Hi all,
I apologize for my long absence. Between visiting home, attending a conference, my van self-destructing, and going camping with my lovely wife, children, and dog (it’s amazing what you can fit into a tiny two door Prelude), I haven’t had time for personal writing. I have been busy reflecting though. As part of entrance into a new seminary and rebooting my candidacy process for ordination in a different denomination I have had to write a general overview of my life – family of origin, faith experience, sense of call, etc. Eventually, I’ll get to be interviewed by several groups of total strangers who’ll ask me to dump my innards on the table so they can poke through them in greater detail. No worries though, I’ve had a zipper surgically grafted to my stomach.
Since I've got nothing else and in the interests of posting something, rather than nothing, here it is.
MY LIFE IN A MUSTARD SEED:
Three generations of my middle class family faithfully attended a large 3000 member Methodist church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Church was just something we did, we never discussed it or God outside of “it’s time to get in the car” on Sunday. I was nine when I had my first powerful sense of God’s presence, while hiking alone on my great-grandparents farm in the other-worldly mountains of southeastern Kentucky. I was suddenly overwhelmed with beauty and an intimate sense of God’s loving presence. That moment was my first awareness of God’s still quiet voice calling me into relationship, with a God both infinitely beyond and infinitely present in all of life.
My father had a daughter from a previous marriage, who lived with her grandmother, so I saw her only every other weekend. She was ten years my elder and the first to introduce me to the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus. It had simply not occurred to me before. She didn’t push me for a decision; she just shared the joy and excitement she was experiencing. I liked what she described, but didn’t think much of it when she wasn’t around.
Eventually these two experiences came together at a Christian camp. One night after our cabin leader had spoken passionately about God wanting to be our friend I made the conscious decision to “let Jesus into my heart”.
In Junior high I began to take faith more seriously. We had roughly 100 youth split between Jr & Sr high and each group had a youth council elected by the students. Our youth minister asked me to run for the Jr high president position, but I felt insecure and inadequate so I fervently declined. Come election day I was shocked and annoyed to find my name on the ballot and even more surprised when I was elected. Accepting the position out of a sense of obligation, there was little sense of call from God, but I did recognize a call from the community and worked hard to live up to their confidence. I continued to serve on the youth council until I went to college.
Several years later, the youth minister who pushed me into leadership left for another church and a new pastor came. It was then that I was surprised to hear some of the other youth talk about how much better they liked the new minister because he didn’t play favorites. I didn’t know our old minister favored some over others, probably because I was one of the favored ones. It bothered me that people were being left out and that I was completely unaware of it. How easy it is to be blind when you’re on the “inside”. Our new youth minister showed me that opening our eyes and pushing our boundaries always requires effort and can often be unpleasant, but it’s essential if we as a community are to be the Body of Christ.
I vaguely recall the idea of pursuing ordination coming up in middle school, but I didn’t take it seriously until high school. With the encouragement of my closest friends, I began meeting our youth minister for breakfast once a week for several months to go through a study on considering the ministry. I came out of this experience with mixed feelings. Although I began to sense a call to ordination, I had a fear of preaching and leading worship. But there were other ministry opportunities, so I forged ahead.
Telling my parents about pursing the ministry initiated an unexpected reaction. My mother declared in no uncertain terms that ministry was for emotional parasites and that if I went that route I’d receive no help whatsoever towards college. I was stunned. There was no discussing it with her, so I dropped the subject and went to college to study psychology. Slowly, I was able to get an idea of where her vehement feelings towards ministry came from. She had been raised in a fundamentalist church, where she came to feel that to take religion seriously was to become judgmental, inflexible, and inherently hypocritical. At first I tried to change her mind. Unsurprisingly, that went poorly. I finally realized that her feelings where her own and that it wasn’t my responsibility to change her. Still, I knew I was only prolonging the inevitable confrontation.
All thoughts of seminary however, where soon to be obscured by a very bad year. In the first six months all three of my remaining grandparents died. Over the course of the rest of the year my extended family fractured over old hurts, my fiancé and I broke it off, I flunked out of school, gained forty pounds, and my cat of sixteen years died. It may seem silly, but the death of my cat was the last straw; it was then that I shook my fist at God screaming my anger and disappointment.
Over the years my grandparents battled cancer I had never prayed harder. As one by one they died my faith came undone. My grandfather was the last to go. I was fortunate to be very close to all my grandparents, but I particularly looked up to him. And yet, I had never told him I loved him. Those words weren’t spoken in my family. When I missed the chance with my first grandmother I vowed to tell the others. But I couldn’t speak the words before my second grandmother died. The day before my grandfather’s birthday I finally had worked myself up to tell him. His nursing home was just five minutes down the road. I was literally half out the door when the phone rang to notify us of his death. I was devastated. Intellectually I knew that faith was more than putting in spiritual “credit” and getting back what you ask for; but if my grandfather had to die, couldn’t God have held him ten minutes longer? That’s all the time I needed to say “I love you.”
