Plunging into Ministry

“Baptismal ministry is to embrace the world of the baptized.”

Rev. Dr. Stephen Bouman, 2019 SCSW LEAD Keynote Address

My experience of ministry has had a baptismal shape to it. Not only have I been called to baptize, but the experience is a kind of dying and rising in itself.

For this reason, I’ve been thinking about this line from Stephen Bouman’s address since my last Sunday as pastor of Orfordville Lutheran Church.

Our final worship included a sending service where the members of OLC symbolically released me from my responsibilities as their pastor and sent me with a blessing to my new call at Trinity Lutheran in Madison.

After worship, I stood at the back of the church receiving hugs and handshakes, tears and smiles. I was flooded with all the ways we had embraced and been a part of one another’s worlds.

To be called into ministry is to be plunged into the deep end of people’s lives. Ministers get invited into some of the most intimate of moments – whether it’s a hospital room, a wedding day, a child’s baptism, or simply sharing a meal. Sometimes my heart aches and burns within me at the same time.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been living between calls as I wait for my first day at Trinity on April 1st. During this time of transition, I’ve been re-reading a book by my friend and mentor, Pastor Mary Albing.

Mary writes:

“It is easy to be critical of the way people live, whether rural or urban or somewhere in between. It is much more interesting to love people just the way they come. That is the key to being contented wherever we are. We can learn to relish the differences. Early on in my life I worried so much about whether I looked like a good teacher or pastor that I missed learning about the people and the joy of simply being there. I worried so much about fitting in and getting it right, or worse, them getting it right, that I did not claim my particular place in that community, the place to which I had been called.”

Rev. Dr. Mary Albing in Called into Ministry To Be a Good and Faithful Pastor: Reflections of a Partnered Lesbian, Pg. 14

If I had to name the most important thing I learned in my first call it would be what Mary articulated. It is much more interesting to love people just the way they come.

This, of course, doesn’t mean our lives or the lives of others will be left unchallenged or unchanged. As Anne Lamott has said – and I’m paraphrasing a bit – God’s grace meets us where we are, but it does not leave us there.

To be called to baptize in Jesus’ name is to embrace people and their world just as they come. And we should all expect transformation in the depths of the waters.

Now as I turn my attention to Trinity, it is time to take the plunge again!