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Pastor as saunterer

This month we asked our bloggers about how they view the role of pastor, how they understand their pastoral identity, or to share what a pastor really does all week.  Here’s how they responded.

Here’s something odd and wondrous about my vocation: A complete stranger will call the church and ask to speak to the pastor.

“Pastor” calls to my mind the man officially known as the Rev. Dr. Andrew Weisner. Twenty years ago, I walked around campus on the second day of my freshman orientation, wondering what the heck I was doing.

“Here is Andrew Troutman of Raleigh!”

This stranger was a short man with a bushy beard, a bald head and a clerical collar. As he continued to welcome me to college, he gestured with great excitement, his hands like two birds attempting to land in the nest of his beard. Every year, Pastor Weisner memorizes the names and hometowns of the incoming freshman class. Over 400 names and faces.

Now he and I are fellow pastors, as well as “brothers in beard-dom,” as he puts it. Whenever he calls to check in, he always greets me not as Andrew, but as “pastor.” He speaks this salutation with a hushed reverence — like this word was resting in the green grass of a pasture beside the still waters. Hearing him say “pastor” calls to mind the Latin on the front apron of the altar at my alma mater’s chapel: Jesu Bone Pastor. Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

At this altar, Pastor Weisner could be found celebrating the Eucharist every weekday at noon. I was an “infrequent” worshipper, to put it kindly. More often, I saw Pastor Weisner on Saturday nights when I was walking back to the dorms from the fraternity houses. This was around 2 o’clock in the morning, yet Pastor’s energetic little black dog, Pepper, would tug him along on the leash as they escorted young men and women across the darkened campus. We ambled, we laughed; we stumbled, we cursed. A few peed in the bushes! Nothing phased Pastor.

Occasionally, someone would want to talk theology, perhaps slurring the Good Lord’s name. But I never heard Pastor utter the slightest hint of judgment. If the drunken dialogue dried up, he’d tell stories about Pepper’s failed attempts as a professional squirrel hunter and, before you knew it, you’d be safely back at the dorm. Pastor would call out a blessing as the doors to the main entrance closed behind you. If you lingered, you would see his retreating figure in the moonlight going back to make sure of someone else.

In his springy essay “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau wrote about the origins of the word “sauntering.” He claimed the word dates to the pilgrims going a la Sainte Terre — to the Holy Land. The children in the villages would shout after those journeyers, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer!” A saunterer. If ministry is more of a journey than a destination, I think we walk toward holiness in ways we know not.

Recently, I received a phone call at church from a stranger who turned out to be an animated father deeply worried about his college son, a child spiraling in a cesspool of drugs and alcohol and lies. This man called, he said, because he just wanted to talk to a pastor. And I thought about you, Pastor Weisner. Somehow you knew to call me one afternoon when I was about as low as I’ve ever been; how you called me out of the muck and mire to ask if I might like to join you on a walk. Your mind retains so much. I bet you remember how we walked through the campus under the trees, our footsteps in rhythm upon the fallen red leaves. We were not heading anywhere in particular, but as one foot was put in front of the other, something like hope came sauntering alongside of us.

ANDREW TAYLOR-TROUTMAN is pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church, a congregation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and has a certificate in narrative healthcare. His recent essays have been published online at Mockingbird  and his poetry at Bearings. He and his wife, Ginny, have three children.

 

 

 

 

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