At the time I focused most my anger on myself for being too afraid to say the words earlier. It wasn’t until my cat was put to sleep that the dam finally broke. Anger, betrayal, confusion, guilt, fear; all the conflicting feelings of that year poured out threatening to drown me until I willed the breach shut and tucked the them back behind a smile.
After a year I returned to collage switching schools and majors, going from psychology to philosophy. I was looking for answers, desperately needing to know what was True – with a capital T. It didn’t work, at least not the way I’d hoped. I wanted something solid, a logical, indisputable foundation to build upon. Instead, I found more questions. At one point I began to fear for my sanity. Mind racing through sleepless nights trying to force an answer. Trying to prove once and for all that there was or wasn’t a God. I had never felt so alone. One night I had a dream that I was a spacewalking astronaut. Connected to my spacecraft by a tether, I reached out and set a knife to it. I vividly remember feeling that the spacecraft was my only way home. Yet, in the dream I cut the cord and drifted away. I woke up covered in sweat, convinced I was going to hell.
To return to what had been safe or cut the ties and go into the darkness? I consciously chose the unknown. That decision was pure grace. Years later, I realized that in that moment, when God felt most distant, God was deeply present. Not that God was more present then than any other time, but that in the exhaustion from searching for answers my natural barriers were down, allowing God to act within me without any awareness or understanding on my part. This was the beginning of the stripping of my pious pretensions towards God, and the dawning realizations that not only can God handle our anger and doubt, but desires our relationship to be completely open and real.
It was during this time of searching that an old friend from high school invited me to his church’s college fellowship. It was there that I was given a safe place to rage and weep. They lived out God’s presence and gave me my first awareness of the extraordinary spaciousness of God’s grace. I cannot over emphasize the value of this group, who appropriately enough called themselves “the Koinonia”. They were one of the best models I’ve experienced of intentional Christian Community.
Finally, I made what felt like a second leap of faith, which had little in common with the first. When I was ten at camp it made sense, there was no fear and trembling, it was as easy as 1+2=3. The second time it made no sense at all. There’s nothing logical about Jesus Christ fully human, fully God. Rational argument fly’s in the face of 1+2 = One!
I was scared again, not of going to hell this time, but of giving up and checking my brain at the door. Yet, at the same time as I worried about the rational defensibility of Christianities central tenets, I was attracted by their non-sense. When I was willing to live in the tension that the beliefs we confess create, I was pushed beyond the boundaries of reason and language to a truth that could not be spoken, it could only be experienced. So in the hope that faith was more than a figment of my imagination, I took the plunge a second time, leaping with reticence into the mystery of faith. I was a little surprised to find myself safely caught.
Since then I have found that my faith journey periodically requires these leaps. Like a trapeze act, I must let go of what is sure and leap towards what is hoped for. It’s not gotten noticeably easier, although I am beginning to trust my partner more.
Eventually, I graduated with a degree in philosophy, married my best friend Heather, and with the support and encouragement of my pastor, church, and friends went to seminary. It was hard on my mom. She still would have preferred if I had done just about anything else, but surprised me by affirming my right to make my own choices. My father, thought I had gifts for ministry, but worried that I would be overly attached to the pain of others and become burned out. He was right.
Over the course of the next five years of seminary I attended classes, took Field Education positions at a nursing home, an inner city church, a small town church, and did a unit of CPE at University Hospital, while also working several part-time jobs. Although I enjoyed most of the academics and the field education, I soon found myself once again fighting depression.
Before beginning seminary I had taken the required psychological evaluation, at which the psychologist affirmed the ministry as a good choice, but warned that I may be suffering from depression. I didn’t want to hear that. I’m from a thoroughly rugged-individualist family, we help other people, we don’t ask for help. I assumed that my periods of profound lack of energy and difficulty focusing where due to laziness on my part and that the accompanying feelings of dread and immanent failure where a reasonable response to my lack of productivity. Therefore, I simply intended to work harder.
Ignoring a psychologist is easy. Ignoring yourself is not. Although there were professors, supervisors, and fellow students who were also struggling with depression or who had dealt with it in the past, I had great difficulty asking for their help. It wasn’t until I realized that my marriage was suffering that I finally acknowledge that I had a serious problem that couldn’t be “fixed” on my own. With no health insurance, I went to a free clinic, which was less helpful than I’d hoped. I saw a clinical sociologist, but without a shared spiritual language I felt a fundamental disconnect in our conversations. I eventually gave in to taking medication, which also proved frustrating. I never saw the same intern twice. The medications side-effects were often unpleasant; the lack of tangible progress was maddening. Eventually, I once again flunked out of school. Now I was very confused, if God wanted me to be ordained, then why didn’t God help me “beat” the depression? I seemed to be going in the wrong direction. The sense of failure was overwhelming.
