A key bit of dialogue from a scene in the television series “ER” has stuck with me for a long time. Mark Greene, the emergency medicine specialist played by Anthony Edwards, has just told the ER staff that his application to the space program has been accepted and he will be leaving for training as an astronaut. As Greene walks away from the hospital at the end of his shift, the head of the hospital runs after him. Breathless, he catches up with Greene and says: “Please stay. I don’t want run this hospital without you.”
In several decades as an administrator, I used that line several times. “Please,” I have said to valued colleagues who were considering positions elsewhere, “I don’t want to run this institution without you. What would it take for you to stay?” Conversations ensued about both life and work. In a couple of cases, the decision was to remain in place with some changes to responsibilities or working conditions. In all cases, however, the result was more vocational clarity, on my part as well as my colleague’s.
When Presbyterian pastors consider a move to another congregation, such conversations never happen. The process works by stealth. The identity of prospective candidates is concealed from both the congregation they might serve and the one they might leave. To this end, applications are confidential. Persons providing references and presbytery committees and staff who know who is under consideration are sworn to secrecy. Pastor nominating committees that want to hear potential candidates preach “live” may visit their congregations in disguise. Indeed, a denominational resource advises: “Visit discreetly. Especially in smaller congregations, it is difficult to conceal the identity of a PNC. Do what you can to arrive, sit and leave separately or in pairs. Do not introduce yourselves to church members as members of a PNC!” Other times, finalists may be invited to visit the community in which the congregation that is searching is located, sometimes preaching in a “neutral pulpit” in a congregation that is not aware that it is participating in another congregation’s search.
What is the rationale for all this sneaking around? One argument is that it protects the congregation searching for a pastor. If the identities of candidates were known, parties might form in support of one or the other. Presentation of a single candidate as a surprise at the end of the process, in this view, disposes to unity. Another rationale is that it benefits the minister contemplating a move, providing a quiet contemplative space in which to discern whether there is a “call,” a space free from the distraction of distressed cries from congregants who don’t want their pastor to leave.
These perspectives have some merit and, of course, up to a certain point, anyone seeking a new position ought to have a measure of privacy in which to explore possibilities without unsettling those they currently work with. But the Presbyterian process carries privacy, confidentiality and secrecy to an extreme. Most often, the announcement that the pastor has accepted a new call comes as a shock to the current congregation. Grief and anger at being deserted are common reactions, and because most departure dates are set at most a couple of months from the time of announcement, those reactions may not have subsided by the time of leave-taking. Some of the happiest relationships between pastor and congregation end on a bitter note, fractured because the pastor is excited by the prospect of a new challenge and the congregation is sad and bereft. The suddenness of the news and the short time that the congregation has to absorb it make the experience much more difficult. It is especially hard on the congregation’s non-pastor leaders, who have to pivot suddenly from working collaboratively with the pastor to assuming full responsibility for key decisions.
The super-secrecy of the call process, especially the exclusion of anyone in the pastor’s current congregation until the new call is an accomplished fact, makes for uncomfortable departures. More seriously, it creates a theological problem. Presbyterians like to say that because the Spirit, like the wind, blows where it will, genuine calls come and are confirmed from multiple directions — from the “still, small voice” that speaks only to the one who is called, from the inviting congregation and from the company of leaders (the presbytery). If this is our pneumatology, that whom the Spirit will speak through and what the Spirit will say cannot be predetermined, limited or directed by us, then what are the grounds for leaving the pastor’s current congregation out of the process of discernment entirely?
The call process should be revised to inform at least the leaders of the current congregation that their pastor has become a finalist elsewhere. To be clear: Pastors of congregations should be free to make initial inquiries about a new position without unsettling the churches currently served. But when a call to serve elsewhere seems probable or likely, they should be urged to include the session and other key leaders in their current setting in the discernment process. I can imagine some of the objections to this proposal. The current congregation’s leaders, averse to disruption and change, will make a plaintive case focused only on themselves, with no regard for the well-being of the pastor or the wider church. That may happen, but a Reformed view would suggest that it is not only the current congregation that is tempted to be selfish. Might not the pastor and the calling presbytery and congregation also have self-serving motives and, therefore, fail to take the good of the whole church into account as they make decisions? Another danger: permitting both the old and potential new congregations’ leaders to have a say might set off an unseemly bidding war. Perhaps, though I can report that very few of the discussions that ensued when I asked co-workers contemplating a move to consider staying had to do with salary. In fact, I learned that (after that initial line, “I don’t want to run this institution without you”) the most fruitful discussions focused not on financial issues, but rather on what might be gained if we could find a way better to align the organization’s mission and the person’s vocation.
If the discernment process were more fully participatory as I have proposed, giving leaders of the current congregation the opportunity to make the case for continuing in ministry together, pastors might decide, more often than they do now, that they are called to stability, to remaining in place for a season to finish projects or solve problems. Probably in most instances they would still choose to leave, but the discussion with the current congregation’s leaders would have benefits. Pastors would have added opportunity to be honest with themselves about their reasons for leaving and to explain their sense of call to the congregation’s leaders. Listening to
those who speak from the angle of the current congregation, pastors would have advance notice of what the congregation as a whole will most need from them as that ministry comes to an end. Congregational leaders would have a deeper understanding of their pastor’s vocational trajectory as well as a head start, before a bridge pastor arrives and the “mission study” has even begun, in assessing the church’s requirements for pastoral leadership. There would be somewhat less shock and more time to look to the future. As a result, one hopes, there would be more comity and mutual good will at the end of a ministry.
We Presbyterians tend to codify and even ossify our procedures. We make rules and then observe them as if they had been handed down with the tablets on Sinai. In this case, the regulations and practices of the call process need reconsideration to make more room for the Spirit to work. We should not be afraid to do this. “Do not quench the Spirit,” it says in 1 Thessalonians, “do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil. … He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” We can rely on this promise: Trusting the Spirit will lead us toward faithful decisions.
Barbara G. Wheeler is the former president of Auburn Theological Seminary and founding director of its Center for the Study of Theological Education. She is an elder in the United Church of Granville, New York.
