"ON THE JOURNEY"

“ON THE JOURNEY”

            On June 23, I will be giving a lecture at the Barth Pastors’ Conference at Princeton Seminary on the “Witness of the Pastor.”  I have been working on it for awhile, and that work has called back memories of the beginning of my pastoral journey.  I was ordained as a pastor 43 years ago this week on June 8, 1975 by Norfolk Presbytery.  Caroline and I had been called to be the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church  (PCUS).  We were called to serve St. Columba Ministries, which included being pastors to the 12 member church there and to develop a community ministry for the 1500 low income families housed in Robin Hood Apartments.  It was funded by Norfolk Presbytery.  At my ordination ceremony, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach irritated my mother greatly by indicating that, if at any time, I wanted to get out of the ministry, I could do it.  As he spoke those words, my mother heard that he was discrediting me, but I heard it that he himself was tired of the ministry.

            I did not take I personally because it had been such a hard journey for me to get to that place in my life.  As regular readers of my blog know, I grew up in the church, and I was nurtured greatly by it.  The members of First Presbyterian Church in Helena, Arkansas, helped my mother to raise me as a single, working mom, and on that level, they were the community that they were supposed to be.  Whereas I told myself that my main definition was “boy abandoned by my father,” they told me and showed me that my real definition was “boy claimed by my Father (and Mother) God.”  It was a powerful gift to me, and I will forever praise them for it.  They also told me over and over again that I would someday make a fine minister.  That part was not so believable.  In white, Southern culture, the ministry was largely de-humanized because we did not want to experience Jesus as a real human being.  We did not want to focus on the life and ministry of Jesus, because if we did, it would be difficult to support slavery and neo-slavery.   So we chose to make Jesus other-worldly, and we chose to make the purpose of life to get us into heaven when we died.  Even at a young age, this was unattractive to me – I liked life and living too much!

            Then I went off to college and learned how much the church had been complicit in slavery and exploitation of women and in believing in redemptive violence.  So, I dismissed the church as a viable option for me, and besides that, I never wanted to be in the public eye as ministers were.  I loved theology and religion, though, so after college, I went to seminary to study religion and move towards a doctorate in theology.  It was right in the middle of the Vietnam War, and I wrestled mightily with the automatic deferment that I received as a seminary student.  In the middle of all that, my fiancé broke up with me, and my world went swirling around.  In May, 1970, after the USA began to openly bomb in Cambodia and Laos, I joined a seminary movement that sought to get deferments from the draft taken away from ministers and seminary students.  The idea was to force churches and ministers to oppose the war.  I joined a small group of students who decided to drop out of seminary and challenge the draft-exempt status of church-related occupations. 

            To no one’s surprise, the draft boards were happy to have more fodder for the war, and I was drafted.  I knew that I was not going to be a soldier in such an unjust war, and I wrestled for several weeks about what to do.  It was either Canada, jail, or conscientious objector (CO). I felt like the CO was a lot like the draft-exempt status of ministers – it was an educated person’s way out of the war.  My friends Ed Loring and Harmon Wray helped me discern that the CO could be much more than that, and so finally I applied for it and got it.   Ironically, I did my two years’ service  as the manager and director of a halfway house for men getting out of prison in Nashville.  It changed my life, and later, Ed Loring again helped me to re-start my 7 year journey through seminary.  He was then on the faculty at Columbia Seminary, and I ended up going there and graduating in 1975, and then it was on to Norfolk.

            It has been quite a journey, and I thank my mother and God and Caroline and so many others for it.  Now, after 43 years, it’s on to the next phase, whatever that is!