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When Everyone Was Watching

Ministry happens in full public view — sometimes on a stage, sometimes in a fishbowl. What have you seen and how have you been viewed?

Our authors for this issue include Amy Wiegert, Chicago, Illinois; Jeffrey Engholm, Redwood Falls, Minnesota; Glenn Palmer, Yongsan, Seoul, South Korea; David Parsons, Brooklyn, New York; and Andrew Weaver, Mount Pleasant Mills and Richfield, Pennsylvania.

Clam Living
“Please stand for the reading of the Gospel,” the pastor announced. He began to read about Jesus calming the waters: “‘And suddenly there was a great clam’.... What? A clam? That’s not right!” he said. Then he stepped back from the pulpit and said, “Well, when you lay an egg, you should step back and admire it a little,” and threw his head back, laughing. The assisting ministers joined in, then the choir, and finally the congregation erupted in laughter. You find out a lot about someone when he responds to his own mistake.

You find out a lot about yourself when you commit a mistake. My first “clam” moment in professional ministry was lighting myself on fire while presiding at a wedding. One of the candles that was used to light the unity candle tipped out of its holder and down the back of my alb as I faced the congregation. Thankfully, the preacher for the day was standing beside me and quickly patted it out. She assured everyone we were okay; we relighted the candle and moved on. She later whispered to me, “My prayer for the couple is that there’s as much fire for God in their marriage as there was on your robe today!”

I have slowly learned that the idea is not to avoid mistakes when leading. That’s impossible. The main idea is not to be perfect but to be serving. I have been told story after story of “clam” moments: the pastor who stepped backwards into the newly dug grave during a committal, the lay preacher who taught the congregation some new swear words when he fell off the milk crate he used to boost himself into the pulpit, the pastor who splashed baptismal water down the new mom’s dress. Why do these become the stories that are retold? Because we want to know that even leaders make messes. Because we want to know that leaders laugh and are able to laugh at themselves. In a small way, that allows all of us to laugh at ourselves.

Some folks say it’s horrible to blunder in church. I ask them, what do we want to teach the children around us? Do we really want leaders who never mess up? If no one is allowed to make a mistake, I am afraid it could lead to an overcorrection of humanness — a lack of risk, a lack of learning, inattention to feelings and frustrations, even crossing sexual or financial boundaries because leaders feel they are perfect and untouchable. Or they feel that they have to maintain a perfect facade at all costs. Is that really what we are after?

Several years ago I was instructing confirmation students on how to lead parts of worship, including reading Scripture, serving Communion, handing out worship folders, and collecting the offering. One conscientious young man, Joe, asked a great question — what would happen if he accidentally dropped the offering plates? “I don’t know what would happen,” I said. “Why don’t we find out?” We moved the class into the sanctuary and everyone took the bills and coins out of their pockets, put them into the plate, and proceeded to pass the plate down rows to each other. Joe didn’t drop the plate but another young man, Max, did. There was a great crash and lots of jingling as some coins rolled around. Then we picked up the money and moved on. “See, Joe, not much happens when you drop the offering plates,” said one of the other students.

One Sunday morning, Joe did drop the plate. He and Max picked up the coins as Joe slowly turned crimson. The only comment? One of the older ushers said to Joe, “Thanks for your service. It was a joy to worship today!” Joe learned that leaders are real and human, that they will make mistakes, and that they might even laugh about it. I hope, too, that they learn that being real makes us more accessible, authentic, and faithful leaders in the long run.

Amy Wiegert
Chicago, Illinois

That Distant Shore
We buried Linda last week. She had been diagnosed with cancer five years ago, but had held it at bay for most of those years. So in the final months of her life, the final weeks, the final days, the final hours, we watched her slip away. Aside from the obvious tragedy of her death, an additional sense of disappointment was shared by those of us who had worked with her on a daily basis during this journey. Through the years we had been waiting and watching, every day, for something dramatic to happen, either toward her healing or her demise. But it never came. Instead, her long journey was simply a steady, measured march, with almost undetectable changes. We didn’t lose Linda in those last days; we lost her slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly over the course of her last years.

