Mr. Dennis, the head elder of the Huntington Church, was my first funeral. It was bittersweet. He had lived well. He was widely respected. The funeral marked the end of a well-lived life. I was not yet old enough to think of a funeral as a celebration, but conducting Mr. Dennis' funeral was not difficult. Kind words about his past came easily and words of hope and confidence regarding his eternal future were perfectly congruent with Christian faith and the expectations of his family and friends inside and outside the church. The only real concern was what was going to happen to his wife and one of her sisters. His wife had severe dementia and his sister-in-law was not capable of taking care of herself. But for the purposes of the service, we could ignore those practical concerns.
Not all the funerals in those early years were so easy. During my second year at Babylon, I got a phone call on a Friday afternoon from a funeral director I had worked with.
“Pastor McLarty, I have a family coming in who needs a minister. I was wondering if you would be willing to help us out. The service will be tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.”
“Ordinarily, course, I couldn’t. We have our services tomorrow, but I have a guest speaker scheduled. So I can make it.” (I remembered the counsel of some seminary professor, I don’t remember who. He said, “Death trumps all. No matter what else you’re involved in, when there’s a death, that’s your first priority.”)
“I would really appreciate it if you could,” the funeral director said. “It’s a real tragedy. They are a Spanish family, from Guatemala originally. They had a house fire. The grandad and two little girls died. They don’t have any church connection here, but they need a minister for their service.”
“Is any chance I could meet the family before I do the service?”
“They’re going to be here at the funeral home about four this afternoon.”
"I'll be there."
When I met with the family I didn't say much. Most of the family spoke English but what is there to say when a family has lost their babies and their grandfather? The next morning I left my church at 10:30. The funeral home parking lot was overflowing. Inside the room was packed. Finally, it was time for me to speak. What to say?
I supposed my job was to voice confidence in God's love and hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ. But what about the grief and chaos of now? In the face of this family's staggering loss, how could I affirm God’s goodness and speak sweetly of a blessed future without sounding heartless were stupid? I played in my mind scenes of fat, old, rich clergy I’d seen in movies.
I have no memory of what I actually did manage to say ,but I have never forgotten the terror of being expected to say something appropriate when there seemed to be no words available that would not add to the pain and confusion.
Then there was Himmel funeral. Mrs. Himmel, the primary organist for the Babylon Church, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery and radiation provided relief for a year or two, but now the tumor was back. She was in Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan and not expected to come home. She looked terrible. Her hair was gone from chemo, face puffy from the side effects of medication.
Her husband was not a member of the church. He was famous for his rages and general obnoxiousness. Their two sons were deeply alienated from him, but Mom was dying, so the family gathered. The oldest son, Heinrich, came home from the Marines on emergency leave. That evening after they got back to the house from the hospital, Dad and son had a furious, cussing, shouting fight. The son stormed out, climbed on his motorcycle and roared off. He came back home some time after two, after the bar closed. His dad heard him come in and go to his room. The son must have gone to bed and had a last cigarette before going to sleep.
The fire damage was confined mostly to the bedroom. Dad and an uncle who was staying at the house suffered burns and smoke inhalation. They were hospitalized for a couple of days. Heinrich died. He never got out of bed.
Again the funeral home was packed. Mrs. Himmel was there, propped up in a wheel chair, looking awful. Her husband was there with his burns. From the way he talked, it seemed he was proud of his burns. I thought he needed them as evidence of his devotion to his son–see, I risked my life to try to save him. I really did my very best. His bandages were marks of a penance he hoped would atone for that last fight with his son.
I must have said something. After all I was the officiating minister. But all I can remember is my overwhelming awareness of the futility of words. Should I talk about forgiveness or about taking fresh resolve to be careful with our words? To say much about faith would be a mockery. The only evident faith in the family was Mother’s faith. And that had never been very confident.
