Grieving the Pastorate

I am confessedly grieving over the vocational change from pastor and teacher/administrator to solely being a teacher/administrator at Western Theological Seminary. (I went through my fb statuses since June and recognize that friends and blog-readers have known this longer than even I). I do not regret the decision to leave the church or believe that I made a mistake, yet I do miss the fullness of life that occurred at the intersections of my former life. I enjoyed sharing life between WTS and Harbert Community Church last year. If WTS was too complicated, I had HCC to occupy my heart and mind. If HCC was too exhausting, I had the work at WTS to enliven me. Now I have just one job, one community, and no pastorate.

I did not enjoy the cost of this life on my family. I have spent more time with my children in the last three months than I feel I did in the last four years. I thoroughly enjoy evenings and weekends uninterrupted with Lindsay and the children. But nonetheless, I grieve.

I am beginning to reflect differently on the normal laments of the pastorate: the late night meetings; the inconvenient death of a long-time member while on vacation; the impossibility of being incognito while shopping, dining, or relaxing out-and-about; or the incessant feeling that no one realizes just how many complaints you’ve received on a Sunday morning just before you begin preaching. All of things are very lamentable. I did plenty of this. And now that it is gone, I am realizing that it is in the spaces of pastoral laments that God-actions were most possible.

• ·      I witnessed an 80 year-old woman convince a multi-generational group that an end-of-year budget surplus belonged to God and the Kingdom and not for the church reserves. The leaders made a unanimous decision to give over $40,000 away in the course of one-hour! We spent the next 6 weeks convincing the church, likewise. This was the fruit of a late-night meeting.
• ·      I remember returning from Disney World one day early to conduct a funeral of a long-time member and area business leader; the ease with which eulogies and the sermon enfolded the man’s life with the story of the gospel suppressed any sadness of having to depart early from “The Most Magical Place on Earth.”
• ·      I enjoyed decompressing from the pulpit by spending Sunday afternoons walking the beach, yet almost always found myself in some intense conversation with a local person who knew I was a local pastor. I usually entered these conversations anxious and irritated for being interrupted during my “self-care time” and left them fulfilled that the growingly secular population still sought spiritual conversation. I enjoyed these “evangelistic” conversations because almost always they were more fully integrative; people, often called Happy Pagans, are deeply interested in how to navigate the questions of bible, theology, and social and political concerns.
• ·      I remember lamenting my relationship with a man in my congregation that was growingly contentious. I (and I stress that this is my perception) felt that we was committed to disrupt momentum of the church leaders; he would seek to divide the church, especially among widows; and every time we tried to have a conversation together, he would infect me and others with his anger. I was begging the elders to step in and help me resolve this, namely bring us together for reconciliation. The conversation occurred late at night, and one of my wise elders looked into my soul and said to me, “you cannot give a man without peace, peace. Let him go. Your job is to pray.” I was reminded of a former spiritual director’s words, “Release me, bless him.”  Complaints are too numerous to count and they easily overtake the plethora of praise offered. Yet I am now realizing that the complaints that come to us, as pastors, are rarely ours to resolve. These complaints are a divine invitation to return to God, and allow God’s peace to be divinely fulfilled in me and in my “enemies.” (Luke 10; Matthew 5:43-48).

All of these brief narratives are to say that I am now recognizing that even the lamentable moments in the pastorate ARE divine moments. Too often I was only in communion with God when things went well: a sermon that was prophetic and received; a prayer time where the Spirit of God broke open formerly closed conversations; Sabbath days that went uninterrupted; the blessings of having an administrative assistant that understood my idiosyncrasies. These obvious blessings were the places I witnessed and gave thanks to God (Deus Revelatus). Now that those people and rhythms are absent from my daily life; I am gaining new eyes to see the formerly cloudy places as blessings in disguise (Deus Absconditus).