It’s been almost 2 months since I wasn’t allowed to stay at my former church of almost 11 years. It’s been difficult. I’ve been writing about it since early October but I don’t know when I’ll finish. So taking a break from writing my story so that I could let other ideas out while that work is in progress.
One of the phrases I wanted to incorporate into my pastoral identity when I first became a pastor was borrowed from Eugene Peterson; I did not want to be a pastor “in a hurry.” The phrase is a reminder that pastoral work is slow in a culture that expects immediate results. Jesus likens it to the growth of plants/trees and bearing fruit. Peterson is reminding pastors that growth is gradual and barely perceptible; so as a pastor, I needed to curb my need to see things work in the lives of those in my care. So I’ve repeated this to myself often in my years as a pastor because slow change is frustrating.
When someone repeatedly falls into the same rut over and over, it’s tempting to long for a quick fix instead of God’s gradual process. But at present, that sheep is me.
During the first weeks, my heart was restless (and in some ways it still is). I didn’t want to be in this in-between space. I met with various pastors and ministers. I wanted to visit all the churches and settle on one sooner than later. I didn’t like being “spiritually homeless.” My hurry in all of this got me stuck again. Steph had to help me out. She had a better handle on me than I had of myself. As a family, we weren’t ready to rush into anything. We needed space. There was still work to be done in me, and prematurely getting tangled in another church would be a distraction from the soul work that I needed to attend to. How much did I want to avoid that work!
I still do… but being aware of it, I talk myself back into that work. Or I stop the train of thoughts that distract me from this work and lead me to dream about a false future. I know that I still need to wrestle with how much the pastoral vocation has merged with my sense of self. I don’t want it to take long but I have to submit to the reality that I have no idea how the Spirit will work. I feel like Eustace trying to peel off his own dragon scales before Aslan; “You will have to let me undress you,” he says.
One reality I’m struggling to accept is that I am no longer a pastor. It doesn’t mean, “never again,” but I need to embrace the possible finality of it. If I merely consider it as “not now,” a part of me will always reside in an imagined future and I won’t be fully present to what God is doing in me now. This is a longing in me that I need to “put to death” so I can attend to my soul in the present. I also need to let this go for the sake of my family. I recognize that insisting on being a pastor or even pastor-adjacent complicates my family’s situation. I’m asking, What is God trying to show me in the wilderness?
The current most tempting distraction to being present to myself is starting my own church. I’ve played with the idea before and when I revisit the idea, I think the warning I gave myself is still true. At the present, entertaining the idea of starting the church is a distraction. It’s striving for a future that keeps me from the now. I don’t want church planting to keep me from attending to my soul. I don’t want to have afternoons dreaming about some possible future… some salve to my present pain… to keep me from working through that pain. It would be an imagined “quick fix” that won’t be a fix at all.