Accepting a new call does not have to mean two or three years of feeling (or playing) the stranger. By directing some thought and action before a move, we can quickly fasten the ties that bind.
—Doug Scott
My wife and I nervously looked right and then left as we scanned the pleasant tree-lined street for house numbers. The magic number was 92, the rectory of the church I had just been called to serve, but all we saw were dozens of seemingly numberless houses.
We were anxious for our first glimpse of the house we would call home. We had followed the moving van for 150 miles. The driver led us through a labyrinth of streets and back roads. Friends will have to find us, I thought. I’ll never be able to find my way out.
The van stopped in front of a nondescript house with a leaf-strewn lawn. While there was nothing to distinguish it as a rectory (the church itself was about four miles away), the key was underneath the front mat, just as one of the board members had promised.
“There probably won’t be anyone there to greet you,” he had said. But someone had pinned a note to the front door saying, “Welcome to your new home!”
Busy hours passed, and when the truck was finally unloaded and the movers gone, Jane and I surveyed the impassable mountain of book boxes. Drawing herself out of her fatigue, she said, “Well, we better get to the supermarket or we’ll die of starvation.”
We both stood up and headed for the door. Then I stopped, and we looked at each other. Jane asked tentatively, “Do you know where the supermarket is?”
“I don’t know where anything is.”
With a flash of inspiration, I grabbed the telephone and juggled the handset while I fumbled in my wallet for the church phone number. I dialed, listened to three rings, then four, and then heard the cheery voice of the church secretary electronically proclaim, “There is no one here to help you now, but plan to come to church this Sunday and meet our new rector!”
They’d have to find me first.
Mobile Ministers
Clergy spend months talking with representatives of congregations about the possibility of a move, but all too often they deal almost exclusively with the acceptance of a job, not the relocation of a home. Among other things, this means that clergy families adopt the mentality of what theologians might call “pilgrim people,” but everyone else calls “refugees.”
For many families, the ministry demands that homes be disrupted, friendships distanced, and children stressed. Each move is painful since in almost every case it means leaving not just a job, but a home, schools, and a community. And, studies tell us, clergy do this every seven years or so. Only circus stars move more.
But given the necessary relocation associated with ministry, accepting a new call does not have to mean two or three years of feeling (or playing) the stranger. By directing some thought and action before a move, we can quickly fasten the ties that bind.
Before You Leave
The next time I relocated, the search committee and I had just finalized my call. We had begun to rehearse a long list of things, both ecclesiastical and practical, that had to be accomplished—notification of my current bishop and the bishop of the diocese to which I would be moving, the necessary paperwork, and all the moving arrangements. When the list making slowed, I said, “There’s something you could send us that we believe is fairly important.”
“Just name it,” the chairman said cheerfully.
“Jane and I would like some anticipation.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We need some anticipation—you know, the best thing about Christmas or your birthday is the anticipation. You see, we will be here for another six weeks before we move into your rectory. Frankly, those weeks will be hard on us. Members of this congregation are already expressing their pain and disappointment at the prospect of our departure. We will have lots of painful farewells. Our life will be stashed in piles of cardboard boxes. We’ll be feeling lonely and a little afraid. Now, it’s true that I’ll have a new job to look forward to, but the rest of my family needs a little more than that. We’d like you to send us something about our new home that we can look forward to.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, “but now that you mention it, my wife and I felt pretty isolated when we moved into town seven years ago. Did you have anything specific in mind?”
Actually, I had something very specific in mind, which I believed would help not only Jane and me, but also the congregation.
“I’d be thrilled if you would take a few minutes with your wife and talk about the things you discovered when you first arrived, and jot them on a piece of paper, ” I said. “Then, if you think they might be willing to help, ask members of the congregation to share favorite places or pieces of helpful information. Give everyone a piece of paper after church and have them write one or two things they would want to know if they were new in town.”
The response was overwhelming. We received recommendations for everything from the best hardware store to a hidden picnic spot in a local park, not to mention telephone numbers: the newspaper delivery service, three or four diaper services (Jane and I were moving toward our second child as well as a new church), babysitters, even a few notes saying, “This is my phone number. Call me anytime.” In addition to getting valuable information that would have taken months to unearth by ourselves, the request gave us a feeling of instant assistance.
I’ve found clergy often feel like the distant stranger upon their arrival in a new setting. Feeling our first task is to move toward self-reliance as soon as possible, we ask only for patience as we struggle with names, and ready forgiveness when we make those inevitable first administrative mistakes.
But this request, unashamedly asking for help with the little things of daily life, gives the congregation opportunity to share its pride in its community. It also begins the pastoral relationship with an attitude of benevolent action. It’s difficult for a congregation to “wait and see” skeptically when it has already offered care.
