"Hello, Martin? This is Jack Morrow. I need your help."
It was strange to hear his voice shaking. Jack was a stalwart member of the church, a lovable bear of a guy. I was in my first year of ministry and roughly the age of his older children. He was the kind of person I would turn to if I were in need. Now he needed me.
"I just learned that my friend's wife hanged herself," he said. "I just got a call from their son. When they discovered her, they left the house immediately. I feel like I need to go over to their house. When they get back I don't want them to have to see her hanging there. Will you go with me?"
It was my own Mission Impossible moment ("Your assignment, should you choose to accept it …").
"Of course, Jack, I'll be right over."
When I put down the phone, I felt light-headed. I had never seen a dead body before, certainly not one hanging from a rope. If they had covered how to handle a situation like this in seminary, I was absent that day.
Baptism by fire
Before that phone call, I had been excited to see the senior minister drive away for his two months of summer vacation. Now I could preach every Sunday, and I imagined that attendance would be unusually strong for the summer. I would bring new members, a bumper crop of souls, and I would introduce them all to the senior minister upon his return. I would get to preside at funerals and baptisms, tasks that normally fell to him. When people called the church, they would ask for me. I would make decisions in his absence. I would be wise and decisive.
I looked forward to all of that. But nobody told me that someone might call on a clear Saturday afternoon and ask me to help cut down someone's dead body.
It did not occur to me to suggest to Jack that we call the police and have them go over to his friend's house. Perhaps I wasn't thinking very clearly. More likely I was eager to demonstrate that I could do this job, that I could be of support to a man who was close to my father's age, that I could offer pastoral care in extreme circumstances.
I felt light-headed. I had never seen a dead body before, certainly not one hanging from a rope. If they covered how to handle this in seminary, I was absent that day.
So I put on a coat and my pastoral game face and drove over to Jack's friends' house. Jack got out of his car when he saw me pull into the driveway. "Thanks so much for coming," he said, extending his hand. I hoped he didn't notice how clammy my hands were.
We got into the house, and began to make our way from room to room, not knowing when we would come upon the woman's body. After looking into one room and then another, it became all the more likely that the next door we opened would be the one, so the tension built. We didn't talk much as we made our way through the house, but I do remember Jack repeating variations on a theme: "Wow, this is really something. Really something, isn't it? Can you imagine?"
After we had been through all of the rooms, we descended into the dark basement. When our eyes adjusted to the light—or the lack of it—we found a bare light bulb with a cord. We pulled the cord and found no body, but more doors, each leading to a different section of the basement. When we opened each door and peered in, it would take a few moments for our eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Did we wish that she was behind the next door, just to put an end to this grim exercise? Or were we relieved each time, drawing on a numbing mixture of hope and denial, beginning to wonder if the woman really had hanged herself? Perhaps, after all, it was just some kind of practical joke. Perhaps it was all a big misunderstanding.
Then, finally, behind one door we could see the limp outline of the woman, a taut rope with one end around her neck and the other around a pipe.
Jack and I got a knife from the kitchen. I held the woman's body while Jack cut the rope. We then lowered her body to the ground, as gently as we could. After such a violent death, a gently cradled descent. We put a blanket over her body and then left the house.
The sun had never looked brighter, the summer breeze had never been more bracing. I followed Jack to his house. We sat at his kitchen table and told his wife, Helen, about what had happened. When I got up to go, Jack thanked me and we embraced.
We had been through something together that day, something that was hard to describe fully, and, gratefully, impossible to replicate. That created a bond between us that is strong to this day.
Later, the police reprimanded both of us for going into the house and tending to the woman's body. That was their job, they said. Neither of us regretted our actions, however. From the start Jack had been clear about what he wanted to do for his friends.
And, as for me, in the end, it felt like a privilege to accompany this good man as he responded to the promptings of his compassion.
I had never met the woman who hanged herself, but here I was summoned to her side, to cradle her body even, to lower it to the floor, in some odd way sharing an intimate moment with a stranger.
As ministers we are often summoned to such strange and unimagined places.
Just a messenger
I was summoned to the side of another stranger a few years later. I was serving a church in Burlington, Vermont, at the time. I got a phone call from another pastor I knew well who lived in Connecticut. He told me that an active member of his congregation had just left his office, terribly distraught. She had just received a letter from a young woman living in Burlington. The two had only met once—on the day of the young woman's birth some 28 years earlier.