Someone once told me about this kind of dying, comparing it to watching your loved one sail out to sea. From the shore, it simply looks like she is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, until gradually she disappears altogether over the horizon. But if there is a promise to be shared, it is in the assurance that, while this loved one is moving farther and farther away from the familiar shore, she is moving closer and closer to that far distant shore into the waiting arms of our loving Savior. (Theologically speaking, I suppose this analogy has many holes in it, and this boat sinks fast. But if death truly is a mystery, then this image of dying and rising is as mysterious — and as truthful — as any.)

At the funeral the soloist sang a rousing rendition of that classic gospel hymn, “In the Sweet By and By.” I had always thought of this as a quaint, even trite, song, not really worthy of our great Lutheran heritage of hymnody. But on this occasion as we sang that first verse, I heard anew the gospel promise ring out strong and true: “There’s a land that is fairer than day, and by faith we can see it afar, for the Father waits over the way, to prepare us a dwelling place there.” And then the whole congregation joined in on the beautiful chorus (in harmony, no less!): “In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore, in the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

In Psalm 30:5 we read, “Weeping may spend the night, but there is joy in the morning” (Holman Christian Standard Bible). This text is rare in that it not only proclaims the promise of God’s faithful deliverance, but it also gives us a glimpse as to how that promise may be delivered: slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, as the darkness of night gives way to the morning light. (Whoever first said, “It’s always darkest before the dawn” has simply never watched a sunrise.) Yes, there is disappointment in Linda’s death, not only in the how, but also in the why and the when. But the weeping that accompanies that grief is a drop in the ocean compared to the joy which comes in the morning — God’s promise of new life.

Jeffrey Engholm
Redwood Falls, Minnesota

My Alive Day
This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). My “Alive Day.” That was the term used in a recent HBO special about wounded combat survivors, starring James Gandolfini, well-known for his role in The Sopranos. Combat vets have two Alive Days — their birthday and the day they were hit and survived.

My original Alive Day is August 18, my birthday. And then there are the other Alive Days. I have a few of them from my time in Iraq, but the one that is seared into my brain, memory, and spirit is November 17, 2003. That is the day in the lovely town of Abu Ghraib that a friend was shot and killed while sitting less than two feet behind me in the backseat of the unarmored, open-air Humvee that I was about to drive. He turned his head in such a way and at such a moment that he took a bullet that I would otherwise have taken. I revisit that scene in my mind daily. It doesn’t visit me anymore, but I visit it. There’s a profound difference.

Combat vets will tell you that a structured account of battle is nearly impossible. Much of what happened the moment my friend was killed and immediately after is like looking through a kaleidoscope or at a montage. I remember the beginning of the day clearly. My senses were sharp and alert. A tingling sensation ran through me like it does when you know someone is watching you. Earlier, I couldn’t decide whether to be out on that civil affairs mission or not. But I went with a premonition of danger, which sounds crazy except to those who have experienced it and lived to tell the story. I believe it was the Holy Spirit directing me to be where I would need to be that day. After deciding to go, my actions and thoughts were focused and deliberate. I knew something was going to happen.

And happen it did. My friend was killed and I survived. It was me visiting his widow and three kids instead of him visiting mine. I can’t figure out why him and not me. Yet out of that tragic, deadly experience something good and profound has emerged. While some days are better than others, I now experience each day as simply a gift from God. Each day is one more opportunity to love my wife and kids, to serve my God, my country, and the soldiers I so dearly love. Each day, thanks be to God, is my Alive Day. I pray the same for you.

Chaplain Glenn Palmer
Yongsan, Seoul, South Korea

Out of the Dust
On September 9, 2001, I began serving as vicar at St. John-St. Matthew-Emanuel Lutheran Church in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I traveled to work on the last A train that passed beneath the World Trade Center after the first plane hit, and before the second.

One member of our congregation died in the North Tower. Two of our high school students watched from class windows just north of the site. Many members worked nearby. All knew at least one other person who died.

The cloud from the site passed directly over our church that day; the church is about three miles south from Ground Zero. That evening my internship supervisor collected dust from the railings of the deck behind the parsonage. It was a quarter-inch deep, and he gathered a baby food jar full.

