Actually, I'm setting myself up with that title-- I doubt I can summarize all the reasons, all the emotions and struggles of many years that led to that life-changing decision of 2009. But as part of moving on, let me try.
A friend of mine once said that if you're in the ordained ministry and have never once thought of leaving it, you're in serious denial. Quite honestly, I thought about leaving it many, many times from the very beginning. It was in the last two years that it became more and more imperative, and unavoidably clear to me that I would not retire from the United Methodist ordained ministry. A lot of things happened. 2007 was a year of many, many deaths in my church. Not that I hadn't had that many funerals in one year before, but in 2007 there were deaths that were sudden and very unexpected. The year started off with a man in his forties dying of blood clots moving from his legs to his heart. A man I'd come to feel close to in about six weeks of pastoral visits to the hospital. He was an outsider, but he embraced me as his pastor, his confidante. He made me feel like what I did mattered. After that, we lost some dear pillars of the church, again, suddenly. There were accidents, a suicide, and cancer. Just when I thought I could not take any more tragedy, my friend Karen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That was a hard hit-- I knew that story never ends well. I didn't feel up to the challenge. Especially the challenge of being the pastor having to comfort everyon else through this loss while having my own heart break.
Death and grief have a way of stripping away all pretenses from your eyes, like scales falling away. Maybe it's like cataract surgery. Honesty becomes essential. I hungered for REAL, and encountered it in a devastating way through those last days with Karen. And I saw more to my job than I cared to see.
A pastor has no job description, no contract that we sign agreeing to certain hours and duties. It is wide open, and therefore, you have as many supervisors as you have members of your church. All with different agendas, different needs, and therefore different images of what a pastor should do. A pastor is expected to be an exceptional preacher, inspiring worship leader, a crisis counselor, grief counselor, Bible scholar, administrator, conflict resolution expert, and mind reader. A pastor is expected to know when people need a phone call or a visit, without anyone telling them. A pastor is expected to relate to little kids, youth, young adults and old people all equally well, and to know how to reach all of them in their interests and entertain them. They are on call 24/7. They are supposed to be always available, day or night. They are expected to be calm in every situation. They are expected to inspire new members to come in all the time, particularly young families, but do that without upsetting the older people.
The pastor's family is always on display. They are not supposed to have any problems, and when I was growing up, the pastor's wife was suppposed to be fulltime assistant to her husband without pay. It's preferable if she plays the piano, is willing to be president of the UMW, keep an immaculate house just in case a parishioner shows up unannounced, lead Bible Studies at the church, and be the perfect mother. She is expected to make the pastor look good.
But the pastor is not allowed to have friends, unless they are other clergy. If the pastor has friends in the congregation, they are accused of having favorites, and the pastor is expected to love everyone equally. They are supposed to attend all the sports games at the school, all the musical programs, and still visit everyone in the nursing home. They are not supposed to ever get angry or depressed. People rarely ask the pastor how they're doing and really want to know, but everyone is surprised when a pastor gets sick or suffers a crisis that makes the incapable of doing their job. Pastors don't trust other pastors, especially in the UMC, because they could one day be their D.S. And if a D.S. knows some weakness of yours, they can send you to a backwoods church where no one else wants to go.
A pastor, when they are ordained in the UMC, agrees to go wherever they are sent "without reservation." Which means that a pastor cannot ever choose where they want to live, how much money they want to make, or what schools their children will attend. They cannot choose what house they will live in. When you live in a parsonage, you cannot make decisions about the house you live in. You have to humbly make your requests to a committee of people that generally think that a pastor should live in poverty, it's part of the call. The general value of the pastor him or herself is called into question. Is she worth a new carpet? Does she really need pipes that don't leak? Can't we just patch that linoleum in the kitchen that was put down in 1960? Back East, the church even furnished the parsonage, you didn't have your own. And the parsonages were usually furnished with pieces from parshioner's basements-- the furniture that was not good enough for their houses was somehow fine for the pastor's house. It's that poverty thing again. Besides, a pastor should not be concerned with such worldly things as furniture that matches.
My father didn't want me to be a pastor, and for a long time I was angry about that. Now I understand. He didn't want me to experience the pain that he had. It is acceptable to freely and sometimes brutally criticize the pastor. My oldest brother used to say that people went to work and got dehumanized by their own bosses, so they'd come to church and take it out on the pastor. Things people wouldn't say to their worst enemy was ok to say to the pastor-- after all, they're supposed to be so holy that they can take anything. They can be criticized about everything from the kind of car the pastor drives, what he/she wears, what kind of music they like, how they keep the house, what restaurants she/he goes to, who they're friends with, how they raise their children, how many times they visit the nursing home, what hymns they choose and how many, how fat or thin they are, etc. It's all free game.
My father experienced it, and inevitably so did I. That person who for some reason unknown even to them, hates the pastor. So they openly criticize the pastor in meetings, behind her back, or block any efforts they make to get something done. And others, even those who disagree, choose not to speak up. The pastor is on his own. One person can bring down a pastor, much less a church. I've seen it happen again and again.
You may think I exaagerate these things. I grew up in the Church as a pastor's kid and lived in parsonages all my life. I saw my father and mother go off into a room and lock the door to "dialogue" about things that were happening in the church that they wanted to protect me from knowing. I saw my father suffer great pain at the hands of parishioners who decided he wasn't Christian enough, didn't bring in enough new members, or thought he was soft. I saw my mother suffer alone in the midst of ongoing conflicts in the church without a friend she could confide in. I felt the tension of making Dad look good to his parishioners and all four of us kids couldn't live up to the ideals of the perfect kid.
I went into it because I was called into it. I went through much of the same things that my father went through and more. I ran into conflict with the Church of Scientology-- who'da thunk? I had an SPRC committee ask me to pay them for the Sunday I missed while being bedridden during my pregnancy when I was bleeding and I was interrogated as to how much time I expected to spend with this coming baby and would it interfere with my church work? I served a church where my predecssor had an affair with a parishioner and the church was angry that he was removed, and took that anger out on me and my co-pastor husband. More than once I was sent to a parish where I made less than a full-time salary and had to leave that situation to avoid bankruptcy. I even lived in a parsonage that had snakes in the living room sometimes.
I still believe God called me into ministry back in 1989-- the experience was undeniable. I pray that my work was fruitful and inspired by God. But I also believe that God called me to a different form of ministry, that God led me out of the Church. My years in the Church are still a huge part of who I am, and I hope to write more about the good parts, the good people and the images of God at work that I did experience. I often used to joke that it was hard to be a pastor and a Christian at the same time. But I knew it wasn't a joke. I finally had to get out of it in order to save my own soul, my own relationship with God. In the last couple of years I knew it was killing me. It's an impossible job.
When I left I didn't know if I could ever be a part of any church, but I know that my relationship with God is too much a part of me to be discarded. I doubt I can be a United Methodist again, but I am a child of God, and I will continue to allow God to lead me in ways that I can serve God and nurture my faith in ways that give life. If I'd stayed, I'd be bitter. I'm not bitter. I'm ready to live honestly and generously and fully.
It's a new year.
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