I also found that a short thank-you note to each person who wrote was more than politic. It was the first seed of relationship; it provided access immediately upon arrival. Even after we had been in that congregation a number of years, these associations remained strong (“We first ate in this restaurant because the Smiths suggested it”).
Even more can be done. At one interview, I was presented with a loose-leaf notebook filled with photographs of the church, the rectory, nearby schools, playgrounds, shopping centers, and parks. There were pages with listings of movie theaters, restaurant reviews, a season schedule for the community theater, and bulletins from area churches. Two issues of the weekly paper were included, together with a few pages describing attractions in the nearest large city. Someone had included a coupon for a free car wash from a service station in town.
A new pastor could easily ask a congregation to provide many of these materials and more. After all, wouldn’t you like to have a town map and telephone book before you really need them?
Matters of the Manse
In planning one move, I called the church warden and asked who was handling the cleaning and redecoration of the rectory. She sputtered for a few moments and then said, “Well, someone’s swept the floors and cleaned the refrigerator, but that’s all we were planning to do. We figured you would decorate the house after you arrived.”
I cautiously asked, “Does that mean the church has funds set aside for us to do that?”
The silence seemed to last for hours.
“Well, frankly, no. We thought …”
Housing concerns are paramount in any transition, but they can be the most difficult issues to negotiate successfully during the time of call and move. Whether we live in church-owned housing or buy our own, it’s wise to explore each other’s expectations.
The issues may not seem that great if you’re buying your own home, but I clearly remember the frantic call of a friend six weeks after his arrival in a new church. “The parish is in an uproar because we bought a house with a pool! I didn’t even want the pool, but it was in the back yard of the house I liked. Now half the congregation is complaining that the board must be giving me an exorbitant housing allowance!”
“Are they really upset about the housing allowance?” I asked.
“No,” he said quietly. “I found out two weeks after closing that I’m the only one in the congregation with a swimming pool.”
Asking a few questions about congregational expectations before you look for a house certainly doesn’t hurt (nor would a drive by the former pastor’s house). Obviously, no one would suggest that church members have the right to dictate our choice of a home, but exploring attitudes is responsible and wise.
I suggested that my friend sponsor monthly parish pool parties during the summer months. Eventually these parties were heavily attended, and while they did nothing for his privacy, they did wonders for his popularity.
Those who live in church-owned housing might well be prepared for some compromise on the issue of redecoration. I live in a rectory where all the walls were painted white before we arrived. But as a tradeoff, we got to select the type and color of carpeting for the entire house.
The most important issue in the repair and redecoration of the parsonage, however, is not what happens when we arrive (when the congregation is filled with excitement at the prospect of our arrival), but rather when the church intends to repair and redecorate again. While negotiating variables like salary and benefits, I try to talk about the frequency with which I can expect the church to attend to the interior of the house.
Agreement on inspection and action every three to five years is fair to the pastor as well as important to the congregation if it is to maintain its investment. But like the other agreements that surround our employment, it’s best to get it in writing. I try to have it added to my contract, not as an issue of trust but a matter of memory. After all, before many of these questions will be raised again, the entire board could easily rotate off, and the simple act of asking that the dining room be painted could become a strain.
“We never agreed to that!” an angry treasurer once bellowed at me. Because I was able to produce a contract that the church and I signed before he took office, I was spared the ugly necessity of defensiveness, and he was quickly corrected without debate.
Discovering Events
Church members have many expectations surrounding our arrival, and many will want to direct our “first burst.” Which will it be—Sunday school reorganization, confirmation instruction, adult classes, property concerns?
“I don’t think you understand. We have a lot of work to do here!” The woman, who looked at me over bulging vestry files stuffed with urgency, wasn’t angry, just confused. They had saved a year’s worth of clergy-must-see paper and expected that would be my first concern.
In addition to attending to the must-do pile, however, I feel my first and greatest task is to meet people. I must know them before I can minister to them. So at the very beginning of my ministry in a church, I’ve used our home to invite groups of ten to fifteen people over until the whole congregation and I have met face to face. However, I had to learn exactly what to seek during these evenings.
At first my plan for the content of these evenings was simple. I would tell them a little about my background and let Jane do the same. Then, in best church-conference fashion, we would move around the room and ask for name, neighborhood, employment, and number of years at this church. Then, I thought, I would ask a few leading questions and the discussion would begin.
As it turned out, while the plan was simple, it was also naive. At the end of the first evening, Jane and I agreed that the conversation had been sparse. I had worked hard just to keep the discussion focused. I admitted I was uncomfortable with the prospect of spending another fifteen evenings like that.