The congregation soon decided to detach me to serve as a Red Cross chaplain two days a week, and two weeks later I headed west on Murray Street and walked into Respite Center 1. I have lived in New York City since 1979. I knew the area. But now the towers, lodestars for the pedestrian, lay in ruins, and I did not know where I was. The air was thick with grit, machinery screamed somewhere far off or close at hand, and the smell was of Moloch.

I was alone, newly graduated from seminary not yet ordained, ill at ease even wearing a clerical collar. I had an ID that said I belonged there. I could not imagine what I might have to offer.

As I crossed Greenwich Street, I looked south, and hell opened. I nearly fell. I had never understood what it meant to have your knees buckle.

“Dear God, help me! What do I have to offer? Can I do this?”

And that day, more than any other, I experienced a clear voice from God. I heard Psalm 23 singing in my soul, “The Lord is my shepherd ... I have all I need” (Bobby McFerrin’s translation). Not everything I want, not everything I would like, but all I need ... sufficient for the task before me.

So I kept walking. And I kept going back down there. I don’t know if I did any good. I know I tried to be of use. I preached the last sermon at historic St. Paul’s Chapel in Manhattan the day before it formally closed for renovations. I sang many days at Pier 94 (Note: New York City located an Emergency Operations Center at the pier. Individuals were also housed there). Because I was at Ground Zero, because everyone was watching, people interviewed me, people wrote about me, people put me on TV and in video presentations. That seemed so odd, so beside the point. But it happened.

Within a few months, my internship congregation began an unusual process that culminated in my now serving as their senior pastor. Every Ash Wednesday I mix a pinch of the dust that my supervisor, Pastor Richard Miller, had gathered from his back deck into the ashes from last year’s palms. My hands shake a bit as I mix them, even more so when I make a cross on the flesh of the people who have taught me how to be a pastor.

“Remember that you are dust....” We have risen out of the dust together, learning once again how God’s shepherding grace is more powerful, more amazing, than all the powers of hell. It is all I, or any of us, need.

David Parsons
Brooklyn, New York

When a Pastor Grieves
I stood before the congregation, began announcements, and broke down sobbing before I finished the first sentence. Finally I got the words out that I didn’t want to say: “Celo died last night.”

Celo Leitzel was a retired pastor and a son of the congregation. He had been quite an academic at Philadelphia seminary, but returned to his roots in rural central Pennsylvania where he served small congregations for his whole career. In his retirement, he was, for 17 years, pastor of a small two-point parish not far from his hometown. When I arrived here, young and right out of seminary, I quickly became active in the conference Bible study, where Celo often acted as senior professor. When he finally retired “for real,” he attended worship in the same sanctuary where he had been confirmed. I was nervous to have a distinguished retired preacher listen to me every week, but he was supportive. He let me know I was his pastor. I buried his wife Doris, who died suddenly. I visited him as he dealt with retirement.

When Celo died, it was sudden too. He had been in the hospital for heart surgery, but post-op complications put him in the ICU. He was soon moved to another hospital for more involved surgery. I sat with his children, who all lived hours away, as he faced his final surgery. When we saw him in the recovery room, he could not speak, which broke our hearts. I drove home late on Saturday night, and as I entered my home the phone rang. It was Celo’s friend, another retired pastor, who told me that Celo had just died.

Because it was so late, I did not feel I could call anyone before Sunday worship. I had no time to let this sink in for myself, so as I came to the church, I still felt raw.

As I stood before the congregation, barely able to control my voice through tears, I found myself saying something like this: “I know that I didn’t stand in church and cry when I had to bury your loved ones, but it doesn’t mean that didn’t affect me as a pastor. I just got this news last night and I barely slept, and Celo was my mentor. Please don’t judge my lack of tears on other occasions.”

I was actually worried about this, that people would see that I wasn’t always stoic, so why didn’t I cry for their family’s loss? This fear proved to be unwarranted, as I received a show of support for my own grief.

The next Saturday morning we buried Celo, and I had to change gears for the afternoon when we gathered at our house to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. Switching gears is what we do in parish ministry. Some times are harder than others.

Andrew Weaver
Mount Pleasant Mills and Richfield, Pennsylvania