Book Review: This Odd and Wondrous Calling

By Chaplain Mike

(http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/im-book-review-this-odd-and-wondrous-calling)

I ¢â‚¬â„¢ve been waiting for this book a long, long time.

Finally, here is a book that paints a clear picture of what pastors actually  do, what serving as a minister in a congregational setting is actually  like, and what we actuallythink and  feel about our calling and our work and how it impacts every area of our lives.

It ¢â‚¬â„¢s called,  This Odd and Wondrous Calling: The Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers, by Lillian Daniel and Martin B. Copenhaver, and I don ¢â‚¬â„¢t have enough superlatives to say how much I loved reading this. I give it my highest recommendation ¢â‚¬” to those in vocational ministry or considering God ¢â‚¬â„¢s call, and to all those who love the church and want to learn what it is like to serve her in Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ name.

Where else are you going to find out about how God broke through on minute 54 of a silly hour-long discussion at a committee meeting about what to serve at a dinner for the homeless? Or what it ¢â‚¬â„¢s like and what it means to stand at the door after a worship service and shake hands with parishioners? Or how pastors figure out what they ¢â‚¬â„¢d like to be called when people address them? Or what it is like to be an associate pastor who gets the leftover assignments?

This book explores such odd and wondrous matters as what pastors think about having friends in the church ¢â‚¬”what the limits are, and what the possibilities may be. It talks about what it is like to be a PK (pastor ¢â‚¬â„¢s kid) who goes into ministry, how ministers and churches deal with issues related to clergy spouses and families (including insightful reflections on the relatively recent phenomenon of being a pastor ¢â‚¬â„¢shusband), how pastors must learn to deal with both criticism and praise, what pastors think about and how they deal with money and finances in their own lives in the context of the church, what it is like to preach when your personal life is in chaos, and what the rite of laying on of hands actually  feels like to one being ordained.

Lillian Daniel and Martin Copenhaver are ministers and colleagues in the mainline United Church of Christ. Some of us who are more evangelical and conservative will not identify with all of their theological commitments. Unfortunately, given the ecclesiology and practice of leading evangelical churches today, a large number of folks in  ¢â‚¬Å“ministry ¢â‚¬  also will not identify with the kind of pastoral work the authors describe. When it comes to parish ministry, the mainline churches may be much more in touch with the down-to-earth, face-to-face pastoral ministry that I, for one, believe is Jesus-shaped and Biblically-mandated. You won ¢â‚¬â„¢t find the work of  ¢â‚¬Å“visionaries, ¢â‚¬   ¢â‚¬Å“ranchers, ¢â‚¬  or  ¢â‚¬Å“CEO ¢â‚¬â„¢s ¢â‚¬  described in these chapters. This book is not about running organizations, casting vision, building  ¢â‚¬Å“great ¢â‚¬  churches, or being on the cutting edge. It is about the Word made flesh. Every day. Here and now.

So, you will read what it ¢â‚¬â„¢s like to have a man in your congregation and choir with Tourette Syndrome, who exhibits his condition by barking without warning. In church. You ¢â‚¬â„¢ll learn what it is like to go to the hospital when your harshest critic suffers a heart attack, and you are the one to speak encouragement and pray for him. You will feel the difficulty of being caught in the middle when you are the associate minister and someone praises you with veiled attempts to criticize the senior pastor, with whom she has issues. You will blush along with the minister as the young woman great with child stops as she leaves worship and asks him to place his hand on her belly and bless her right then and there with the whole congregation watching.

You ¢â‚¬â„¢ll find out what it ¢â‚¬â„¢s like for a pastor to be a patient in the hospital when he is usually the one visiting. You ¢â‚¬â„¢ll feel the chagrin when his doctor insists that he spend a half hour of uninterrupted time in prayer each day in order to relieve stress in his life. The shoemaker ¢â‚¬â„¢s kids often go barefoot, they say.

You will be invited to sit in with a motley group of pastors on tense community meetings to support workers being treated unjustly by their rich employers, in the church basement with the youth group wondering if this is what you went to graduate school for, into the sanctuary after morning service where you find an anonymous note left on a pew that criticizes you, into the home of a gay couple that surprisingly restored a congregation ¢â‚¬â„¢s ministry of hospitality, into the pastor ¢â‚¬â„¢s bedroom when he turns out the light and lies down next to his loving wife, who nevertheless does not share his faith or commitment to the church.

I savored some of the best sentences I have ever read about ministry in this book. Here are a few:

• Somehow God calls us into practicing our faith together, not so that we will all march in lockstep but so that we will move like a dance troupe, in which each one of us contributes a somewhat different step to the unfolding work and beauty. (3)

• Some preachers ¢â‚¬”mostly the celebrity preachers, the leaders of megachurches ¢â‚¬”do not shake hands. I can see why. Celebrity requires some distance and at least a dash of illusion.  ¢â‚¬ ¦As a preacher who shakes hands, I believe worship leaders have a quite different job: to expose illusions at every turn, including the illusion that they are something more than fellow-players in the drama of worship. (13f)

• Being in the ministry, where so much of my work is devoted to the building of relationships, I worry about losing the ability to just sit next to someone and talk about nothing. (18)

• Being a pastor has made me better than I am. That is because the pastoral vocation requires that I act in ways that seem beyond me. (58)

• What has stayed with me more is her advice in my times of vocational doubt. Every time she just sent me back out to listen to the people. They were the only ones who could turn me into a pastor. (105)

• Pastors are generalists. In fact, we are among the last generalists in a culture that draws people into ever-narrower areas of specialization. (107)

• God ¢â‚¬ ¦took seven days to create the universe, and so would probably prefer that I start my sermon on day one. (226)

• Henri Nouwen often talked about the importance of a  ¢â‚¬Å“ministry of presence. ¢â‚¬  But certainly there is a  ¢â‚¬Å“ministry of absence ¢â‚¬  as well, not only for the sake of the pastor ¢â‚¬â„¢s own health, but also for the bracing reminder that God can be at work even when the pastor is not present. (230)

•  ¢â‚¬ ¦with just one life to live on this earth, I am grateful that God called me to be a pastor. And I am staying. (235)

This is a descriptive book of stories and reflections, not a prescriptive book to show  ¢â‚¬Å“how it ¢â‚¬â„¢s done. ¢â‚¬  I ¢â‚¬â„¢ve read many of those, and most leave me cold. Theory and technique are the least parts in the complex process that produces a pastor. As these authors tell us, the old word for minister ¢â‚¬” ¢â‚¬Å“parson ¢â‚¬  ¢â‚¬”is derived from the word  ¢â‚¬Å“person, ¢â‚¬  thus blurring any meaningful distinctions between the office and the one holding that office. Pastoral ministry is about being a flawed human being who, by grace, is becoming a wise, loving, Jesus-shaped person and who is called to live and serve in a special way among others likewise called to Jesus.

This wise, loving, Jesus-shaped book is eloquent testimony from two who are on that journey of becoming.