“I know what happened,” Jane said. “They don’t trust you enough to open up about their church life. After all, it is one of the most intimate relationships we have. And it may not have been just you. Don’t forget that just because they live in the same area doesn’t mean they’re friends. That may have been a room filled with strangers. Those folks might have simply seen each other across a pew every week for years.”
I was convinced she was right. And after a day of thought and discussion, a few members of the vestry and I came up with a new approach for the house meetings. We agreed the format should be social, conversational, and light. After all, we wanted to start a friendship, not bring it to completion. The information we would ask for would not be about feelings and opinions, but about events. These were the key to our common life.
Within a short time, we had devised a full page of questions people would enjoy answering. We had even concocted a silly “take a question with your coffee” game that made each person a participant.
The next evening, people delighted in giving two or three answers to such questions as:
“What was the funniest thing to happen at a worship service?”
“What wedding here was the most beautiful?”
“Which Christmas pageant contained the most mistakes?”
“What has been the saddest moment in the life of this church since you have been a member?”
“Which former members do you miss the most? Why?”
As the night went on and one story led to another, we discovered we were talking not only about our congregation, but about other churches around the world as people shared their histories with one another. While this may not have made us close friends yet, we had begun to know and trust one another.
All in the Family
At these meetings, I also took about ten minutes to explain clearly to the parish the part my family plays in my life. I told each group that I believed myself to be the most married man in America. I explained that my first and most important ministry was the ministry to my marriage. Then, after explaining the wonderful way in which my wife and I met and married, I asked for their help in this ministry.
“You see,” I said, “I am convinced that clergy are not just supposed to talk about family life. I believe we are supposed to live it. I think each of you wants your pastor to have a strong and happy marriage and to be a caring and committed parent. In order to live up to those expectations, I’m going to need your help to pay as much attention to them as I do to you. Here at the beginning of our relationship, I want you to agree with me that the preacher’s place is in the home, at least for a significant part of each week. If I start to forget that, you let me know.”
The response was warm and sympathetic, and for as long as I served that parish, people came to me and asked, “Are you spending enough time at home?” How I rejoiced in hearing those words!
Planting Symbols
Another key for me has been to establish a visible reminder of my growing relationship with the congregation.
In each parish I have served, I have planted a tree as a sign of our beginning. I have also thought of planting a thousand daffodil or tulip bulbs, and have imagined the glorious blanket of color they would provide the church grounds. But for some reason I have always come back to a flowering tree.
So one Sunday my congregation and I walked out of our morning service and gathered around a young dogwood waiting to be planted.
“I don’t have anything fancy to say, just a prayer that this tree—a sign of our beginning a new work together—will bloom for many years, and that even after I’m gone, you will think of this time, as I will, with grateful hearts.”
Everyone who could see over heads and shoulders laughed as my clean black shoe was covered by mud as I stamped the root ball deep into the watered hole.
Then, as each spring season arrived, the new growth on the tree and the beauty of its flower was a joyful sign I had been planted in a new home and was rooted there. The planting ceremony itself is a powerful moment and becomes one of the events of parish life that is shared for years to come.
Postpone Your Homecoming
At first it seemed unfortunate that my installation as rector could not take place for eight months following my arrival. The bishop’s schedule was booked solid. The vestry felt some frustration and even expressed some of those “we-they” opinions about Episcopal dioceses in general and bishops in particular. Still, we reasoned, we would have plenty of time to prepare for the service, and we could give it a little thought.
We appointed a committee to plan the service and celebration to follow, and they promptly forgot their charge until I called the chairperson six weeks before the scheduled date.
Three weeks later, having heard nothing from the group, I called again.
“Oh, wait until you see what we have lined up for you. Do you know the symbols of office that we are suppose to present during the service? And the congregational response to the letter of institution? Well, all I’ll tell you is this: you’re going to love it.”
And love it I did! The worship service reflected a relationship between pastor and people that had already had time to grow. There were moments of humor and poignancy that were possible only because we had come to know each other over the course of that eight-month period. The celebration included my favorite music, their special food, and a wonderful gift that was acquired not in anonymous haste but with deliberate care.
Whatever the service might have been at my arrival, it was a thousand times better having waited until we were both at home.
Home Is Where the Thought Is
When the children of Israel were in bondage in Babylon, Jeremiah wrote to help ease the pain of exile. His advice seemed deceptively simple: “Build houses, settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. … Work for the good of the city to which I have exiled you; pray to God on its behalf, since on its welfare yours depends” (Jer. 29:5, 7, njb). Even outside of exile, Jeremiah’s advice is sound: work makes home.
Specifically, the work I invest in the preparation for my arrival, in the house in which I dwell, in friendships planted and nurtured, and in my commitment to my new community bring a sense of home quickly and bring it well.
Copyright © 1991 by Christianity Today
