A Particular Story

A year ago last June, my husband and I traveled to South Dakota to help celebrate the Centennial of one of the three churches I pastored back in the 1990s.

I had not been back in 14 years, though I had thought about them often since leaving.  They were a good parish, a farming community out on a prairie unfamiliar to me.  It was a gracious place to begin ministry, though sometimes I had critiqued myself, thinking that I had not done enough "big" things while I was there.

I wondered what it would be like, to see them again.  I wondered what the community would be like as well.  It's not so easy for rural communities these days:  with farms getting larger, towns get smaller.  I remembered the many funerals, the handful of new members and baptisms, and wondered what it would be like when I returned.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this church, still small, but teeming with children.  Some of them were the children of my former confirmation students.  Some were faces I didn't know.  There was a sense of hope and vitality, a sense of health.  Later on, someone told me that in this small congregation (membership is just under 200) there are 57 children in Sunday School this year.  The church attracts:  particularly young families.

Ever since that summer day, I've been thinking about this congregation, and about the sense of vitality that I found there.  I've been thinking about what makes a congregation resilient, able to bounce back when their are challenges rather than continue to contract.  I have also been considering that growing congregations are not all necessarily large:  there are growing congregations in every size.  I wondered if it was DNA or habits, or something else that mattered.

Here is what I came up with.

1.  This congregation sees each of their pastors as uniquely gifted, and uses each pastor's particular gifts.  Even mine.  So someone came up to me on the Sunday I visited and showed me a copy of a contemporary worship service I wrote while I was there.  They wanted me to know that they still use that service, although they had added to and expanded to what I first put together.  Every year they purchase a couple more copyrights to favorite songs.  Every year the book gets a little thicker.  They took the gift I offered them, and they made it their own.

2.  This congregation has necessarily become lay driven.  This reality is borne out of the challenge that they often got new and first-call pastors who did not stay very many years.  But because of that, they have become a lay-driven congregation.  I never had all of the ideas.  I was just one of the leaders, adding my vegetables to the soup.  I had the idea that we should help serve a meal to hungry people at "The Banquet", but there were plenty of other things that happened that had very little to do with me.

3.  This congregation is inter-generational by nature.  There is no nursery.  The children belong to the congregation, and everyone supported and looked out after them.  The largest service of the year was always Easter Sunrise, which the youth group planned and executed every year (no sermon).  I was also impressed when the leadership board decided that they should cash in some savings in order to build a lift.  They wanted their church basement to be handicap accessible.  The impetus for this move?  a child in the congregation who had Muscular Dystrophy.

And, most important....

4.  This congregation has a Particular Story.  Well, I suppose that every congregation has a Particular Story, a story that makes them who they are, whether everyone in the congregation even knows it or not.

I didn't learn the story for a long time, and I didn't learn it all at once.  I learned first about the cemetery four miles west of the church.  Then I would hear references to "The Pleasant Church."  Finally I learned that there had once been two churches -- the one in town that I knew, and a beautiful, old country church west of town, founded by Norwegian immigrants.

One terrible day the country church burned to the ground.  I don't know if there is anyone alive yet who remembers the story of the fire, but there were some people who remembered it still when I was pastor.  Their voices fell still when they told the story of the fire at their beloved church.

Both churches were still lively and bustling at the time; yet even so, the congregation made the decision not to rebuild, but to create a whole new congregation, together with the people of the church in town. The town church was re-named to reflect the belief that they were now a new community.

My telling does not do justice to the Particular Story of this congregation:  the hard work, the hope, the persistence, the joy.  It is a story of death and resurrection.  It is a story of what happens when the worst thing you can imagine happens -- and you find out that it is the not the worst thing that can happen to you.

Last fall, a house two blocks from my current congregation burned to the ground.  Almost everything was lost.  Our faith community, along with others,  took a door offering for the woman and her family.  When I talked to her on the phone, she said the fire was, "the worst blessing."  It was an odd thing to say, but I think I know what she meant.

A particular story.  That is what this congregation has.  It has a particular story of "the worst blessing."  It has a story that tells them that when the worst happens to them, it is not the worst that can happen to them.  It is a story of death by fire.  And it is a story of life from God.