How do I speak of God in the real world, without mocking either God or the people who live here? We need hope and meaning. It is a hunger written in the very core of our existence as humans. It is the job of the church to be a place where people can renew their hope and find strength to affirm there is purpose and meaning in our lives. But sometimes putting this into words appears either blasphemous or rudely naive.
Then Lori Gambino called. She could barely talk. Through her stumbling, hesitating speech I got the message: her son was dead. Eighteen years old. Suicide. He hung himself in the basement. There was going to be a funeral on Wednesday evening. Their priest doing the service. She didn't want to offend, but wasn't possible I could do something, too? Maybe in the afternoon when the family was going to gather for the viewing?
Lori was a recent convert to Adventism. Her entire family was Catholic, of course. They had to have a service with the priest. I was not offended.
Wednesday afternoon I conducted a service for a small group of Lori's friends from church and close family members. I quoted Jesus words about his friend Lazarus who had died, “He is sleeping.” Louis, Lori's son, must have been in horrific pain. He committed suicide because he saw no way out, no possible relief. The pain had become unendurable. Now he was sleeping. He was resting. He was not hurting any longer.
We bore the cost of his decision. We were now grieving. But we could take some small solace in Jesus’ assurance that Louis was sleeping. He was not in torment. He was resting. And we could leave his future in the hands of a God who loved him so much he died for him.
That evening I attended the funeral. The priest was gracious. He spoke explicitly about the suicide then talked about reasons for hope. Louis had been baptized. He had made his first communion. Through the years he had participated in church, had gone to confession and received holy communion. He had the saints to pray for him, the goodwill and prayers of the church, his mother’s love which mirrored the Blessed Mother’s love. So while his life ended tragically, we could find hope in all the resources of grace God had placed in his church.
I admired the pastoral concern the priest exhibited. He did what a pastor is supposed to do–mine the spiritual resources of his community for treasures of hope in the darkness. I was glad I was not saddled with the theology of his community. I was glad I did not have to imagine some phantom interaction with the church that could serve as a basis for salvation. Based on my Adventist understanding of the judgment, I pictured God examining the totality of a person’s life, looking for evidence of faith. God's ability to save was not limited to the resources available through his church. Then there was our prophet’s famous statement that one’s eternal destiny was not determined by the occasional deed or misdeed, but by the trend of the life. And obviously suicide could not be a trend in someone's life. But whether I was Adventist pastor working with our theology or a Roman Catholic priest working with his theology, pastoral role was the same. Finding hope in the darkness, giving voice to meaning and purpose in the face of tragedy, saying good words on behalf of our people.
The proper role of a preacher at a funerals is not that of a prophet heedlessly declaiming God's truth. Rather, at funerals the preacher is a priest. He/she is one of the grieving. The words of a good pastor are conditioned by his/her deep empathy with the ache and questioning of the grieving. The ultimate purpose of our words is not to declaim truth but to offer solace.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Chapter 44 Geology 101
Maybe if I had lived in Arizona, the geology class would have had a different impact on me. I had read articles by creationists who told of observing the layers exposed in Grand Canyon. And some layers were missing. The evidence was right there in your face. The standard geological story did not seem plausible. How could you reconcile a million years between two apparently smoothly adjoining layers? So maybe, if I had taken geology at Flagstaff Community College it would have been different. But I didn't live in Arizona.
When I signed up for Geology 101 at Suffolk County Community College, I had my guard up. I knew the professor would teach stuff I didn't believe. He would talk about about millions of years and evolution and horse fossils. But, I figured, it was time to face it. I had read everything the church had published on earth history. Intellectual integrity obliged me to find out what the other side had to say. And not from secondary sources. Besides, quite apart from the evolution/creation controversies rocks had fascinated me all my life.
Tom showed up in classic science professor attire, jeans and sweatshirt. He was only a couple of years older than I was. Everyone else in class was under twenty. They wore standard student uniforms–blue jeans and sweat shirts at beginning of the term in January, shorts and T-shirts come May. I wore my ministerial uniform–wool tweed jacket, dress slacks and knitted wool tie.
