A Reflection on Ministry at the End of Clergy Appreciation Month

I recently found myself with an assignment related to the technical and administrative aspects of the immigration process for clergy serving in the Virginia Conference, a process that is managed through the work of the episcopal office here in Glen Allen. The assignment was to write a document describing a “typical day in the life of the pastor serving in VAUMC.” I had a template to work with, and the first blank said “9:00 a.m.______________.”

What is a typical day of ministry in a vocation where the saying goes, “You never have the same day twice”? Indeed, in my 11,095 days of ordained ministry, I cannot remember much duplication. Even in seasons of life when I was most hyper-organized, when I began each day armed with an ambitious (yet unrealistic) to-do list and a calendar, with my eyes set squarely on organizing and completing all of the things, the phone would ring, a visitor would drop by unannounced, something would suddenly locate itself in the Urgent/Important square on my Eisenhower Matrix, and the oasis of control would prove to be but a mirage upon the sand.

At some point, I had to learn that the entreaty in Proverbs to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight” has as much to do with time as anything else.

Having said that, this assignment gave me an opportunity to imagine the document I wish I could have written and submitted, where I could have shared so many typical days of pastoral ministry I have had over these last thirty years. Here are a few.

It was a typical day when, very early in my time in ministry, I was attending an afternoon meeting of a group of our church’s very best leaders, planning things that were beautiful and bold and transformative when my phone rang. I answered the call and heard the voice of my father-in-law, weeping, telling me, “It’s bad, son,” before telling me that my mother-in-law had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. I reentered the room where the meeting was being held and told them what I had just learned and that I had to go home to be with Tracy.

As I left, I heard our lay leader, a breast cancer survivor, call out to me to come back and, with tears in her eyes, say to me, “Tell Tracy it’s not a death sentence. It’s not like it used to be.”

It was a typical day when a group of leaders made an appointment with the senior pastor and me to inform us that they were convicted that God was calling our congregation to do something that would be “challenging and bold” for us. That thing turned out to be a partnership with the Virginia Refugee Resettlement Program, through which we helped a Sudanese family escape unspeakable violence at home and build a new life in Newport News.

It was a typical day when I was serving a local church and volunteering as a small-town fire chaplain when I received a call about an accidental shooting in a home near the church that had taken the life of a young girl. Her father, another pastor in town, was attending a meeting out of town. I stayed at that house for hours waiting for him to arrive and hoping that seeing another pastor would somehow help him to cling to hope on the worst day of his life.

It was a typical day when I was in a meeting in the sanctuary of the smallest church on a rural multi-point charge when the church bully once again began verbally abusing those who were present. On this day, however, before I could say anything, the oldest member of the church, a gentle, soft-spoken, elderly woman, found her voice and simply said to the bully, “You can’t talk to us like that anymore.”

It was a typical day when Bob died. Bob was a carpenter in the church. When I arrived at that appointment, he was converting a long-outgrown basement fellowship hall into what would become my office. He was a neighbor, the kind of person you could call when a squirrel fell down the cold parsonage chimney and was trapped in the fireplace. Bob was the choir chaplain, and he prayed the most beautiful prayers each Sunday as we all entered the sanctuary together.

I received the call that Bob was in the hospital and not expected to live through the morning. I sat beside his bed, along with his wife and sister-in-law. After he passed, we prayed and promised to gather again soon. I then rode the elevator up to the next floor, where a little girl from the church preschool saw me, came bounding down the corridor with her glasses bouncing on her face, leapt into my arms, and said, “Pastor Doug, you have to come meet my new sister.”

It was a typical day when the young mother in the church who had fought so valiantly against cancer was in her home, dying, in transition from life to life everlasting. A few of her neighbors were there as well, and we kept vigil for her and attended to her husband. When she passed, we were all there in the room with her, and after she took her last breath, everyone looked at me. All I knew to do in that moment was something that was not mine: to say words that were not mine but had been entrusted to me by the communion of saints who had come before. I simply made the sign of the cross upon her forehead as I repeated the words of Jesus: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

We all then returned to the living room, so that when her children returned from school, the first thing they would see after their father was the community who would help carry them so they would know they were not alone.

When I was a district superintendent, I helped bring a pastor to a church on the district who would be the first clergywoman in that congregation’s history. She arrived with her husband for the meet-your-pastor meeting, and after the introductions were complete and she shared the story of her call to ministry, we were wrapping up the final details when a member of the staff-parish relations committee said, “I saw the two of you out the window, walking across the parking lot, and I thought to myself, ‘I really hope she is the new pastor. We have never had a woman pastor before, and we know that it is time.’”

What is most beautiful to me about these stories of my typical days is that while they are immensely special, they are hardly uncommon. Every pastor, including yours, whether serving a local church, campus ministry, or extension ministry, has a compendium of stories like these that they also carry tenderly in their souls. This is why the memorial service at annual conference is so meaningful to me. When we entrust the eternal lives of these servants of the church to almighty God, we are also entrusting to God stories of so many typical days, days filled with blessings and pain, days that are burdensome and buoyant, days that are filled with the impossible, and days of miracles large and small, if only we are willing to expect them and even be surprised by them.

Pastoral ministry has always been a challenging vocation, but now, as clergy increasingly find themselves on the front lines of the culture wars—more often expected to guard the idols than to demolish them—they are enduring more stress and more mental and physical health challenges than ever before while working in a field that no longer has one of the longest life expectancies of any vocation, as it once did.

Anyone who knows me has heard me say that nothing can break your heart like ministry can. But when it is good, there is nothing else like it. This is why we must pray daily for our clergy and for their families, their congregations, and their communities, as well as the laity with whom they serve, for both the days of blessing and the days of heartbreak in this remarkable calling that is so often so impossible to shake, in service to a love that will not let us go.

Last Sunday, I was at worship at Trinity United Methodist Church in Richmond, where I grew up and where my wife and children are members. The service included a baptism for an infant boy in the congregation.

It was a strange experience. I cannot remember another time when I was in a worship service where there was a baptism and I was not the pastor of the church.

As we moved through the liturgy, I was overcome with emotion. My eyes filled with tears and my body shook as I tried not to break down in tears. Maybe it was because this baptism brought to mind all of those Sundays in 2020, when I was a new district superintendent and could go months without seeing any children in worship. I would attend a meeting in a classroom at a local church and walk past a room being used for storage. I would look in that room and see the Noah’s ark mural on the wall and the crib, folded and pressed against the wall in a space no longer used as it was intended in better and more hopeful days.

Last Sunday, I wept out of gratitude for this child and his parents. I wept for a congregation that I trust will live into the promises it made to that boy and his parents, just as my parents did in that same sanctuary for my brother and me. I wept out of unadulterated hope rooted in a God who, I confess, did not bring that boy to the font to become a part of a faith that will cease to be. The United Methodist Church in which he will live and grow will very likely look very different than it does today, but it will still be, will still remain the steadfast community of love and forgiveness it promised to be that day.

And I wept out of sheer thanksgiving for this odd and wondrous calling that has allowed me to have so many typical days, that has allowed me to know laypeople I would otherwise never have known and clergy colleagues with whom I would otherwise never have shared this work. If all the work it took for me to be ordained in this church did was provide me with the people around me, it would have been enough.

It is my prayer for all of our clergy that all of your typical days may somehow be filled with the ever-present reminder that you are not alone.