Читать книгу All Hands Stand By to Repel Boarders - Cordell Strug - Страница 9

That we would serve as co-pastors in the same parish was not something my wife and I planned or asked for. In fact, the first interviews we had in the Red River Valley Synod were in neighboring parishes. One interview fell through, so Bishop Lohr told us to turn down the other and he would keep trying to place us. Once we had served together for so many years, however, we were unwilling to give up the advantages this gave us; so, when we looked for a new call, we looked together for one. Thus, all the years we served as pastors we served together.

That shared service will not make many explicit appearances in these memories, tales, and reflections. The reader should assume it as background, but I will not be discussing it much. This will, no doubt, make these fragments even more distorted than faulty memory and deliberate alteration have already made them.

Caveat Lector.

However, I thought it might be useful to set down the advantages we found in this arrangement and some of the principles we tried to live and work by. This might also throw some light on my reticence.

The great advantage is time: you get the time to work on your sermon because someone else is doing the visiting that week; you get time to make those visits next week because someone else will be doing that week’s sermon. Time, and more than time—it’s a rare gift for a serving pastor to hear someone else preach regularly.

Also, if there’s a funeral on Friday and a wedding on Saturday with Sunday still to come—and sometimes more—at least you won’t be burdened with all of them. (What it’s like to find the words for a young person’s burial in the morning, then the words for a happy couple’s wedding a few hours later, is simply beyond telling.)

We set our week and our tasks by who would prepare Sunday’s sermon: that person was in the office that week, studying, preparing the service, dealing with whatever came through the door. The other person did the visiting, the hospital trips, anything that required being on the road. (When the major hospitals are fifty to a hundred miles away, this means a lot.)

Essential things we did together: all worship services (including funerals and weddings, which we understood as congregational milestones), council meetings, major educational events. We alternated Vacation Bible School by the year, confirmation by the half-year, and we split up committees.

But there’s one absolute about a team ministry, whether your partner is spouse, friend, stranger, or enemy: if you have to be the center of attention, if you have to shine more brightly than anyone else, if you need to control anything you see as important, if you need the credit, the name above the title, then don’t do it. Don’t serve in a team ministry, or on a staff. In fact, do me a favor and don’t be a pastor. Be a politician or talk show host instead.

Paul’s hymn to love, which most of us know from its use at weddings, was meant much more broadly, as a call to life in community: it remains just as vital for the smaller community of the church staff:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way [repeat this over and over while you’re brushing your teeth]; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing . . . (1 Cor 13: 4–6)

That’s the secret. Piece of cake.

Now I’ll note three pieces of advice I acquired over the years that I thought were essential principles for partnership.

1/ Don’t split your own congregation. Wherever two leaders are gathered together, there will be a third person trying to play one off against the other. Don’t make this easy to do.

I got this advice from an older head pastor who had a long record of good relationships with his assistants. He gave the advice about preaching schedules: he never alternated assignments but staggered them so that no one could come only to hear one person on the staff preach. But obviously the advice goes beyond scheduling.

There are always people willing to tell you how much better you are at something than your partner is. You can’t stop this from starting, but you can stop it from continuing. However, if you need to hear this or if you resent that someone else is hearing it, I’ll say once more: do not serve in a team ministry. You’ll split the congregation apart.

2/ Don’t argue in public. There are no perfect choices, approaches, strategies, or styles in church life. No two pastors will agree on all of them. One of you will want to fill the service with music from a website called something like “New hymns with impossible rhythms that no one on earth has ever heard”; the other won’t be able to understand what’s wrong with singing some version of “Old One Hundredth” every week. Settle it in the office. Settle it and let it go. Don’t debate it at the council meeting. Don’t evaluate it in the narthex with your fans after the service. Speak with one voice.

It might seem more honest, more ingenuous, more open, to debate these things freely with everyone, to let people know you disagree. In one sense, that’s true. I didn’t mind people knowing we disagreed and compromised, but it was more important that they knew we finally agreed and supported the same decision. Also, knowing we disagreed was one thing, seeing it fought out was another. Any open, extreme disagreement will inevitably be exploited by someone else for their own purposes. You can’t let that happen.

3/ Respect each other’s work. Don’t look over each other’s shoulders. If one of you is writing the sermon, leading the adult class, planning the funeral or the wedding, negotiating with the budget committee, prioritizing visitation, let that be that. Certainly, a staff should talk, share ideas, settle on strategies and directions, evaluate what worked and what didn’t. But there’s a point where you have to accept the fact that the call to ministry and the authority of word and sacrament are no greater for you than for your partner.

Also, it never hurts to speak some words of praise.

Now, somewhere in the above reflections, you should be able to find a reason why our shared ministry is the background, not the subject, of this writing of mine.