In the first few weeks of class we learned basic geological jargon, the major periods of geologic column–Cambrian, Permian, Jurassic, Pleistocene, etc.–with their putative dates, states of matter. It was elementary, pedestrian stuff, but since it was geology, I loved it. In lab we broke rocks with hammers, analyzed them with chemicals, stared at them through magnifying lenses. There was not a lot of room for evolutionary “opinions” or bias or prejudice. We were dealing with down-to-earth, concrete stuff.
I kept waiting for the teacher to get around to evolution.
We took field trips. We visited the central ridge of the island. Boulders and sand. On south shore beaches we observed erosion patterns created by winter storms. We visited construction sites where precautions against cave-ins had to be taken during any excavation. We checked out areas where we could smell the septic system seapage polluting creeks.
Geology, as Tom taught it, was not about theoretical links between dinosaurs and birds or the resetting of radiometric clocks during volcanic eruptions. Geology was primarily about providing essential knowledge for present living. Geology offered crucial information with a direct bearing on managing gasoline tanks, siting land fills, handling sewage, placing wells, and doing construction. For a bunch of godless scientists, geologists appeared to be unusually concerned about the health and well-being of society.
We couldn't completely escape history. The very land we lived on begged for an explanation. Why was the soil in my backyard so utterly different from any soil I had ever encountered before? When I dug my garden why did I encounter rocks of all different sizes and compositions? Why were the forests of eastern and southern Long Island so anemic? There was plenty of rain. Why didn't the trees grow? Why were there rocks in my yard and none in the yard of the Babylon Church? Why were there endless beaches all along the Atlantic shore?
The only plausible explanation for Long Island was glaciers. Huge glaciers. Glaciers a thousand feet thick that covered the entire states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Ironically, the conference office was located on Shelter Rock Road a few hundred yards from the eponymous Shelter Rock, an 1800-ton glacial erratic. The mineral composition of this forty feet long, twenty feet wide, fifteen feet high rock matched bedrock in Connecticut, a hundred miles north across Long Island Sound. The only plausible method of transport for Shelter Rock and other large boulders imbedded in the sand and gravels of Long Island was the movement of massive ice sheets across New England.
The position, shape and composition of Long Island made perfect sense if you accepted continental glaciers. Long Island made no sense at all if you tried to explain it using Noah’s flood. The visible, obvious features of my everyday world shouted about an element of earth history—continental glaciers, an ice age—that was not even hinted at in the Bible, and, in fact, could not be fit into most creationist narratives.
One chapter in our book did offer a bit of hope for creationist theories. When plate tectonics was first proposed, the leading professors, the papa bears of the geological establishment, vociferously opposed it, ridiculed it. When these men died off, they were replaced by their graduate students who embraced this new understanding of earth history. As a creationist, I could hope that perhaps some day there would be a similar upheaval in the conventional understanding of geochronology.
We never did get around to spending much time talking about evolution. Geology 101 did not challenge my creationist beliefs by presenting evolutionary theories. What it did do was erode my confident dismissal of geology as a hopelessly bias-dominated philosophy. I experienced geology as a science, as a system of knowledge-seeking firmly rooted the the real world. The geological theory about Long Island readily lined up with evidence that was available to me through direct observation. I didn't need a microscope or sophisticated machinery for measuring radio isotopes. I wasn't dependent on diagrams in books. The evidence was large, visible and ubiquitous. Then, perhaps most importantly, the geological theory about our island offered concrete guidance for public policy and wise living.
Geologists might be wrong on this or that particular point, but their connection with the real world and their versions of truth were at least as credible as the science of creationists.
