“One minister stands up and tells another minister (or ministers)” to resist the temptation to work oneself to death. Take your day off … set boundaries … don’t try to be all things to all people”… blah, blah, blah.1 Though it may come as a surprise, every ministerial candidate on the ordination track in the Presbyterian Church is, at one time or another, required to undergo a battery of psychological tests (and pass them) before being certified ready to receive a call by a congregation. Clergy health, stability, and self-care are obviously at the forefront of our church’s collective mind.
I do not encourage an unhealthy lifestyle; I do wonder if our current therapeutic pursuits do not often contradict, or at least run into, the strong headwinds of God — the countercultural and mysterious God whose form of self-care did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, humbling himself, and becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8). A strange form of self-care, if you ask me.
Indeed, I wonder, when Jesus visits those fishermen casting their nets into the Sea of Galilee and calls them to follow, can ministers of the gospel seriously say that the disciples’ decision to drop everything and follow Jesus was one of complete emotional health and balance and self-care (Mark 1:16-20)? Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, yes, and even life itself cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26-27). Is it really possible to take such words and then encourage each other with a straight face to live a healthy, balanced, and a limited stress life in ministry and in service to Jesus Christ? Is life in Flossenberg prison or the Birmingham jail or the streets of Calcutta really the most stress-free and self-caring life one can pursue? And so, while I do not encourage fellow pilgrims along the Way to intentionally overbook or to stay on the job 24/7, the very notion of following a crucified and risen Savior threatens all our notions of stability and “clergy health” and stress management. Psychological testing or not, no matter how we slice it, there is often a fine line between insanity and following Jesus Christ.
About 500 years ago, a Reformed pastor in Geneva was no alien to such struggles. In a recent editorial in Theology Today, George Hunsinger reminds us of a few things we may not know about Calvin: “Beset by a dizzying array of illnesses, Calvin lived in constant pain. The list of what he suffered apparently included chronic gout, kidney stones, pulmonary tuberculosis, painful breathing caused by pleurisy, the coughing up of blood, recurring fevers, intestinal parasites, bleeding hemorrhoids, and migraine headaches. He died of toxic shock.”2
As if that were not enough, Calvin’s only son was lost in infancy and he lost his wife, Idelette, at the age of forty. In the midst of such pain and disparate circumstances, this pastor and leader of the Reformation church churned out some 20 sermons per month, including the New Testament text on Sunday morning, the Old Testament text on weekdays, and the Psalms on Sunday afternoons. He wrote five separate editions of the Institutes, commentaries on nearly every book in the Bible, and still found time to minister to refugees, train ministers, oversee the work of the church, and work for the social welfare of all.3
In every edition of The Presbyterian Outlook there is always a very small and short section about pastors, listing those who have been honorably retired and where they served, those who have been newly ordained and installed, those in the midst of transition and where the minister is serving. Finally it lists recent deaths of pastors. That final section has always kind of bothered me, obviously because it deals with death, but also I think because it lists only the pastor’s name, his age, and the date and place he died. That’s it … no small list of achievements, no list of places served, no list of accomplishments or good sermons preached. I always have mixed feelings when I read the list.
Recently I was looking over the list and saw “William H. Gage, 77, June 10, 2009, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” Here was no name, age, date, and place, here was my field education supervisor when I was in seminary … here was a man who had served more than forty years as a Presbyterian minister in inner city Philadelphia.
Here was a chip of salt stuck in the ground in the neighborhood of Kensington who, in spite of urban decline and the decline of his own congregation, refused to give up and leave and move to greener pastures or more affluent suburbs or easier work. Bill Gage’s church was located in one of the poorest sections not only of Philadelphia, but also of the entire country. The church had dwindled in size over the years and is now down to about 15 to 20 members.
The pastor had come to the church and neighborhood fresh out of seminary in 1963. The neighborhood, made up primarily of blue-collar and lower middle class families had experienced considerable “white flight” and urban decay in the 1960s and 1970s, so much so that by the 1980s, the minister, now a good bit older, but refusing to abandon this call to the ministry, often had to chase drug dealers off the church steps. He also began to learn Spanish in order to communicate better with the majority Puerto Rican community now living in the neighborhood surrounding the church.
About this same time, in the 1980s, the pastor and his wife also began an after school program at the church for neighborhood kids — to do homework, come to educational programs, to go on field trips (most had never been out of Philadelphia), and to receive tutoring. The minister, always good with his hands, built a library in the basement of the church. He applied to the Presbyterian Church and other groups for funds to buy books and computers. He built bookshelves, installed overhead reading lights, computer terminals, and poured out his life and ministry into serving the community God had called him to, even as the church’s membership declined and the neighborhood became a transitional revolving door where the good and able people always seemed to move on to some place nicer, cleaner, and better.
For more than forty years this minister and his wife stayed and labored in a part of the world, and in a part of Philadelphia, most people and even most Christian people for that matter, chose to ignore. In spite of every sign of hopelessness and urban decline, the Rev. Gage refused to leave this church and this community. At the end of every month, he had to figure out why and how to keep the church going — each day was lived in dependence on some One else in whom he believed his future and our own graciously rests — and one day the minister would pour all that he had out into this fledgling little enterprise called a church and a community. And apparently that day came on June 10, 2009.
By all measurements of success or power or achievement in the world, most might look at this minister’s life as a failure. But I wonder if set beside God’s own form of self-care we might see a different result. I wonder if this minister in Philadelphia, an earthy, sinful, and salty human being, could not also be a parable of what it means to empty oneself in service of Jesus Christ whose own form of self-emptying we dare to participate in and emulate.
So there, perhaps I have given Bill Gage a proper obituary or at least more than name, date, age, and place, and perhaps in him we might find a parable of the church, a parable of ourselves, a parable of who and what Jesus might be calling us to be as we seek to take up our cross and follow Him ourselves. It may never look like or even feel like the most balanced, risk free and successful line of work, but for some reason I don’t think God would have it any other way.
Chris Currie is pastor of Calypso Church, Calypso, N.C.
1 Lillian Daniel, “What clergy do not need,” Call& Response Blog, www.faithandleadership.duke/edu/blog, February 12, 2009.
2 George Hunsinger, “Calvin at 500,” in Theology Today vol. 66, no. 2 (July 2009): 131-134.
3 Ibid.
