Chapter 12. If Only I Had Been a Doctor

The summer after tenth grade, we had a guest preacher one Sabbath for church, Elder Schmidt. He was invited to our house for lunch. I rode with him to give him directions.
Even to an ninth grader, he seemed a little strange. At that time in my life, I wasn’t really familiar with the word, effeminate, but he had a softness that seemed strange in a man. He had attended Madison College with my dad and they had stayed in touch over the years.
Elder Schmidt took ministry and became a pastor. After several years he became a youth director for the Florida Conference, then moved on up the denominational bureaucracy, eventually becoming director of the General Conference Children’s Department. For the last ten years, he had been the editor of “Our Little Friend,” the weekly Sabbath School paper for preschool kids.
In his sermon that morning he talked about the eternal importance of ministry to children. He said the required things. They were all true . . . and dull.
On the drive from church to our house he asked about my career dreams.
“I’m planning to be a doctor. Maybe I’ll be a missionary doctor in Africa.” (There was no point in trying to explain to a preacher about Jacques Cousteau and Ed Link.)
“That’s great. I’ve always admired you dad. He’s a great man. Back when your dad and I were classmates at Madison College, we both were hoping to become doctors. And I would have been a doctor like your daddy, but I got married and didn’t have the money for medical school. So I settled for being a minister.”
I was shocked. He worked for the General Conference. In our denomination, that was like working in the Vatican. There was nothing higher. How could a person work for the General Conference and think of their work as of secondary significance?
“So if you don’t like being a minister, why don’t you do something else?” I asked.
“I’m too old to do anything else. Besides, I have a wife and children who are counting on me to support them. You can’t start over at my age. I have too many responsibilities to change now. I have fifteen years till I can retire.”
By this time, we were pulling up in front of our house on Vinton Ave. My head was spinning as I climbed out of the car. How could this man travel the country talking about the wonderful progress of the church, promoting ministry to children and telling inspirational stories to children–while loathing his work?
He wasn’t the first minister to tell me they wished they were a doctor like my dad. But he was the first to tell me–in plain English–that he was a minister for the money. That the only reason he stayed in the ministry was because of the financial needs of his family. I had never heard a doctor say such a thing.