When I signed up for Geology 101 at Suffolk County Community College, I had my guard up. I knew the professor would teach stuff I didn't believe. He would talk about about millions of years and evolution and horse fossils. But, I figured, it was time to face it. I had read everything the church had published on earth history. Intellectual integrity obliged me to find out what the other side had to say. And not from secondary sources. Besides, quite apart from the evolution/creation controversies rocks had fascinated me all my life.
Tom showed up in classic science professor attire, jeans and sweatshirt. He was only a couple of years older than I was. Everyone else in class was under twenty. They wore standard student uniforms–blue jeans and sweat shirts at beginning of the term in January, shorts and T-shirts come May. I wore my ministerial uniform–wool tweed jacket, dress slacks and knitted wool tie.
In the first few weeks of class we learned basic geological jargon, the major periods of geologic column–Cambrian, Permian, Jurassic, Pleistocene, etc.–with their putative dates, states of matter. It was elementary, pedestrian stuff, but since it was geology, I loved it. In lab we broke rocks with hammers, analyzed them with chemicals, stared at them through magnifying lenses. There was not a lot of room for evolutionary “opinions” or bias or prejudice. We were dealing with down-to-earth, concrete stuff.
I kept waiting for the teacher to get around to evolution.
We took field trips. We visited the central ridge of the island. Boulders and sand. On south shore beaches we observed erosion patterns created by winter storms. We visited construction sites where precautions against cave-ins had to be taken during any excavation. We checked out areas where we could smell the septic system seapage polluting creeks.
Geology, as Tom taught it, was not about theoretical links between dinosaurs and birds or the resetting of radiometric clocks during volcanic eruptions. Geology was primarily about providing essential knowledge for present living. Geology offered crucial information with a direct bearing on managing gasoline tanks, siting land fills, handling sewage, placing wells, and doing construction. For a bunch of godless scientists, geologists appeared to be unusually concerned about the health and well-being of society.
We couldn't completely escape history. The very land we lived on begged for an explanation. Why was the soil in my backyard so utterly different from any soil I had ever encountered before? When I dug my garden why did I encounter rocks of all different sizes and compositions? Why were the forests of eastern and southern Long Island so anemic? There was plenty of rain. Why didn't the trees grow? Why were there rocks in my yard and none in the yard of the Babylon Church? Why were there endless beaches all along the Atlantic shore?
The only plausible explanation for Long Island was glaciers. Huge glaciers. Glaciers a thousand feet thick that covered the entire states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Ironically, the conference office was located on Shelter Rock Road a few hundred yards from the eponymous Shelter Rock, an 1800-ton glacial erratic. The mineral composition of this forty feet long, twenty feet wide, fifteen feet high rock matched bedrock in Connecticut, a hundred miles north across Long Island Sound. The only plausible method of transport for Shelter Rock and other large boulders imbedded in the sand and gravels of Long Island was the movement of massive ice sheets across New England.
The position, shape and composition of Long Island made perfect sense if you accepted continental glaciers. Long Island made no sense at all if you tried to explain it using Noah’s flood. The visible, obvious features of my everyday world shouted about an element of earth history—continental glaciers, an ice age—that was not even hinted at in the Bible, and, in fact, could not be fit into most creationist narratives.
One chapter in our book did offer a bit of hope for creationist theories. When plate tectonics was first proposed, the leading professors, the papa bears of the geological establishment, vociferously opposed it, ridiculed it. When these men died off, they were replaced by their graduate students who embraced this new understanding of earth history. As a creationist, I could hope that perhaps some day there would be a similar upheaval in the conventional understanding of geochronology.
We never did get around to spending much time talking about evolution. Geology 101 did not challenge my creationist beliefs by presenting evolutionary theories. What it did do was erode my confident dismissal of geology as a hopelessly bias-dominated philosophy. I experienced geology as a science, as a system of knowledge-seeking firmly rooted the the real world. The geological theory about Long Island readily lined up with evidence that was available to me through direct observation. I didn't need a microscope or sophisticated machinery for measuring radio isotopes. I wasn't dependent on diagrams in books. The evidence was large, visible and ubiquitous. Then, perhaps most importantly, the geological theory about our island offered concrete guidance for public policy and wise living.