"I see you out walking your dog in the morning...."

About twelve years ago, when I moved here, I thought I was moving from the claustrophobic microscope of small-town living to a relatively anonymous life in the big city. The retired couple who lived across from the parsonage used to greet me in the morning with words like these: "Your light usually goes on at about 7:00 in the morning, but it didn't come on until 7:30 today. Is everything okay?" One day, at the post office, one of the farmers said, "I saw you leave town the other day and I thought your car was going to turn left, but it turned right. Where'd you go?" (As I was opening my mouth and trying to form words, another farmer interrupted, "She doesn't have to tell you where she's going." Bless him.)

Don't get me wrong. I loved this town and its people. They were, in many ways, an extremely gracious parish, a lovely place for a first call pastor to get her start. They greeted me when I arrived at the parsonage, helped me to unload my car and then left me to unpack in private. They knocked before entering. I never found them in the parsonage without my permission. But I was unused to the feeling that I got that people pretty much knew where I was at all times, knew which house the pastor lived in, could see my car come from a good distance away.

So imagine my surprise when, shortly after I returned to what I thought was big-city life, I was getting tickets to a movie with a date and the teenage clerk blurted out, "Aren't you the new pastor at Brand X Lutheran Church?"

I run into parish members, community leaders and neighbors regularly at the grocery store, as well as the Big Store with the Red Circles and other places of interest. Once, after Good Friday Tenebrae services, I ran into a couple from church at the grocery store. We greeted each other silently, I leaned in and whispered, "I think it's all right to talk now."

But I measure most of all my lack of anonymity by the people who tell me, "I see you out walking your dog in the morning." Maybe it's because in this particular case, they see me, but I never see them. I am blithely going along, getting in exercise and bonding time with Scout, while unbeknownst to me, I Am Being Watched. They don't wave to me. I don't notice them. But people know I'm around, in the community. And they feel compelled to tell me, "I see you out walking your dog in the morning."

I'm enough of a believer in the priesthood of all believers that I don't believe that I'm a "sign of God's presence in the community." The truth is, we're all that: each and every one of us mostly anonymous Christians. We're all signs of God's presence in the community. And, like a lot of God's signs, they are mostly small or invisible. The pastor walking her dog. The young woman next door who works with child protection. The teenager helping younger children learn to read. The older couple who have opened their home to young adults.

You never know where we are. But we're God's people, and we're on a lot of streets.

An inelegant postscript:
actually, upon thinking about it, I think I am a sign of God's presence in the world -- in particular as a pastor. Here's how: when you see me, you know there must be a congregation around somewhere. You know that God has called me to serve God's people in the world. Sometimes I happen to be more visible because I'm wearing a collar, or I'm standing up in front. But I'm a small visible sign of the presence of God's people, the ones who have called me to lead them, provoke them, listen to them, and equip them.

My Last Day In South Dakota

I had really left two weeks before, on a Sunday afternoon. It was the middle of May. I preached my last sermon, a story sermon without notes, I remember. I stopped at an anniversary celebration for the retired pastor who lived in my community. And I drove, my car full of boxes (and one cat), to my new call in suburban Minneapolis. My parents had taken a car-full as well, and my mom had tried to help me organize and pack the possessions that had bred like mice in the parsonage during the last four years.

But I wasn't done yet. The moving truck was coming at the end of May. I had left some half-packed boxes throughout the two-story, five-bedroom house I had managed to fill up all by myself. So, on Sunday night two weeks later, I drove back to the prairie and walked back into my home.

My church secretary and my past church secretary both came over that night, to help me finish packing the rest of my boxes. I had started out with such aspirations to organize: books, music, dishes, clothes. It all made sense at first. Somewhere along the way, though, I had discovered items that didn't quite fit into my neat categories: "miscellaneous". Miscellaneous, it turned out, was my biggest category. Gifts, stationery, a cloth angel wall-hanging, candles, bric-a-brac, scripture verses, hand lotion, bath soaps -- after awhile many things became "miscellaneous."