The mother was quite young at the time her daughter was born. She was not married, she was scared, and so she put her daughter up for adoption immediately after she was born. After that day, she never saw her daughter, never heard from her, and knew nothing about her life.
A few years after her daughter was born, the young mother fell in love with a man, got married, and had three children with him. It was a whole new life. She became a respected member of her community and a pillar of her church.
Then she received a letter, out of the blue, from her firstborn child. No one else in her life, except her husband, even knew she existed. And she didn't want anyone to know. Particularly, she didn't want her other children to know. She did not want her new life turned upside down, so she did not want any contact with her daughter. My assignment ("should you choose to accept it …") was to get together with the daughter, someone I had never met before, and to tell her that her birth mother did not want to see her or have any manner of contact with her. At least, that way, she could hear that difficult news in person, and in as caring a way as possible.
Ministers are asked to do things we never imagined doing, things that the person asking not only imagines us doing but thinks, in some way, is our job. Why is that?
I called her and asked if we could meet in a local coffee shop. I said that I had some news to relay from a member of her family. Understandably, she wanted to meet right away. When I got to the coffee shop, she was already sitting in a booth.
When I sat down, she leaned forward and looked me in eyes, so obviously eager for what I might say. I introduced myself and immediately moved to why I was there. After all, how do you ease into such a conversation?
"I am sorry to tell you that I have a message from your birth mother, passed through a pastor in Connecticut," I said. "She does not feel able to meet with you or to have any other contact."
Without saying a word, she continued to look me in the eyes for seconds that felt like they stretched into hours. Then, her own eyes filled with tears. They began to spill from her cheek onto the table, like large drops of rain.
"I'm so sorry" is all I could think to say.
Eventually, she began to wipe her eyes. I sat in silence. People in the coffee shop began to stare. She was about my age, so the others in the shop may have assumed that they were witnesses to a romance breaking up.
After a time, we ordered coffee and settled into conversation. She said, "I didn't even get a chance to write the letter I wanted to write." She explained that she had worked with an agency that helps adopted children connect with their birth parents. She was advised to be discreet in how she worded her initial letter. They told her to write something like this to her birth mother: "Dear Mary, It has been many years since we have seen one another, not since we shared that memorable day on November 18, 1954 (her birthday). But then, after that memorable day together, I have not seen you since, so I am eager to reconnect."
She asked, "Do you think I can at least write the letter I wanted to write, to tell her about my life, and that I'm fine? She doesn't have to write back."
When I got home, I called the minister in Connecticut, told him about the conversation, and passed along the request. Later that day, he called me back to say that, yes, his parishioner would be willing to receive a different kind of letter from her daughter.
When I called the young woman and passed along the news, she sounded relieved. "Thank you so much," she said. "I really appreciate it." She went on, "Maybe I will come to your church some Sunday." She never did.
If I could write an alternative ending to this story, she would have come to the church. She would have been embraced by the members and even found another kind of family. But I never saw her again, although I did check in with her by phone once or twice. Instead, we just shared that memorable day years ago and never saw one another after that.
Out of bounds
Then there are the odd assignments that come to us as ministers that we probably should not accept. One day, early in my ministry, Clark Hanson made an appointment to see me. He was not all that active in the church, but was well known in town as a prominent real estate developer. I was eager to make some kind of connection with him, particularly because he could be very helpful to the church if he became more active. Once in my office, he got right down to business: "Martin, I've been divorced now for some time and I am beginning to date. I figure that one of the best places to meet someone is the church. Are there any women in the church that you might suggest I call up and ask out?"
You can immediately see any number of ways in which this could turn out badly. Even as I was talking with him, a few of those ways crossed my mind. I am quite sure, however, that even if you made a long list of possible bad endings to this story, that list would not include what actually happened.
I recently asked a circle of my clergy friends if they had examples in their ministries of odd assignments. The stories flowed like a stream in springtime.
I took out the church directory and began to flip through its pages. I paused at one photo and said, "How about Debbie Thornton? Do you know her?"
"I'm not sure," Clark said. "Let me see." I handed him the directory. "Yeah, I think I have seen her before. She's really quite attractive."
"She's here every Sunday," I said. "She sits over on the right about halfway back." I thought that might even get him in the door for worship. I went on: "She's recently divorced, but that was a long time in coming, so she might be ready to date now. She's a real sweetheart."
