The morning after I became senior pastor, I received a phone call that shaped my entire ministry.
I ended up senior pastor by default: the former pastor had moved on, and the church had neither the money nor, I think, the will to conduct a search for his replacement. So they turned to me, a still wet-behind-the-ears youth pastor, and asked if I'd take the position. At first I balked, and then I agreed.
My first crisis came a week later. My insides tighten, 22 years later, as I sit to write about it.
The morning after I officially became the pastor, a man from the church called about a strange matter—his neighbors, a young couple with their first child, had asked if his "priest" performed "exorcisms"? They said an evil presence inhabited their home, striking terror, causing havoc. It had a pernicious fixation on their infant daughter.
I agreed to visit with the couple in their home. I invited a man with some experience in such matters to come with me. I thought our role would be to dispel their fears with hard cold reason.
Instead, our role was, indeed, to perform an exorcism, or at least to try. That house did have a visitor, some vile and malicious spirit. The whole thing was straight out of the Gospels or the book of Acts.
This was my first encounter with anything like it (alas, not my last). The man with me, it turned out, was himself a novice. We did the best we could. The thing seemed to leave, and peace came upon the household.
Then we told the couple about Jesus. I've rarely seen anyone embrace him so instantly. It was like he was standing in the room, arms spread wide, and they ran to him, flung themselves on him. That Sunday was their first—and last—time ever in church. They sang with gusto songs utterly new to them.
They drove directly into a bridge piling … at 102 miles an hour.
They listened with wonder to every prayer, every Scripture reading, every word in the sermon. They even seemed agog with the announcements, as though the deacon bumbling through them was a fiery seraph unveiling apocalyptic visions. They couldn't get enough, so they stayed for the second service, and then stayed long after, greeting everyone.
They were happy. I was happy. I then left for a four-day conference.
The phone was ringing when I got home Thursday night. It was the man who had called the previous week. His voice was quavering. I could barely make out what he was saying. And then I wished I couldn't.
The couple was dead. They fled their home Tuesday night, abandoned it like a house on fire, and drove 500 miles and booked into a seedy hotel. They got up early the next morning and drove directly into a bridge piling. The forensic report estimated the car was traveling at 102 miles an hour. The coroner said the husband and wife died instantly, their daughter an hour later.
It was my first funeral.
There's more to the story: a media circus, a six-month police and coroner investigation, a 200-page report concluding that the deaths were a "suicide, double homicide" and documenting a string of bizarre circumstances.
It was my first encounter with deep trauma. I walked through the funeral and all the events surrounding it with a calm and poise that verified, for myself and for the church, that I, indeed, had the right stuff to be their senior pastor.
But afterward—after the grieving family went home, after the media left, after the church forgot about it—afterward, I couldn't stop shaking. I would cry at odd moments. I'd wake in panic at 3 in the morning.
I never saw anyone or took anything for it. I eventually worked through it. But that trauma held for me an unfolding epiphany: care-givers need caring-giving. I started writing books soon after. Many of them have to do with attending to our own souls.
My first week as a senior pastor taught me that. My last 22 years has been spent trying to apply it.
Mark Buchanan teaches pastoral theology at Ambrose Seminary in Calgary, Alberta.
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