This time last year, I was anxiously awaiting the final say on whether I’d be hired as a campus minister (I wasn’t really sure until late July, and even then there was some ambiguity as to the length of my service). Anxious partly because this seemed like the only ministry work that I seemed likely to find up in my part of the rural mountains.
That uncertainty has returned. Do I, as suggested by a friend’s father, try to break into higher ed administration (as is the natural state of things with my family), committing myself to some sort of novel bi-vocational ministry that would likely not entail ordination? I have been contemplating the future of liberal protestant ministry, and wondering whether it is a return to the bi-vocational ministry of our non-conformist forefathers. But facing the reality is something different, especially as I watch so many friends receive their stoles. The polity of the UCC requires ordination into a call. My committee did not immediately recognize serving as a campus minister for a group with whom we were not covenantally tied as ordainable, and for financial reasons I chose not to push back on that understanding. So here we are.
But before that, a realization about this past year:
One reason I have been hesitant to pursue hospital chaplaincy is that I need a balance and a big picture to grow, learn and be satisfied. I found during my clinical pastoral education that I would quickly grow bored exercising only one set of skills. The campus ministry I served this year came from a very democratic tradition, and so I was carried where the students led. And, this year, a year of transition for them and the ministry, that was a very safe place. As a result, I found myself again in something of a box. While I loved working with the students, the ministry’s activities were not diverse enough for me to fit in; my strength has always been connecting disparate parts to make a whole, but there were no disparate parts, so I was trying to mentor the group members on the same things all year. And neither of us benefitted from that arrangement. It’s hard to draw out themes and connect dots without some continuity and variety, and yet that’s the way that I teach. I tried to create a space with more variety for the first few months, and to reach out to other campus ministries, but that’s just not where we were. It’s also a reminder that the terms of interim ministry need to be settled amongst all stakeholders up front. For various reasons, that did not happen this year, and that affected our ability to use the unique opportunity of interim ministry effectively. Rather than planning out an orientational shift or addressing the specific concerns that were needed to get from point A to point B, we started in a steady state, carrying momentum from the previous year, and waited for that steam to expire before coming to terms with the necessary adjustments. Interim ministry can be such a wonderful chance to understand identity without the burden of history and offense when done right, that it was a disappointment to waste the chance.
For me, personally, too, it was a reminder that a double context-shift might be too much. I am not a Baptist. I am UCC. And I am not from a small town in North Carolina. I’m from Iowa, raised by New Englanders and trained in Boston and New Haven. I think a move to a more urban-dominated Baptist chaplaincy, or a more rural UCC chaplaincy, would have been an adjustment that was possible for me, jumping from an urban UCC setting to a rural Baptist setting was difficult for me and for the students. I have always believed that ministry has a setting, a time and a place, and this was a reminder that bringing God into different times and places requires a mental and attitudinal flexibility that takes time to achieve. If I am to stay in this place long-term, I will need to understand what God needs me to be here. And that’s still hard and unfamiliar.
More to come as I process this past year and reflect on more general lessons for the future.