The Minister’s Workshop: Forced to Choose

Doran’s dead. He died early this afternoon.” Those were Betty’s first words on the telephone.

The words shocked me. We had known it would happen, but had not expected it so soon. My mind numbed as Betty told me the circumstances of his death.

My wife Shirley sat across the table. She and my son watched my face. They knew what was coming next.

“Would you conduct the funeral?”

Another time I would have said yes without a second thought. I felt myself tense. Betty needed an immediate answer. I couldn’t say, “Wait a couple of hours while I pray about it, Betty, and I’ll call you back.”

I had been Doran and Betty’s pastor for two years before the fatal brain tumor. During that time we experienced a close fellowship. A few months after Doran’s surgery I moved to another church twenty miles away. Doran spent the next eight months as an invalid. He could no longer hear, and his muscular coordination deteriorated rapidly. Because of brain damage he lived completely in the past. Consequently he never knew my successor; I had been his last pastor.

For the final two years of Doran’s good health, he and Betty, along with several other business people, had a time of prayer and Bible study every Wednesday morning in Doran’s office. In those seconds while Betty talked to me on the phone, pictures flashed through my mind of those who had been ministered to through our prayer group. David, who had lost his job and his home and was ready to give up on life, found new courage through the group. Tony went through months of deep depression after his divorce, but it was Betty who kept reaching out and saying “Don’t give up. All of us love you.” I remembered Ruth, too. She had grown from a cynical woman of the world into a tender, caring person. Bob once remarked, “I get more out of this than anything else in my week. People are so close to each other here.”

And now Betty wanted me to conduct Doran’s funeral.

Lord, please show me what to do.

I glanced at my teen-age son. He said nothing. His eyes betrayed no flicker of emotion. But I knew what he was thinking.

It was now Saturday, and the funeral was to be Monday afternoon. Another delay.

Delay. That was the word for our vacation. After an especially busy and tiring summer, we had planned to leave the previous Thursday. Twice problems had arisen in the church that kept us from leaving. Twice we had changed our reservations. We had only one week before John’s school started.

I remembered something my son had said a few weeks earlier. He had gone with me to see a family who had not been to church recently and about whom I felt concerned. John made only one comment: “Preachers never get time to do what they want to do.”

Had I neglected him? Not intentionally. But I had put the ministry and the call of other people ahead of my family.

I’ve tried to be available to people and to respond to their needs. On occasion, it has meant postponing or canceling family activities. I can recall times when I scarcely saw my children for two or three days at a time because of the heavy commitment of my time to the ministry.

Lord, guide me.

I looked at John. By going to summer school he would graduate in June. Then college. I knew only too well that this might be the last vacation we could share with him as a teenager. Soon he would be an adult.

I thought of all the things I had wanted to do with my son during his growing years. Now he was sixteen, and few of them had happened. I had been too busy.

Words of Scripture flowed easily through my thoughts: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself …”

Is that your will, God?

Where does responsibility to my family end? Or to the church? What about ministry to my son? Which is God’s will—going with the family or upsetting our plans?

I had wrestled with that question many times before. A year earlier I had gone two days late to a retreat with Shirley because of a funeral. One year we had no vacation at all because of pastoral demands.

Then suddenly I knew what to reply to Betty. After what had seemed like a long period of reasoning, though it must have been only a few seconds, I decided.

“Betty,” I said, “I love you. And you know how much I loved Doran. But I’m going to say no. I can only hope you’ll understand.”

In a few sentences I explained that this time I owed my family priority. Doran had been known and loved by several pastors in the area. One of them, Bill, had frequently joined in our sharing sessions and was Doran’s parents’ pastor. Betty said she would ask him to conduct the funeral.

“I feel guilty about this, Betty. No matter what I say, I feel guilty.”

“I understand. Honest, I do. We know how much you care. You showed your love while he was alive. Doran would have understood, too.”

I stared at my wife and son, seated at the table. Their expressions had changed little, but I noticed a softening. My son’s eyes communicated his thanks.

We went on the vacation, and during that week my wife and I felt we learned to know our son again. We had hardly realized the changes that were taking place in his life. We now could appreciate the maturity of his thinking and the sharpness of his mind.

Several times guilt troubled me. Had I done the right thing?

I believe I did. Later I would ask myself, “Isn’t ministry to my family one of my highest priorities?” The Apostle Paul gave as a condition for ordaining a man as elder that he rule his household well. In trying so hard to minister to people, how many times had I failed to minister to my own family?

Our struggles don’t always center on temptations to do evil rather than good. It sometimes is a question of choosing between two good possibilities. There will often be questions—even afterwards—but being a disciple means living by faith, not by facts that substantiate our decisions.

Did I choose correctly? My faith assures me that God guided my answer because I honestly sought his will. After all, Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.”—CECIL B. MURPHEY, pastor, Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Riverdale, Georgia.

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