Ministry. In a lot of ways it’s a thankless job. No matter how good of a minister you are, there will always be somebody who dislikes you. There always seems to be a line of parishioners who think they can do your job better, and they remind you of it, from the returned bulletins grammatically corrected to complaints about mistakes during the liturgy. Even if you try sticking to a 40 hour work week, people will call you at home, get you out of bed, or want you to come home from vacation early. And best of all, there are those who assume you sit at your desk playing solitaire all day. If you develop friendships with some of your parishioners, you always have to be careful about boundaries. The upside, of course, is that you are able to touch people’s lives, help them through struggles and rejoice with them as they celebrate. Ministers give people hope, and that by itself makes it worthwhile.
One of the most wonderful side-effects of ministry to me, though, is the friendships with colleagues: those people who know all too well what you’re going through. These people know you in a way that even your spouse may not. We got a taste of this at our church in Dallas. It has a large staff and in the five years that Stephen worked there, we developed a deep appreciation for the fierce loyalty that group of colleagues exhibited. No matter what complaints parishioners had, they had each others’ backs. They vented to each other, pastored one another, sometimes corrected and took each other to task but they always put forth a unified front. If as a parishioner you went to a church employee to complain about a different employee, you had to prepare yourself for the possibility of an ass-chewing. They trusted one another and they stuck together.
When Stephen started seminary, it was my hope that he would begin developing relationships like that with people that would soon be dispersed all over the country. Networking, yes, but more than that, really. I could visualize that at some future conference or convention, Stephen will spot an old classmate, shout his or her name across the room, greet that person with a big hug and spend the rest of the time chatting in a corner, catching up, sharing the good and the bad, and plotting future partnerships. He is being inducted into a fraternal order of sorts and the outcome is the mother of all “good ole’ boy” networks. That phrase usually has a negative connotation, but I think that’s a shame. I am not talking about shady backroom deals and covering up wrongdoings. But tasks are so much more easily and enjoyably accomplished when they are shared with friends.
I am learning, however, that not everybody has this view of clergy life and certainly do not value it. Unfortunately dissention seems to creep in here at the old seminario and it makes me quite sad. Instead of one day greeting old friends with a smile and a hug, I worry that it will be a simple head nod from across a crowded room, or even worse, a turn quickly and look the other way, hoping to not have to acknowledge that other person. I don’t know if it’s simply that some seminarians dislike one another or that they just don’t value their time here and appreciate the opportunity that is right in front of them. I can’t help but assume that some people have never experienced relationships like what we had in Dallas. If they had, then they’d surely know better!
More worrisome to me than leaving here without a giant group of friends is what it implies about the future of church dynamics. If I could give one piece of advice to my friends who are graduating and looking for their first church it is this: find a rector that you could see yourself being friends with, a church secretary who appreciates your sense of humor, and a children’s minister who will go on road trips with you. If you can’t find that, then who will save your neck when the altar guild is on a head hunt and who will save your soul when you are in your darkest hour?