Geologists might be wrong on this or that particular point, but their connection with the real world and their versions of truth were at least as credible as the science of creationists.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Chapter 43 Better off out of Church
One of the casualties of my meddling was Mrs. Oliver. She had been treasurer for years. Her monthly reports were always on time. Every penny was accounted for. She questioned every expense. Her husband was a good man, but not a member of the church. In fact, he really didn’t care for the church. Everything she did in the church was in spite of him.
In addition to serving as treasurer, she taught the primary Sabbath School class. Her daughter came with her. Her son used to come, but now that he was a teenager, his father said he didn’t have to, so most of the time he didn’t.
For all her hard work Mrs. Oliver never looked happy. When we talked about issues in church board meetings, she participated in a civilized, courteous way, but there was always a severe intensity on her face. She felt the weight of our responsibility as God’s representatives in the last days of earth’s history. She worried that people–not just the general population, but most of the members of our own congregation—would come up short in the judgment. They thought they were okay, but in the judgment they would be sadly disappointed.
Sometimes she complained about the amount of work she was carrying. She wished more people would volunteer. Too few were carrying the work of the church. If people really believed Jesus was coming soon, they would be more serious about their support of the church. They would be more committed.
Our second spring in the parish, when it was time for our annual nominating committee, I was pleased with the prospect of electing a new treasurer. Brother Anthony had moved to the area and joined our church. He was a Jamaican. He was an accountant. And he was cheerful and pleasant. Working with him would be a lot more pleasant than working with Mrs. Oliver. At least he would have a smile on his face.
When I visited Mrs. Oliver and told her the nominating committee was going to give her a break from the work of treasurer, she didn’t say much, but I could see she was not happy. I was surprised. She always looked so burdened. More than occasionally she talked to me about how many hours the work of treasurer entailed. I knew her husband was not happy with the time and energy she devoted to the church. I thought she would be relieved. Instead, she was hurt.
A few weeks after her term of service as treasurer was completed Mrs. Oliver quit attending church. People called her. I ran into her in the grocery store a couple of times. She seemed lighthearted and pleasant. Finally, after four months I visited her at her house. We talked for a while about her kids and her husband. I told her I missed her work as treasurer. I was glad we had taken some of the load off her shoulders, but I missed her reliability and consistency.
She asked about different individuals at church. Then I asked if there was anything new in her life. Her face lit up. She gotten involved with a group working to protect streams and wetlands in Suffolk County. She liked the people. The project was very important. They were going to hold a demonstration in downtown Huntington the next Saturday. I winced. She should be in church on Sabbath, not marching with some environmental group. But I kept my mouth shut and kept listening.
She was devoting hours every week to the work of the group. They had talked to her about becoming treasurer. So much for my plans to ease her load. She was a busy outside the home as she had ever been. But it appeared to me there was one huge difference. She looked happy.
Finally, I screwed up my courage and asked her. “Mrs. Oliver, it seems to me that you are a lot happier now than when you went to church. You seem more at peace. Is that true.”
She hesitated, smiled, then said. “Yes. Yes, I am. I feel more free, more relaxed. Sure, we’re busy. We're already planning another rally downtown next month. The county has to do more restrain development that impacts our streams and wetlands here in Suffolk County. I’m as busy as I ever was. But it’s different. I am happier.”
“So is it a good thing you’re not at church?”
She thought for a minute. “Yes. I hate to say it to you, but yes, I’m doing better now. I’m more at peace.”
What could I say? I could see it in her face. She was visibly happier and more content than she had ever been in the year and a half I had known her as a member of the church. What was it about church culture that made her tight and frowning? Working in an environmental group she was still involved in prodding people to do their duty. I'm sure she was still keenly aware of the lethargy and lack of commitment that characterized far too many people. I sure she could see work that could be accomplished if only everyone would step and do their duty. So why was she so much happier? I suspected it had something to do with our ideas of the close of probation and the need to attain perfection in preparation for the Second Coming. Whatever the cause, the effect was undeniable.