Monday morning I was still working when the movers arrived, two earnest young men from the big city. They seemed bewildered to be here, as if they had taken a wrong turn and fallen off the edge of the world. One of them talked more than the other. He saw my grandmother's old piano in the corner and said, "That's staying here, isn't it?" "No, that's going," I answered. He saw my small television in another corner, and asked some question or another about a show I never watched. "I don't get that station," I replied. "What? You don't get cable?" He looked around and said, "I could never live in a place like this."

He didn't know the half of it. I didn't get cable; I also didn't get NBC; never got addicted to E.R., because it was not available on my television. And during blizzards, ABC went out too, so I was pretty much left with CBS and Public Television. And we did have blizzards. During blizzards I did jigsaw puzzles, caught up on paperwork (like parochial reports, conveniently due in January or early February), called people on the telephone, cross-stitched and watched the same movie over and over until I knew it by heart (no video store either). One year it was Strictly Ballroom; another it was Gigi. I think I watched Roman Holiday over and over one winter too. And of course, if the snow wasn't too bad, I could always walk over to the council president's house. They did have cable.

I had never seen professional movers at work before. They were experts at building boxes around furniture. Everything was going very quickly, as they emptied my bedroom (couldn't understand my love of antiques), the kitchen and the living room. I was furiously packing the last of the kitchen items while they worked. At one point the talkative mover asked me, "Are there ticks here? I think I got a tick!" I said that yes, there were ticks out here at this time of the year, and he shook his head again and said, "I could never live in a place like this."

I remembered the two summers my niece and nephew came out to stay with me for a week. One year they came at the same time; the next year they came separately. They had a great time at Vacation Bible School. The older children down the block came over and played with them and baby-sat while I did hospital and nursing home calls. I invited them all over for dinner one night and my neice cried and cried when they left. My nephew learned to ride a bike; a family loaned him their smallest one for the week he stayed with me. And my neice chased a cat under the porch and -- you guessed it -- got a tick.

Lunchtime drew near, and my movers asked where they could get a hamburger. In the next town, ten miles away, I told them. "No restaurants here?" they asked. No. No restaurant, no grocery store, no gas station. I told them I would drive down and pick up a couple burgers for them. "I could never live in a place like this," the young mover said, yet again.

Almost four years before, on a hot day in the middle of July, I had driven into town, following the pick up trucks (and a U-Haul) driven by the council presidents of two of my congregations. Between us, we carried all of my possessions. Shortly after we left Watertown, they seemed to speed up and I had a hard time keeping up with them. They ran a stop sign just east of a small town called Hazel. Following them, I ran the stop sign too, fearing I would not find my way if I lost sight of them. (Later on, I found out that they were laughing, and one of them said, "Our pastor broke the law." to which the other replied, "at least she slowed down.")

Perhaps I was thinking, "I could never live in a place like this," as we turned on to the street which would eventually turn in to this small town, home to (as the sign said) 90 people (although others thought the correct number was 63). As our small caravan of cars approached the parsonage, it seemed as if everyone in the whole parish was there, waiting for me.

That's why they ran the stop sign. They were late.

They were making barbeques (South Dakota for "sloppy joes") and serving chips and lemonade, and of course bars. And they made moving into a party. They had my furniture and my possessions unloaded and in the house in an hour. And then they wisely left me to get acquainted with my new home. I did hear later, that one man had commented to his wife as they were leaving, that he felt sorry for me living all alone in this great big house with hardly any furniture.

Perhaps he was thinking, "How can she live in a place like this?"

And now, almost four years later, I was leaving. I was ready to go to a place where I could be anonymous, at least sometimes. I was ready to go to a place where I could have Chinese food for lunch, and hop right over to the nearest bookstore. I was ready to go to a place where the grocery store was five minutes away, where I didn't have to do jigsaw puzzles and cross-stitch during blizzards, and watch endless marathons of Gigi. Really, I was ready to go.

How could I have lived in a place like this?

But then there was my first Easter there. It was my birthday, and as I walked down the steps to the Easter breakfast, I saw that they had gotten a cake, and that there were cards and presents. There were the Christmas programs every year, and the gifts they left for each other under the tree. There was the surprise party they threw for my 40th birthday, and there were all the pickles and jams and sweet corn and green beans and even a couple of pheasants, once (but that's another story).

