Two years ago I nearly ditched the pastorate. I started focusing on the negatives of my job: the draining, Saturday-night sermon-anxiety attacks, a pitiful raise, the disintegrating basement tiles in the parsonage (“Don’t worry,” the trustees assured, “we’ll get to it within three years.”). Finally, as the financial secretary again bellyached about the church’s money woes (“This is it, folks, we’re really in trouble this time. Ya, you betcha ya, it looks grim. The ship is sinking for sure … ), I silently prayed, Here am I, Lord. Send me to Cancun.
I desperately wanted to escape people. Needy people. Petty people. Dysfunctional people. Spiritually obtuse church people. Moses’ prayer became my own: “Lord, why do you treat your servant so badly? I’m getting sick and tired of carrying these whiners on my back. If this is how you treat your employees, then I’ll work for someone else” (my paraphrase of Numbers 11:11-15).
After eight years of frantically meeting needs, pleasing people, and tracking down plant stands for weddings, I could identify only trace elements of spiritual growth in my congregation (at least with my measuring equipment). A dangerous ice slowly spread throughout my heart—the ice of cynicism, the ice of pastoral sloth, an attitude that didn’t care if people changed because of course they didn’t want to, anyway.
God didn’t answer my prayer to escape. Instead, God slowly resurrected the call to ministry. He granted us one key event on our family vacation to Libby, Montana.
Three small interruptions
While I was reading and praying in the Asa Wood Elementary School Park, three children with bag lunches, dirty clothes, and dirt-streaked faces plopped themselves on the grass beside me.
Before I could object or move, the oldest child launched into a complicated story of family dysfunction: “Hi, my name is Deanna, and I’m 12; my sister is Kristy, and she’s 10; and Mikey my brother—doesn’t he look fat in his Lion King t-shirt?—is 6. Actually, though, we all have different dads. My dad is dead; Kristy’s dad disappeared; and Mikey’s dad beats him up, so our mom is divorcing the creep. My mom and her fiancee, Larry, are at the casino because they need time alone, so she bought us all a barbecue burrito at the Town Pump and told us to stay in the park for two hours. Can we sit by you?”
In order to be polite, I said yes, then asked if they lived in town.
“No,” Deanna, the family spokesperson, answered again. “We used to live in town, but my mom lost her job. Now we live in a tent in Lower Granite. I wish my mom could get a new job. I don’t like living in a tent. By the way, what’s your job?”
Reluctantly, I whispered, “Well, I’m a pastor.”
After a long silence, she asked, “Mister Pastor, can you tell me something? I’ve heard stories about Jesus walking around healing people, loving people. Why doesn’t he do that anymore?”
Drawing on my training, I launched into a lecture on the Incarnation. Three children simply stared back at me with big, love-hungry eyes. I looked at Deanna and Kristy, with their limp burritos, and fat, little, abused Mikey with barbecue sauce smeared on his Lion King t-shirt.
I stopped lecturing. With tears welling in my eyes, I said, “Deanna, Kristy, Mikey, let me start over. Do you have any idea how much Jesus loves you right now?”
How did God rebuild my call to ministry? He broke my heart again—with his love for these three children.
I had lost touch with the tender love of Jesus, who wept when his friends hurt. There, on a playground in Libby, Montana, the glowing love of Jesus began to burn again in my heart—for Deanna, for Kristy, for Mikey, for all God’s prodigals, even for all God’s needy, petty, stubborn children.
—Mathew Woodley Cambridge United Methodist Church Cambridge, Minnesota
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