As a Christian evangelist, it was my job to tell people, “Get in here! Come to Jesus . . . by coming here.” My entire training as a minister, in fact, my entire life as a devout Adventist, had been focused on helping people by persuading them of the truth of our doctrines and bringing them into the fellowship of the church. However, as a physician of the soul, I could not ask Mrs. Oliver to return to a place that made her miserable. I was obliged to encourage her in her new life. She was serving humanity. She was healthier psychologically. By every observable measure she was better off out of church than she had been in church.
“Mrs. Oliver,” I told her, “you know it’s my job to bring people into the church. And I hope sometime you’ll find yourself drawn again to our fellowship. But I can see you’re happy. I wish you blessings in your new work.”
To put it mildly my visit with Mrs. Oliver left me deeply perplexed.
As a final note of irony, and perhaps as a divine rebuke of my facile substitution of a faithful, meticulous, if somewhat grumpy, worker with someone more congenial, more cheerful--within six months of Mrs. Oliver's departure, I was the one hurting. Brother Anthony remained cheerful and pleasant. He never questioned a receipt I gave him, never challenged an expenditure proposed in board meetings. But the monthly treasurer’s report came irregularly. Sometimes a week late, then two and three weeks late. Then more than a month late. I began to worry about the accuracy of the reports. I asked the conference to audit our books. But their auditor was too busy. No matter how late the reports, no matter how many times I asked Brother Anthony when we could count on the next report, he remained happy and cheerful. Maybe happiness was overrated?
In addition to serving as treasurer, she taught the primary Sabbath School class. Her daughter came with her. Her son used to come, but now that he was a teenager, his father said he didn’t have to, so most of the time he didn’t.
For all her hard work Mrs. Oliver never looked happy. When we talked about issues in church board meetings, she participated in a civilized, courteous way, but there was always a severe intensity on her face. She felt the weight of our responsibility as God’s representatives in the last days of earth’s history. She worried that people–not just the general population, but most of the members of our own congregation—would come up short in the judgment. They thought they were okay, but in the judgment they would be sadly disappointed.
Sometimes she complained about the amount of work she was carrying. She wished more people would volunteer. Too few were carrying the work of the church. If people really believed Jesus was coming soon, they would be more serious about their support of the church. They would be more committed.
Our second spring in the parish, when it was time for our annual nominating committee, I was pleased with the prospect of electing a new treasurer. Brother Anthony had moved to the area and joined our church. He was a Jamaican. He was an accountant. And he was cheerful and pleasant. Working with him would be a lot more pleasant than working with Mrs. Oliver. At least he would have a smile on his face.
When I visited Mrs. Oliver and told her the nominating committee was going to give her a break from the work of treasurer, she didn’t say much, but I could see she was not happy. I was surprised. She always looked so burdened. More than occasionally she talked to me about how many hours the work of treasurer entailed. I knew her husband was not happy with the time and energy she devoted to the church. I thought she would be relieved. Instead, she was hurt.
A few weeks after her term of service as treasurer was completed Mrs. Oliver quit attending church. People called her. I ran into her in the grocery store a couple of times. She seemed lighthearted and pleasant. Finally, after four months I visited her at her house. We talked for a while about her kids and her husband. I told her I missed her work as treasurer. I was glad we had taken some of the load off her shoulders, but I missed her reliability and consistency.
She asked about different individuals at church. Then I asked if there was anything new in her life. Her face lit up. She gotten involved with a group working to protect streams and wetlands in Suffolk County. She liked the people. The project was very important. They were going to hold a demonstration in downtown Huntington the next Saturday. I winced. She should be in church on Sabbath, not marching with some environmental group. But I kept my mouth shut and kept listening.
