Power Supply

Yesterday morning, I motored my way from my home in Annandale, Virginia out to the congregation I'll soon be serving part-time in Poolesville, Maryland.  I had an 11:00 AM meeting scheduled with the clerk of session of the wee kirk there, to sign my first contract and talk about how things at Poolesville Presbyterian work.

I left early, concerned that the ever unpredictable steel and asphalt maelstrom on the Capital Beltway might slow things down on a rainy morning.  There were storms all about, deep rumbling clouds fat with rain, which made my ride out there on the bike just a tiny bit on the damp side.  Only a tiny bit, though.  The 'Zook acquitted itself admirably protecting me from the elements, although I noticed an odd side effect of the aerodynamic bubble behind my extended GIVI screen.  In really heavy rain, the vacuum behind the windscreen creates swirling back pressure.  The water beading on my helmet visor leaps forward into that vacuum in bright shining droplets, like I'm casting diamonds and pearls at the road from my face as I ride.   Rather pretty, although a bit distracting.  Not nearly as distracting as it might be if it happened in meetings, but so it goes.

Whichever way, I made it to my meeting on time, and the contract was signed, and badda boom, badda bing, I'm the pastor at Poolesville.  And, well, that's an unusual thing for a Presbyterian.  In fact, it's a huge thing, or would be if folks in my denomination thought about it.

Understand this, O my Presbyterian Brothers and Sisters:  In June of the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven, a PC(USA) congregation said a fond farewell to a long-term and well-liked pastor. 

Within three months, they had lined up a new pastor.  

July.  August.  September.  And lo and behold, that's their transition.  That's the total amount of limbo and liminal time they'll have to endure.  Three.  Months.  How does this compare to your last transition? 

This is not an unusual occurrence in smaller congregations, congregations that are used to having temporary supply pastors, which is what I'm going to become starting October 1.   That means, in PresbyParlance, that I'm not "called and installed."  I'm just under contract on an annual basis.  That means every year, I need to sign a new contract to reaffirm my relationship with the congregation.  If things are working, then we're copacetic.  If either party is ready to move on, well, then it's time to go.  Have robe, will travel, as they say.

Called pastors, well, they're there as long as they want to be.  Of course, they renegotiate their "terms of call" on an annual basis.  And if either party wants to move on, well, then it's time to go.  

It's the same thing, kids.

Functionally, there is no difference between being a called and installed pastor and a temporary supply pastor.  You preach.  You teach.  You meet.  You greet.  You pray.  You care.   And honey child?  Both positions are temporary.   There ain't no such thing as a permanent pastor, unless you attend the First Presbyterian Church of Transylvania, and Pastor Edward has only been there 350 years.  Not like Pastor Vlad, who was there 735 years, and left only after that well intentioned but poorly thought out sunrise service.

And yet most congregations that aren't teeny tiny don't call supply pastors.  Supply pastors are for little bitty bucolic family churches out in rolling fields, or for struggling churches that can't afford competitive salaries.  To which I ask:  Why?  Is it just congregational ego? 

Why couldn't a 200+ member, thriving, successful Presbyterian congregation choose to sidestep our agonizingly slow and convoluted call process?  Don't complain about it.  Don't fret about it.  Just go supply, and simply write a position description, advertise for and locate a qualified pastor who would then pick up and carry on.  You'd have a trained, ordained, tested, and proven Presbyterian pastor.  As a "temporary supply."  With contracts to be signed on an annual basis. 

Not just why "couldn't."  Why "wouldn't?" 

Given the choice, why would you inflict the call process on yourself if you didn't have to?  The way we connect pastors with churches now is institutional quicksand, a source of frustration and anxiety for both pastors and pastor nominating committees alike.  If the results were demonstrably better than any other system, it might be justifiable.  But the results are not.   Instead, it means that those charged with calling pastors approach the task with fear and trembling, but for all the wrong reasons. 

Our process as it stands now is orderly, but indecent.  A congregation's energies would be better spent on outreach, or service ministry, or ministries of justice, or on just about anything so long as it got us out in our communities living and spreading the Good News.  Instead, we pour our energies inward, into processes that make us feel like we're doing something but that come perilously close to institutional onanism. 

So to you pastors contemplating a move?  Perhaps you should suggest going supply to your big steeple church.  You elders who have suddenly found yourselves chairing the PNC?  Maybe it's time to think outside the box a bit, and to make that known to your General Presbyter.

Why should little churches be the only ones getting it right?

Dual Career Households and the 21st Century Pastor

Ozzie and Harriet were, in reality, a Dual Career Couple.

As the months tick by, and the necessary preparations for my departing my congregation continue, I'm keeping my radar crankin' to see where the calling might lead next.  Reality has so far served up some clear signals.    There are wonderful churches looking for pastors, sure.  There are churches where I'd be able to serve effectively.   But with a glut of pastors seeking calls in the DC area, it's looking more and more like things are trending towards a void.

When a supportive, insightful and good hearted Presbyterian official suggests that...given my locational limitations and the competitive environment...it's time to be looking at being Lutheran, things aren't trending well for the continued union of calling and gainful employment.

My set answer to folks who ask what I'll be doing after October 30, 2011 now tends to be either 1) I'll be the Associate Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Nowhere, or if I'm feeling less whimsical, 2) I'll be working on my studies, taking time to write, and "spending time with my family" or, if I'm feeling blunter, 3) I'll be unemployed.

One never knows, of course.  The Lord doth work in ways motht inthcrutable.  Still, my shamanic reading of the dripping entrails of the Presbyterian call system points in a very challenging direction, at least in the short term.

