Friday, October 17, 2014

While You're Waiting: Itinerant Preacher

I have been waiting for call as a pastor for almost six months now.  Being half of a pastor couple is never an easy job, and to be quite honest, it's been a bit of a vocational frustration for the Darling Husband and me in the last few months.  DH works hard at forming and learning his new congregation, and I have been working hard at both finding the right call and finding employment in the meantime.

So while I've been waiting, I have had the following jobs: itinerant preacher, substitute teacher, recess supervisor, guest blogger, knitter for hire, storyteller, beet harvest worker, and accidental domestic diva.

In the spirit of honesty and to keep you in news-y reflections of life on the prairie, I introduce a series of blog posts chronicling my journey in occupational strife, success, and humor.  The last few months I have been kind of a crabby and sullen version of myself and my Darling Husband has felt a majority of the weight of this loss.  I had no idea of how much my own idea of myself was tied into my ability to find meaning in work.  This has been a humbling experience for us, and so I blog, gentle readers, with as much delicate authenticity as I can currently muster.

Part One of the Unemployment Chronicle: Itinerant Preacher, or how I start to answer the question: what is it that you do for a living?

I fill other people's pulpits.

On an invitation only basis (and often out of dual desperation) I have been substitute preaching for pastors who need a Sunday off.  In no particular order, here are some of the things I have learned:

1) Travel: This taken me to many near exotic locations throughout the western Minnesota and near-eastern North Dakota landscape.  It has involved driving very early on Sunday morning to destinations.  I have dodged beet trucks at 5 AM.  I have watched the sun rise, golden over crops waiting to be harvested.  I discovered there are bluffs in North Dakota.  Like hike-able bluffs worthy of a couple days camping.  No kidding.

2) People: Being in a new church every week, you meet new people of the church every week.  It is astounding to me what connections can be made of cross networks.  The "do you know" game is a vibrant one in the communities I have visited.  When I meet people who know and love the same people as me, it's a little bit like discovering a piece of my heart and my home in a friendly stranger.

3) Preaching:  I pride myself on being a creative preacher.  But who would have thunk it-- but I have a preaching formula.  Insert personal story, biblical context, question, tie the three together.  The gift of itinerant preaching: 1) there are new people each week who will never know I follow a formula. 2) there are new people each week who won't get bored with my formula and I can develop my skills in that direction.

4) Telling Stories: Preaching with people I don't know well is really hard.  I have to tell them when something is funny.  Which ruins the joke, I know.  I don't know who to look at to see if I have lost them completely or caught their attention.  When you preach with developed relationships with those who listen, you engage them differently.  I miss being able to tell their stories back to them.  I just end up telling my stories.  Or, like I may be doing this week, I tell stories from two Sundays and two locations ago to this Sunday's place.  No matter they are several hundred miles apart and half-step culture apart.  I guess I bring stories of the larger church in small segments, in half-steps away and not half-worlds away.

 It's now the third season of waiting for call.  I have been wondering, what is it like to share a call or share a pastor's work; one Sunday at a time?