She was devoting hours every week to the work of the group. They had talked to her about becoming treasurer. So much for my plans to ease her load. She was a busy outside the home as she had ever been. But it appeared to me there was one huge difference. She looked happy.
Finally, I screwed up my courage and asked her. “Mrs. Oliver, it seems to me that you are a lot happier now than when you went to church. You seem more at peace. Is that true.”
She hesitated, smiled, then said. “Yes. Yes, I am. I feel more free, more relaxed. Sure, we’re busy. We're already planning another rally downtown next month. The county has to do more restrain development that impacts our streams and wetlands here in Suffolk County. I’m as busy as I ever was. But it’s different. I am happier.”
“So is it a good thing you’re not at church?”
She thought for a minute. “Yes. I hate to say it to you, but yes, I’m doing better now. I’m more at peace.”
What could I say? I could see it in her face. She was visibly happier and more content than she had ever been in the year and a half I had known her as a member of the church. What was it about church culture that made her tight and frowning? Working in an environmental group she was still involved in prodding people to do their duty. I'm sure she was still keenly aware of the lethargy and lack of commitment that characterized far too many people. I sure she could see work that could be accomplished if only everyone would step and do their duty. So why was she so much happier? I suspected it had something to do with our ideas of the close of probation and the need to attain perfection in preparation for the Second Coming. Whatever the cause, the effect was undeniable.
As a Christian evangelist, it was my job to tell people, “Get in here! Come to Jesus . . . by coming here.” My entire training as a minister, in fact, my entire life as a devout Adventist, had been focused on helping people by persuading them of the truth of our doctrines and bringing them into the fellowship of the church. However, as a physician of the soul, I could not ask Mrs. Oliver to return to a place that made her miserable. I was obliged to encourage her in her new life. She was serving humanity. She was healthier psychologically. By every observable measure she was better off out of church than she had been in church.
“Mrs. Oliver,” I told her, “you know it’s my job to bring people into the church. And I hope sometime you’ll find yourself drawn again to our fellowship. But I can see you’re happy. I wish you blessings in your new work.”
To put it mildly my visit with Mrs. Oliver left me deeply perplexed.
As a final note of irony, and perhaps as a divine rebuke of my facile substitution of a faithful, meticulous, if somewhat grumpy, worker with someone more congenial, more cheerful--within six months of Mrs. Oliver's departure, I was the one hurting. Brother Anthony remained cheerful and pleasant. He never questioned a receipt I gave him, never challenged an expenditure proposed in board meetings. But the monthly treasurer’s report came irregularly. Sometimes a week late, then two and three weeks late. Then more than a month late. I began to worry about the accuracy of the reports. I asked the conference to audit our books. But their auditor was too busy. No matter how late the reports, no matter how many times I asked Brother Anthony when we could count on the next report, he remained happy and cheerful. Maybe happiness was overrated?
Chapter 42 Huntington Conundrum
After a month or two I knew the names of most of the people. I thought I had a feel for the congregations. I decided to focus most of my attention for the next year on Huntington. Based on what the conference president had said, I figured I would get the most results there. I put an advertisement in the local paper for Bible studies. From that ad Karin and I developed a Bible study with four women all in their middle forties. Three of them were wives of airline pilots. We spent months studying basic Bible teachings about prayer and spiritual life and the doctrines of the Adventist church. Only one of them had any trouble accepting the Adventist belief about hell: there is no such thing as eternal torment for the damned. But she finally came around. They agreed with the Adventist interpretation of Bible prophecies about the end of time. They agreed with the Adventist understanding of the Sabbath commandment.
By this time we had been studying together for nine months. It was time to invite them to church, but I hesitated.
The people at Huntington Church were unfailingly respectful to me. In their eyes I was God’s anointed. Several of the folks were positively warm. It was a pleasure to see them, to talk with them. But there was an ill-definable tension in the church. I could feel it when I walked in the door, a palpable alienation or hostility. I didn't understand it. Board meetings were civil. People did their jobs. The church was functioning. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what.
