In its latest issue, The Atlantic published an article describing where and how America is recovering from the Great Recession. With glossy maps, bright colors, and sharp symbols the piece displays with graphic frankness the locations where industry, innovation, and economic hope are shooting up.
I don’t live in any of those areas.
I live and serve in a swath of territory outside of The Atlantic’s geographic and cultural landscape, a dead zone of economic improvement. No eloquent columnists study us for future trends; no analysts scrutinize our goings-on for the world to see. We are invisible to the popular eye as are most of the small and tiny towns in the world.
But I live and serve here. I follow a Savior whose preaching ministry took place in Galilee and whose primary audience was fishermen. I am a teaching elder serving a congregation of fewer than 100 in the midst of woods and farmland. You know the sort. You might even belong to a congregation like mine.
Like Jonah, when I began my ministry I knew my boundaries. I knew my homeland, and I had heard about the Ninevehs out there. I was trained to be a minister of Word and Sacrament; my ministries would be preaching, teaching the Scriptures and training ruling elders. No youth ministry for me — there are other people for that. Pastoral care would be a minor chord to the melody of my work. And forget administration and finances: not my gifts!
Early on, I should have seen the signs in the sky when I was in fact called to an actual Nineveh: Nineveh Presbyterian Church, in Nineveh, New York.
I spent the first few years doing only what I believed I was called to do: preaching, teaching, training ruling elders and, as a sidebar, getting to know my flock and the 600-member community seated on the uneasy banks of the Susquehanna River. I kept myself focused on those things where my training made me feel like an expert and diligently encouraged others to use their gifts to accomplish the other works of the Body of Christ. It seemed to work well enough until one of the church’s teens came to me with a request that revealed how blessedly inadequate my ministry plan was.
Beautiful Music
“Would you teach me to play guitar?”
I have never taken a formal lesson on the instrument. I was given a second-hand guitar years ago and have picked up tips from people who have been put in my path along the way. I play chords, but have never learned to finger-pick properly. Then again, all this young lady wanted was to learn what I knew. She wanted to play Christian worship songs on guitar. Christ was bringing about a particular expression of faith in her life and I had the ability to equip her. So I said yes.
This was not part of my ministry plan. Seminary did not teach me how to become a music teacher. But my systematic theology course did teach me that the Spirit of Christ moves in every corner of the church’s life with sovereign grace. Furthermore, God does not wait on experts, but emboldens those willing to learn.
As this student quickly learned everything I knew about guitar, the Spirit spread farther and wider. I asked her if she wanted to help lead music for the youth group. She said yes, and she did. Just last week, when I could not be present to lead, she stepped up to play lead guitar for a full set of worship songs. She not only has wings, but she is learning to fly.
She brought a popular contemporary worship song to me that she wanted to learn to play. We learned the chords and rehearsed it a few times. I meditated out loud on how the song was not expressly Trinitarian and focused only on the individual (one of many “me and Jesus” songs on Christian playlists). My Reformed systematics started to shape the conversation. Our hymnody is “compact theology,” to use language from “Glory to God,” our new hymnal. Did she see what I meant? Yes, she did.
I gave her a challenge: Amend the song so that it’s Trinitarian and speaks for a community, not just one person. We talked little about how that might happen. She took the song home and brought it back with modified language, extra verses, and a richer theology. We have since used it in our Lord’s Day worship (with both of us leading on guitar).
Christ called me to use my gift of guitar playing, no matter how rough it was, to serve what the Spirit was doing in the life of a teen. God multiplied her talents not because I had learned so much, but because I was willing to learn and follow.
Into the Breach
Eighteen months ago, a long-simmering crisis boiled over in the life of a disabled member of our congregation. He received money from the government for his disability, but neither he nor his impoverished family was capable of seeing properly to his care. Seminary had not trained me to be a social worker or community organizer, but it became clear to me that someone had to advocate for this young man’s welfare.
As my attempts to navigate the social services in our area revealed their complexity and obscurity, this man’s crisis deepened. In order to get his needs met, someone had to assist with paperwork, drive him to appointments and clarify with him the possibilities of his situation. These tasks lay far beyond the pale of preaching, teaching Sunday school, and training elders in the Reformed tradition. But here was Christ, knocking at our door. And when Christ knocks, you open.
