A Short Walk with God

25 years ago on July 22 in an unair-conditioned sanctuary in Ludlow, Kentucky, I knelt with the hands of Elders, pastors, Presbytery officials, and others on me. Ordained, I was now a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA), may God have mercy on my soul…

That was a long time ago.

Yet, it feels so very immediate.

I was 26, with little or no experience to speak of in much of anything. I had been married for a couple of years—blessedly still so to Alison, a partner, friend, and confidante in all places and all ways. My church work to that point consisted of a summer internship, a year long internship, and a month in Africa. But there I knelt, taking on the mantle to lead a congregation in its continuing journey of sharing Jesus in a struggling community just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. 

My congregation was predominantly older. Most of them had lived nearly their entire lives in that place. They had watched their town shift from a home to hardworking, hardscrabble folks who carved out nice niches for themselves into a place where homes got subdivided into tenements and most of the residents were now Appalachians come to the city to find work that did not exist, leaving them to live hand-to-mouth. 

I was 26, with little or no experience in much of anything.

Except a certainty that God wanted me there to preach, to teach, and to care for the people in that church. God also sent a parade of people in desperate straits through the front door of the church (and occasionally the backdoor) who needed someone to help them find help, direction, and hope; even one named London Bridges who in a single week needed financial assistance because five grandmothers, six cousins, a brother, a sister, three mothers, and a father all were grievously ill or dead (or both—Wednesday a dead grandmother as of Monday miraculously rose to break her leg in three places requiring hip replacement surgery! Could I help?). 

Experience began to sprout like moss on a stone. 

That layer of experience has deepened, taken root, and continued to grow for 25 years. It is thick now. It shapes what I say and do everyday. It confirms my sense that God still leans heavily on me, pushing me this way, over there, pulls me back here, and then shoves me over there. It confounds me because nearly daily I will meet something or someone brand new, a moment when all the experience in the world seems to bring nothing to the table except to get through this moment to find out what God is doing with them, with me, with us…

And that is ministry.

It is a journey of discovery, digging, and doing. It is finding that saints come in many frames and forms, some of them named London Bridges, who really was a child of God who was simply too proud to just need help, so he became a miraculous storyteller. Some of them were grizzled farmers who would literally give you the clothes they wore if you needed them. Some of them were grandmothers who knew the delicate art of how to approach a person in need without letting them know they were getting help. Some are thorns in the side who push you to try something you never thought you’d do. Some sleep through every sermon, every Sunday. Some of them are pastors who have never been ordained, attended seminary, or consider themselves anything other than pew sitters who have a predilection for saying exactly what needs to be said to whom it needs to be said. Some of them are still to be discovered.

25 years in, there is still so much to learn, so many ways to grow, and so much left to do.  

But there is another generation rising. Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message Bible, and Presbyterian pastor, decided to retire as he laid hands on his own child assuming the mantle of ordination. My daughter is about to begin her own journey at seminary this fall. Unlike the Rev. Peterson, I am not ready to retire, but I do wonder what sort of Church my daughter will be within. I remember well reading with horror an article in a church journal in 1993 that predicted the PC(USA) would be gone by 2010. We’re still here, but… What will the generation of preachers of my daughter’s class bring? What will they face? I want to walk with them long enough to see the future. 

But, then again, that is in God’s hands. 

And those hands are still on me…

and you.