It was a lonely day, just me and the movers. I didn't run into anyone from the church. After all, I had already officially left. But every once in awhile I had to go upstairs, to the second floor, and have a good cry.

I was ready to go -- really I was. I was a big-city girl, returning to her roots. I had never lived in a place like this. Sure, my mother was from rural Minnesota, but that was different: trust me. A small town of 4,000 is much different than a small town of 63. And I had only visited there. I had a been a fish-out-of-water for four years, and now I was going home. That's what one of the council presidents had said. "You're going home."

"I could never live in a place like this," I heard the young mover say, again.

In my mind, I replied, "you never know."

P.S. this is a draft of something I'd like to continue working on. I'd appreciate feedback.

Winners and Losers

Lately I've been thinking about Pastor Arlo, the retired pastor who was a member of my first parish our in rural South Dakota. He was a member of Our Saviors, a pretty little country church with its own cemetery: one of three churches in my parish. He had been a basketball star in high school. He graduated from high school, married and went into farming, like so many others of his era. Then in the late 1950s, he went to college and then to seminary. He spent his entire ministry serving two rural parishes, in Platte, Nebraska and in New Effington, South Dakota.

After he retired, he served as the interim pastor at the churches were he grew up. He held his last service the week before I arrived. He announced to all of the churches that he would not do any pastoral ministry: no baptisms, no funerals, no weddings. From now on, he said, they would have a new pastor. At the time, I don't think I realized the magnitude of his gift, or his sacrifice.

My second day of ministry, I got a phone call from a funeral home. One of the members of my parish had died. I remembered that we had prayed for him on Sunday, and I had checked in on him at the hospital when I was in town getting my checking account. This family had not been in church on Sunday and had not heard Pastor Arlo's announcement. They wanted him to be involved in the funeral service in some way. What should I do? I didn't want to turn down their request to include a beloved pastor, and someone they had known since childhood, as well.

As it turned out, I didn't have to do anything. When they called him, he said "No." And that's what he always said, every time someone asked him to help with a funeral. He was always available if I wanted him to help -- once I lost my voice due to a bad cold, and he offered to help with the services. And he preached and presided for me when I was on vacation, if he was available.

Sometimes he would come to my office and ask me questions about the changes in the church: why did we have Passion Sunday now instead of Palm Sunday? What is the significance of the "imposition of ashes"? What's the difference between the Christ Candle and the "Paschal Candle" we are supposed to use now? All these things were new to him.

Sometimes he would come to my office just to make copies to send to Medicare. He told me that his doctor told him he wasn't supposed to drink cofffee any more. He said that in one small community he served, he saw what happened when a retired pastor stayed in the community. Every time there was a special event, a baptism, a funeral, a wedding, they asked the former pastor. "That young man never really got to serve his people," he said. "That's wrong."

He was unfailingly supportive of my ministry. If he had questions regarding women in ministry, I never knew about it. Often he would take the time to comment on something from a sermon he and his wife had enjoyed. He supported me publicly in congregational meetings.

I described him once as a "gracious pietist." He was a tall man, but he always walked with a little stoop, as if he were bending over to hear you a little better. He never gave advice unless he was asked, but when asked his advice was always sound, and always with the gospel -- and the people -- in mind.

With our ears to the world and its values, we often hear about "winners" and "losers." If you want to "win," they say, you need to get a plan and stay on it. You need to buy your home early so that it will appreciate in value. You need to start putting away money when you are 18 or 22, and you need to look at every transaction as a financial one. There are no other values to look at, and if you think so, then you are one of the "losers".

Should Pastor Arlo have left the farm and gone to college and seminary? Was he a "winner" or a "loser"? When he died in 2005, he wasn't a rich man, as the "winners" define wealth. He didn't own a home until he retired. He served out in prairie towns, where often pastors are reluctant to go these days, where towns are dying now. He was a faithful pastor in an age when many people decry religion as bunk.

As for me, if I can tune out the noise long enough, I think I can hear the music of a still small voice, "Well done, good and faithful servant."