Switching from Pastor to pastor – by Erika Funk

It can be life-giving, energy-renewing, and most of all surprising.

From Theresa’s introductory blog.

Five years ago I was ready for a switch, a movement as Theresa offered.  The shift I made was moving across country.  But out of all the switches I made in that move the literal move was the least well …“switchy”.  It required the least amount of processing, counseling, internal questioning and lamenting.

The switch that was more difficult, as you probably have guessed, was the one I had to make as a pastor, it was an internal switch, a move no car could travel for me.  For most of my 18 years of ordained ministry as a Presbyterian Pastor I have worked in fairly traditional churches, all in the Reformed tradition, so there became many assumptions I could make about myself and my role as a pastor that I hadn’t questioned in years.

My old assumptions:

• People go to church.  They just do.  Because they want to.
• Those people who come, come often and for the long haul.
• A female pastor is treated or should expect to be treated the same as a male pastor.
• Preaching means you are probably a pastor.  A “real” pastor.
• My salary will be taken care of.
• Your budget is directed by pledges and stewardship is just a season.
• If you need to plug it in or turn it on chances are you can and it will.
• Plaster is unlikely to fall onto the heads of parishioners during worship.

Since we’re speaking of assumptions you can probably make a few of your own about my current situation based on the list above.  (like urban, old building and poor).  If you’re guessing I serve a financially struggling, younger, more contemporary congregation in an old building…. You’re not wrong.  This is the situation for many urban pastors.

My “switch”

I’ve really had to change some of my assumptions about who comes to church and why.  And what I expect of them.  I also had to accept the fact that it wasn’t just that some people didn’t have time for church or even that they didn’t want to come to church, they really, really could care less about church.  As painful as it was to understand how hurt many people have been by the church, I also had to learn that for most people church is simply irrelevant.  It’s not that they hate church; they don’t think anything about church.  It’s about as relevant and useful as a landline.  For some people church is just the preschool or where they donate their annual closet purge for the rummage sale or where they get married.  But most people don’t use church for church.  As Troy said of Britta, “She was born in the 80s, she uses a phone as a phone.”*  To use church in the sense of community, a place to understand and live out God’s word, where the world’s servants are grown, called and sent?  No, a church is probably just a place that tells time (if you have a bell tower).   We have to re-define what it means to be the church to the general public not so that they will become pledging units but just so that people may care again about life, Word and good news.

Lost and Found

At first I would have said the hardest part was not being taken seriously as a female pastor.  I thought those days of having to prove myself were behind me.  They were not, but I learned at least one thing from this.  It’s not always a bad thing to have to prove yourself now and then, especially when you think you’re way past that.  At first you work extra hard just so people will take you seriously because you’re young, or a minority or inexperienced.  And it pays off; you become sensitive to other’s perceptions and motivated to understand them.  You walk into a room knowing there will be doubters and so you do your homework beforehand so you can crush those doubts.   (you thought I was going to say “crush those doubters”, didn’t you?)  There’s an edge, a Sasha Fierceness that can really get the creative juices going.

After a few years, a kind of false tenure sets in.  You think you’ve earned your stripes, you’re in the club and they can’t that away from you.  True, but so what?  Where did I get this idea that just because I’d hit a decade or two of ordained ministry that meant I knew everything?  Or that people should assume I knew everything?  I can’t fully explain why so many people asked for the “real pastor” when they first met me, but I’ll tell you it made me ask some tough but important questions.

• In a post-institutional world, where titles mean less, how do I know when I have become a pastor in my community’s eyes?
• If my gender or my title or my preaching does not engender trust, authority or confidence….then what does?
• If I must rely fully on the work of the Spirit and my own authenticity then how must I abide in this community?   And where will my own confidence come from if not from my years of experience?

Success

Uncovering my own resentment about titles revealed some assumptions about church success. If I was going to come to terms with a different definition of “pastor”, I would have to do the same with “church”.   One of my remaining fears is that church is only for those who can pay for it.  On almost any level our church would be labeled a healthy growing dynamic congregation by these markers:

• Most of our congregation is made up of the coveted “young adult” 20-30 year olds.
• Handfuls of new people appear every week for worship.
• Adult baptisms
• A widely known positive reputation in town
• Most of our budget goes to mission and outreach in the community

But by other markers we are failing:

• We have no members, no pledging units and no committee members (granted we have no committees – which most of the time is a wonderful thing)
• Most people leave after 18 months
• It’s hard to get people to come to church on days other than Sunday
• Our weekly monetary offering in worship is purely an act of discipleship.  It barely covers the light bill for that day.
• Did I mention the falling plaster?

If the people who worship together on Sunday, pray together, serve together and eat together are the poor and marginalized can we still afford to open our doors and call ourselves “church”?  If I change these definitions of “pastor” and “church” will I also change my assumptions about success, happiness, and satisfaction?  I have to, but it doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t always stick.  At times I still wish for things to be easier and more predictable.

But that’s not why I moved.

*quoted from NBC’s Community

Native to the California beaches, Erika Funk now resides in the hustle and bustle of downtown Philadelphia.  As a pastor at Broad Street Ministry and the director of the BSM Youth Initiative, she finds renewal in cups of tea, water ice and dreams of the Irish Sea.