Still hoping I was called to ministry, we moved back to my wife’s home town of Cincinnati where I took a position as a Director of Education and began seeing a doctor for depression. I began my new job feeling like “damaged goods” and feeling very grateful that they were giving me a chance.
Unfortunately, the congregation was largely divided and bitter. Adults were often tying to triangle me into taking sides against the co-pastors and/or other factions, and many of the staff members gave off an aura of frustration and negativity. After two years, I was approached by another DCE whom I’d worked with on occasion, about interviewing for the youth director position at her church. At the time I’d been putting in 60 to 70 hours a week and feeling very frustrated with the over work and culture of blame, but there were also many good reasons to stay. After prayerful struggle I decided to interview. I was completely honest with the staff about my depression, but they recommended I not mention it when I interviewed with the lay committee. That should have made me think twice.
The new position had much that was good about it, but I was surprised by the cynicism of the youth. I soon learned that I was the 5th youth director they’d had in six years, and they weren’t confident I’d stick around. I assured them that I would and I meant it, but within a year the DCE, who had invited me to apply, decided that I wasn’t cut out for youth ministry after all and suggested I leave. I resisted half-heartedly, but in inside I was already defeated. I cannot begin to explain how devastating this was. In the irrationalism of depression this was a confirmation of my worst fears. I felt I had let everyone down, the youth who were just beginning to open up, the adult advisors who were willing to fight for me, my family who needed me to provide for them, and even the staff who were “suggesting” I leave. I felt worthless and hopeless.
Friends from seminary suggested churches to apply at, parents at the church I’d worked for previously asked me to come back, but I was done with ministry. For twenty years I’d thought I’d be serving in the church and now I was at a loss for what to do. I went through the stages of grieving, especially anger. I had casually studied other religions for years, but after leaving the church I began to seriously look into them, particularly Buddhism. I think a part of me was unconsciously giving God an ultimatum, “fix my life God or I’m switching teams” – not particularly mature or noble, but there it was.
I began applying for every non-profit social justice job I could find. I tried very hard to create another dream to throw myself into, but I couldn’t get an interview. One day my wife suggested I read Jonah (a not so subtle hint). By that time several other things had changed. My wife and I had begun going to therapy together, I had found a new doctor who aggressively worked with my therapist to find a medication that seemed to help, and we decided to begin church hunting. When in Louisville I’d had a field ed. position at a Lutheran church, and my wife and I had discovered that we found the more liturgical and sacramental worship deeply meaningful. So we began visiting Lutheran and Episcopalian churches. Serendipitously, our therapist turned out to also be a Lutheran pastor, who when asked recommended the church of a friend of his that he thought we’d like. He was right. Trinity Lutheran was across town, but going there was like coming home. During worship, to my surprise and embarrassment, I cried more in the first few months than I had in years.
It was the life of the community of faith that tangibly expressed God’s loving presence that provided the opportunity for deep healing for my wife and me. In time I was able to stop blaming both others and myself, realistically accept my own complicity, reevaluate how I imagined ministry, and begin to trust my instincts again. Ever since I accepted that I had depression I had looked forward to the day when I’d “beat it”, put it behind me, and minister out of my new found “strength”. Now I’ve come to realize that my greatest strength can also be my greatest weakness. But thankfully God works in and through weakness. To some degree I may always be a perfectionistic, self-doubting, mess. But that’s ok, it’s a constant reminder that I must throw myself wholly on the grace of God if I’m to live well and bear fruit.
I had also given a great deal of thought to my vocation and finally realized that I would find all of the things I disliked about the church wherever I went, they’re just part of the human condition. Making some peace with my own brokenness helped me begin to make peace with others. I also realized that all of the things that I find most valuable and meaningful are expressed best or only in and through the Body of Christ. As I began to get involved at our new church and several people asked if I’d considered ministry I had to laugh. When Seth, our intern from Trinity Seminary, invited me up to visit the campus I felt that it was where I needed to be.
My strengths are in pastoral care, interpersonal relationships and communication. I have a deep concern for worship, the sacraments, spiritual formation, and community outreach. It’s ironic that worship, which scared me most about ministry, has become the area I feel is most important. I have a love for church history and theology that I want to be able to celebrate while translating into the present and future. Which leads me to a host of questions about just what is “the Church” and how are we to be relevant, life-giving, and transformative in a world very much in need?
I particularly need work in the areas of time management, organization, and administration. Unfortunately, I also bring a nagging perfectionism and a general frustration with being a mere mortal. However, I have written a resignation from Godhood, and although I still find myself wandering back to the office, I have become somewhat more realistic in my personal expectations.
As for after seminary, I now see myself probably pursuing a solo pastorate, possibly in a small town. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to be open to surprises.