Most of my challenge comes, I think, from being in a 21st century relationship.  Were this 1957, I'd be the sole breadwinner, the one with the career in the institutional church.  With things wrapping up at my church, my poor-as-church-mice family would be preparing to follow me from my little country church to a bigger church in a larger town, living the semi-itinerant life of the parson.

But this is not 1957.  I'm not the only one who works.

Ours is, as is the case in so many American households, a dual income household.  Well, for the moment.  My wife's career...which is flourishing...is here.  When I entered the ministry, her income became the primary income.  Following a recent job change, followed by a raise, followed by a major promotion and another raise, she now makes more than triple what I make in my part-time Presbytery minimum pastorate, and more than enough to sustain our household even in the complete absence of my income.

More importantly, she's good at what she does, and she likes what she does...most days.  It's her vocation.  Which leads to the challenge facing pastors of a moderate-to-progressive bent in this era.  How do we balance our vocation with the vocations of our wives/husbands/life partners?

Do we just assume that they'll be nice and submissive and follow us around from church to church to church, because we are Called By God (tm) and they "just have a job?"

"Yes, I know you like what you do, honey, but if you don't quit, you'll be impeding the will of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has told me that I must now go serve a slightly larger church for slightly more salary three states away, just like He always does after I get into a fight with the Session."

I've got a Proverbs 31 problem with that, not to mention the fact that this way of thinking flies completely in the face of the Reformed and Protestant understanding of vocation.

Pastoring is not the only calling, eh?

Problem is, we've structured our church life under the assumption that it is, and that assumption prangs up against the reality of how most families look these days.

Temporary Shepherds

As I continue my reading for a training session I'll be undertaking next month, I'm about halfway through reading Temporary Shepherds: A Congregational Handbook for Interim Ministry.  It's a collection of short and related essays on the nature of interim ministry.

The work of intentional interim ministers is really important.  These are folks who are particularly interested in working with congregations that are in times of transition, and particularly those that have experienced some wrenching leadership changes.  I've personally witnessed the positive impacts of a competent interim on several occasions.  In the congregation where I grew up, a very capable interim led the process of healing after a brutal and divisive church fight, which involved a pastor leaving with a large portion of the congregation.  That interim's work really made a difference.  In the congregation where I interned, the pastor died suddenly, and the interim who followed on really helped refocus that church and get them back on their feet.  She was a literal Godsend.  In congregations where there has been malfeasance, a pastor whose call is re-focusing and redeveloping a communities' identity is absolutely essential.

In fact, much of the interim skillset is helpful for anyone involved in the ongoing process of transforming a church.  It's one of the primary reasons I'm taking the coursework.

As I'm working my way through this book, I'm finding a tremendous amount of useful stuff.  It's already helping me develop my ministry.  But I keep stumbling over what seems to be a major operating assumption among several of the folks who contributed to it.   That assumption seems to be that leadership transitions in congregations always require professional therapeutic intervention.  A few choice samples:

..members need to complete closure with the departed leader, taking time to express their feelings of loss, separation, hurt, disappointment, anger, guilt, or whatever strong emotions may be left over... (p.7)

Major attention must be given to issues that have surfaced in relation to the loss of a significant leader in a dynamic, living, grieving congregation.  A human system is in trauma.  All the emotions that an individual experiences in grief are present in a congregation that has suffered a significant loss...(pp. 56-57)

The "now you all need therapy before you can move on the to the next stage of your life" approach seems very wise and knowing and professional, albeit a tiny bit too Betazoid.  It has the one disadvantage of not actually being true.  Sometimes, yes, congregations do need to work out grief or resolve conflict, and need to take their time doing it.    But this is hardly the case all of the time.  It is decidedly not the case in healthy churches. 

Having watched as a lay person when a healthy pastoral relationship came to a close, I can tell you straight up that there was no weeping and gnashing of teeth.  The pastor simply let us know that he was going to leave in a few months to direct the Presbyterian Church's Ghost Ranch retreat facility.  We were, like, dude, that's so, like, awesome!  It was clearly a great match for his skills, and though he was really a blessing to the church, and well liked, we all understood.  He left as beloved as he had been while among us, with our well wishes for his journey.  The interim that followed was a good pastor, but his presence was not necessitated by grief or latent conflict.  The congregation was fundamentally healthy, and in healthy relationship with a pastor whose departure was viewed as nothing more than a fact of life.  But we still needed to have an interim.  Why?

Because unlike those who have the noble calling of intentional interim ministry, interim ministry is not something that Presbyterian congregations enter into intentionally.  It is mandated.  If you're a PC(USA) congregation, you HAVE to have an interim.  That's not because Presbyterians are more collectively dysfunctional than, say, our Methodist brethren.  Rather, it is because we have no choice.   If we don't get an interim, we'll be without a pastor for at least a year, and often longer.  Our process for calling a pastor takes too damn long.

I use that phrase advisedly, and in context.  Let me say it again: the Presbyterian process of calling a pastor takes too damn long.  The process is frustrating for churches.  It's equally frustrating for pastors seeking calls.  It is exhausting, both in terms of the time it requires and the spiritual energies it drains from communities during overlong liminal times.  It significantly increases the anxiety in communities of faith that are trying to find new leadership.  When even your denominational handbook for entering into the process acknowledges that it is frustrating and draining and intimidating, well, excuse me for going bold and all caps, but PERHAPS THAT'S A SIGN THAT SOMETHING'S WRONG.

Well-trained interims do help cushion the impact that this abusively draining and dispiriting process can have on healthy churches.  But that they are there shouldn't allow Presbyterians to delude themselves into believing we're going about ministry transitions in the right way.  We also shouldn't mask that underlying dysfunction with well-meaning therapeutic assumptions that only enable a critical systemic failure.