Clark said, "Well, I'll give her call, then. Thank you." And he left my office.
I was feeling quite good about that interaction—until I got a phone call from Clark later that afternoon.
"What kind of minister are you?" It was clear from the anger in his voice that he was not inquiring about my denominational affiliation. "I should sue you for malpractice! What kind of minister sets up a parishioner with a married woman?"
I was confused: "What are you talking about?"
"When I called her home, her husband answered the phone."
"Well that must have been her ex-husband."
"No, they're still married, Pastor," he said, spitting that last word. "When I asked if you could suggest a woman in the church I might date, I didn't think I needed to specify that she should be single. You suggested I date a married woman."
I don't remember how the rest of the conversation went, but I do know I got off the phone as quickly as possible. The last time I had spoken with Debbie about her marriage she had a final court date set for her divorce within a week or two. What she had not told me is that between our conversation and the court date, Debbie and her husband had reconciled.
So, yes, there are some odd assignments that we ministers should probably not accept. But the odd assignments just keep coming—to me and to other ministers.
Our odd calling
I recently asked a circle of my clergy friends if they had examples in their own ministries of odd assignments. The stories flowed like a stream in springtime. None of my friends had been asked to suggest a parishioner they might date, but one did help a widow write a personal ad and another helped a widower fill out the form for an online dating service.
Many of the stories related to death. One clergy friend cleaned up the bathroom where a parishioner had shot himself so that his widow would not have to confront that gory scene.
Another clergy friend received a call from an elderly parishioner who asked if he would "come over and see if Charlie is really dead." When he went over to her house, Charlie was in their bed, under the covers, cold as ice. Only then did she call the undertaker.
Another friend did a committal of ashes at center field of the local softball field. That was the wish of the deceased but, since it was illegal, the pastor and the family conducted the service during the Fourth of July parade when no one was around to see them.
Another minister friend visited a widow the week after her husband's funeral and, when she asked if there was anything she could do for her, the widow responded, "The dishes?" So she did the dishes.
Then there were the unusual rituals my minister friends had been asked to perform. One friend was asked to perform an exorcism of evil spirits in an art department studio of a university where, over the years, a number of young women had been abused. Another was asked to serve communion to a seeing-eye dog, "Because he has the purest soul of anyone I know."
Other odd assignments were related to personal care. One 103-year old woman asked her pastor to spray a streak of green hair coloring in her pure white hair. Another minister responded to a more basic need of another centenarian. When he knocked on the door of her small apartment, he was told to come in and then his parishioner, seated on her bed, asked, "Will you help me fasten these garters? I am having a devil of time with them today." He was inexperienced as a minister, and even more inexperienced with garters, but he knew that there is a time for boundary awareness and a time you simply have to accept an odd assignment.
Why do pastors have so many stories about odd assignments? Why are we called to such peculiar places and asked to do such strange things? Ministers are asked to do things we never imagined doing, things that the person asking not only imagines us doing but thinks that, in some way, it is our job to do. Why is that?
Well, who else are people going to call? When they don't know where to turn, they often conclude that they can turn to their minister, no matter the circumstance, odd or otherwise. Some people probably assume that ministers are just better at life, particularly the hard parts, than they are. But most often, I think, they want to bring God onto the scene, to invite God's presence, and one way they can think of doing that is by inviting a minister, and especially their own minister, to be with them.
Come to think of it, in the end, most of ministry could be described as an odd assignment. Is spraying a streak of green hair coloring in the hair of a centenarian any odder than placing water on the hair of an infant and declaring that, through this act, the child is bound to Christ?
Going to a parishioner's house to confirm that her husband is dead may be an odd assignment, but is it any odder than standing at a graveside and announcing that the one being lowered into the ground is still alive?
Hospital visitation is odd, as well, because we have no medicine or treatment or words of diagnosis to offer, but only words spoken to an unseen being.
Certainly, it is odd to stand before a group of people week after week to speak of the implications for our lives of a book that is thousands of years old. The affirmation that the Creator of heaven and earth can be at work through any of these acts is odd, indeed. The notion that God can somehow work through such flawed instruments as pastors is odder still.
So, yes, pastoral ministry is odd, wondrously so. No wonder we get so many odd assignments.
Martin B. Copenhaver is pastor of Wellesley Congregational Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and coauthor of This Odd and Wondrous Calling (Eerdmans, 2009).
Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