The Spirit led me to learn what I needed to know about Social Security, social services and our community’s assets that would bless this young man. I wouldn’t expect seminary to teach me this material, but my seminary studies did help me to better understand Scripture’s witness to a God who can work through — and overcome — principalities and powers in order to bless the faithful. For my part, instead of asking myself whether I was called to do this sort of work, I asked myself, “What does Christ desire for this young man’s life?” God answered, and now, thanks to the efforts of several devoted saints, our friend is financially stable and has an apartment of his own.
The Flood
In 2011, a flood devastated the hamlet in which our worship space is situated (the second such flood in five years). During the flood itself and the long-term aftermath, as I expected, I was called to provide pastoral care to my congregation.
I could not have anticipated the need to get in a kayak and check on flood-stranded neighbors or to help the community organize subsidized testing of their contaminated wells. When I took this call to Nineveh, I could not have guessed how much of my ministry week would be swinging the hammer of reconstruction and organizing work days for the benefit of those rebuilding. But when I looked out over my congregation and community, I heard God calling in those directions. And when God calls, God equips.
I do not look back and bemoan that my seminary did not mandate a course on community organizing. Instead I celebrate teachers who pointed us consistently to a Savior who redeems the crushed and despairing, and a God who calls the saints to seek the welfare of the city — or town, or village — especially in times that feel like exile. We can do all things, even the things for which we have received no training, through Christ who strengthens us.
Fire in the Belly
I notice that much of the conversation about our denomination right now centers on how to equip leaders to provide what the church needs. We are generating a lot of heat especially around teaching elders and their seminary education: witness Sarah Sarchet Butter and Chip Hardwick’s article, “Dangerous not to evolve,” in the September 16 issue of The Outlook. I have a concern that we may be missing something that I have found crucial for my own ministry.
Through the above experiences and many others, I am gaining a new appreciation for Paul’s assertion that he had “become all things to all people so that by all possible means he might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). I am not sure that the most critical question for church leadership is, “How do we prepare teaching elders — or commissioned ruling elders and others — to do what the Church needs?” I believe that the Spirit reveals to us in our ministry settings what Christ desires if we are open and willing to learn. That readiness to learn — can it be taught? — may be the real key.
Anyone who can make it through undergraduate and seminary educations probably has the ability to learn the details necessary to serve in various situations. I don’t believe that my seminary should have mandated a class in navigating social services (to glean from one example). It was enough to have had theology professors who taught me to think critically about Christ’s care for the poor and suffering; the rest can be learned on the fly. The wisdom that God has been instilling in me is to pay attention for the cracks from which sprouts of the Spirit are growing, and tend them. My first mission is no longer to define where I am called to go; my first mission is to ask, “Where is Christ, and how do I follow?”
We have an orderly denominational culture that likes to prepare and plan for things, which in some cases serves us well. And I continue to believe in the value of academic training for teaching elders. I encourage professors who have a calling for such ministries as community organization and blended styles of worship to offer these courses. I grow concerned when our anxiety about the future of the denomination leads us to press for exhaustive preparation in all things. Such preparation is an impossible task, and fails to honor the God who is in charge of the future. At the heart of the gospel, after all, is the fact that God did for us, in Christ, what no amount of work or education could do for us.
For those entrusted with the nurture of future leadership — sessions, CPMs, presbyteries — I think discerning those with fire in the belly is more important than training for every contingency. Do our candidates and teaching elders see the face of Christ in those around them? Are they motivated by a passion for following the Spirit into new territory? Are we (to include myself) willing to learn enough of anything that will bless the ones we are called to serve? Do we say, with Isaiah, “Here I am, send me!” and with Joshua, “I am not afraid” of these strange new lands?
I love the work that was part of my initial vision for ministry. I still preach 46 Sundays of the year. I still teach in a classroom at every opportunity. I still focus much energy toward the enrichment of my ruling elders. But I also jam on guitar with teenagers every week, comb through a disabled friend’s finances every Tuesday and help the saints give away food and clothes to the poor in our community. And I stand ready for anything the Lord may ask me to do next. Because here, in the rich fertile hills that most people have never heard of — but where the majority of PC(USA) congregations dwell — the Spirit of Christ is moving mightily in ways for which no seminary course trained me. And as rough and ready as I might be, I am called to follow.
EMRYS TYLER is a teaching elder and prophet sent to Nineveh where, he has discovered, folks continue to repent joyfully on a regular basis. He currently serves on the GA special committee to study the process of preparation for ministry.
