also miss the chance to lead prayers in the Sunday service. Maybe this is because, attending worship services in various churches, I notice more and more how important the prayers are. They set the mood almost as much as the music does, and they make it possible-or impossible, if they are bad-for the person in the pew to pray.
Some Sundays, when I am worshiping with a congregation whose minister has not carefully prepared the prayers or does not offer them in a truly prayerful mood, I feel disappointed and even a little outraged. I confess, I sometimes feel like thrusting the minister aside and hijacking the congregation by taking over the prayers myself.
There is something special about mediating between God and a congregation, guiding their thoughts and emotions through moments of confession, the recital of blessings, the sensitization to needs, and the recommitment of will and resources. No human being is worthy of this privilege, but the minister is permitted to do it, and, if it is faithfully done over a period of years, it inwardly shapes the minister. This service to the congregation makes more real priests than any laying on of hands and conferral of authority.
The Elation of Leadership
I never thought I would miss my job as a CEO, but if I am honest, there are days when I miss even that. I am decidedly a right-brained person. In the classic sense, I am also an introvert, one who likes to pass an experience through his inner being before responding to it. In Myers-Briggs terms, I am an INFP (introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive), the absolutely worst combination to saddle with administrative responsibility.
And yet I find myself missing the hum of an office during the busiest times of the year, and the excitement of selling a new program to a church board, and even the thrill of an annual meeting of the congregation, with the attendant opportunity to sum up the achievements of the past year and point the people forward to the mission lying before them.
I can’t fail to mention how I miss my secretary. In both of my major parishes, I’ve been blessed with extraordinary secretaries-sharp, devoted women who were marvelous public-relations experts, excellent typists, careful filers (I couldn’t file anything!), and indefatigable workers-who I knew, deep down, were more essential to the functioning of the church than I was. Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses to keep them steady during the Israelites’ battle with the Amalekites (Ex. 17:12), and these marvelous secretaries did fully as much for me.
As a teacher, I share the time of a secretary with several other faculty members. She is very efficient, but this arrangement isn’t the same as having someone remind me of appointments, run interference with unpleasant callers, and generally defend, nourish, and prop me up as a combination mother-wife-aunt-valet-chauffeur-amanuensis.
Now that I think of it, there probably ought to be consecration services for church secretaries-and thanksgiving services, too.
The Experience of Family
What I really miss, in all of this, is the warm and natural community of the church, which pastors and their families enjoy more than anyone else in the congregation.
Oh, the church family gets heavy at times; I won’t deny that. It is almost impossible to take a real day off without getting out of town, away from the telephone, out of sight of one’s parishioners. And there are a lot of people who are chronic complainers, psychic leeches, spiritual bloodsuckers, who will siphon the life and energy right out of you if you let them. But where else does one find such a network of loving, caring people, such a company of decent, hardworking folk ready to share their lives with you, bare their souls to you, hold you up in their prayers, celebrate grace with you?
We have found some of this in the university family. We share meals with friends, have picnics or play tennis with others, speak amiably on the campus, joke about the frustrations of the faculty. But it isn’t the same as in the church family. We don’t all gather around the Lord’s Table together. We don’t say weekly prayers together. We don’t feel bound together in the same bonds of eternal love and obligation.
My wife and I went back to Los Angeles last summer to visit our former parish. The experience was overwhelming. People crowded around us, hugged us, touched us, and wept over us, just as they had done when we left. They feted us at parties and invited us to more lunches and dinners than we could possibly eat. It fairly took our breath away, for our capacities of receptivity had diminished in the year we had been away. We had to go through the grieving process all over again, as indeed they assured us they did.
And I noticed something: that some of the people I had missed the most were among the most marginal people in the church, some of them not even members of the congregation-street people, foreigners, a homosexual whose friend I had visited while he was dying of AIDS, parking lot attendants, even a restaurant owner across the street. These little friends of God had made life sacramental for me and kept the church from seeming too antiseptic, too unworldly and unreal.
<IMG SRC=”91l1076.jpg”>
The Blessed Tradeoff
There are, of course, a lot of things I don’t miss about the parish. I don’t miss the almost-endless phone calls at home that punctuated our meals, interrupted the few free evenings we had, and sometimes pierced the silence of our sleep. I don’t miss the interminable array of meetings, especially the ones at night that meant wolfing a hurried dinner, missing a favorite TV program, forsaking a good book, forgoing talking with a child who phoned long distance, and being absent from my wife, whom I still adore.
Nor do I miss the hostility-either open or ill disguised-of some members who seem to hate all ministers except possibly the ones they remember from years ago. Such people seem to devote themselves with unbelievable constancy to the business of starting rumors; they hinder programs and destroy the faith of new believers, generally disrupting the kingdom.
But, looking back, I realize even more now that the parish is a wonderful, exciting place to be. Who more than the minister and minister’s spouse gets to live so much at the center of the hopes, dreams, and day-to-day existence of such a varied band? Who else gets to experience so fully the interaction of God and his people, or to share so completely in the gift of the kingdom? Who else has such a sense of fulfillment in terms of a calling, a life of service, and a chance for self-expression, all rolled into one?
I may have to go back to the parish ministry someday. Even writing about it now makes me homesick. But then again, wouldn’t it be unnatural not to miss that to which I was called and in which I found blessing for so many years?
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