There were some obvious problems. At the weekly potluck meals, there was not enough food for everyone. Within a few months of our arrival, the church ladies decided serve the food instead of allowing people to serve themselves. They struggled to stretch the available food to feed all the hungry mouths. For awhile Karin tried making multiple dishes of food trying to fill gap between supply and demand. Her mother wisely put a stop to that. “It is not your job to feed the church,” she said.
I was appalled by the tension I could feel at meal time, but the church seemed used to it. They just managed.
I was puzzled by some of the ethnic realities. While the majority of the church was West Indian, none of the church offices was held by West Indians.
The Chinese family had their own lives independent of the church. They attended church faithfully. They supported the church generously with their money. But they were not part of the main network of relationships. Karin and I enjoyed a natural affinity with them as outsiders.
Actually, there were two main networks–the West Indians and the Acosta Family. Mr. Robinson seemed to be the most influential person in the West Indian network. He had six kids and most of the other kids in the church were connected to the family through friendships. In church two of the most influential people were Mr. and Mrs. Tobias. They were the oldest Jamaicans. Crusty and confident. They seemed to embody the authoritarian, frowning Adventism I remembered from boarding high school. It didn’t seem to me that people liked them. But the West Indians would not buck them when it came time to make decisions in church board meetings. They were “authorities.”
The senior Acosta had been the second elder in Huntington for a long time. When Mr. Dennis died, it was assumed he would move into the head elder slot. However, he seemed to me to play a very minor role in the church. He was not regarded as a leader or counselor. He was a nice guy who had been honored with the title elder, but he had no clout and hardly any influence that I could tell. So I suggested electing a West Indian as head elder.
There was vigorous opposition from the West Indians. They did not want to attend a Black church. If the head elder was a West Indian, then White people would be less likely to attend the church. So they wanted a White person as head elder to help keep the church from becoming all Black.
The most prominent African American in the church, Charlie Nelson, wanted a Black church. It would be far more effective reaching out to other African Americans he believed. The West Indians did not appreciate his emphasis on Black culture. And the Acosta clan was deeply offended that I would question putting Papa in as the next head elder.
As a young firebrand I was oblivious to the violence I was inflicting on the congregation by my insistence on driving them into the future I believed was their destiny. The primary effect of my driving was to heighten tensions that had been carefully restrained.
The church had delicately balanced their image of themselves as a community church in a suburban society that was overwhelmingly White with the reality of their increasingly West Indian membership. My pushing for formal West Indian leadership in the congregation forced people to think more pointedly about ethnic identity. And as they did so, they did not find a new, sweeter harmony. They were driven apart.
The Acosta family now felt unappreciated. Charlie was more bothered by the failure of the church to effectively minister to “his people after the flesh.” The West Indians became more aware of their own divisions, Jamaicans versus Barbadians versus Trinidadians. The Whites were made more aware of their shrinking, minority status. Huntington Church was not the happy church described by the conference president. After a year of my zealous meddling, it was worse.
I finally invited my Bible study ladies to church. They visited a few times, then did not come back. When I called they were happy to talk, but they were not interested in becoming part of this congregation.
By this time we had been studying together for nine months. It was time to invite them to church, but I hesitated.
The people at Huntington Church were unfailingly respectful to me. In their eyes I was God’s anointed. Several of the folks were positively warm. It was a pleasure to see them, to talk with them. But there was an ill-definable tension in the church. I could feel it when I walked in the door, a palpable alienation or hostility. I didn't understand it. Board meetings were civil. People did their jobs. The church was functioning. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what.
There were some obvious problems. At the weekly potluck meals, there was not enough food for everyone. Within a few months of our arrival, the church ladies decided serve the food instead of allowing people to serve themselves. They struggled to stretch the available food to feed all the hungry mouths. For awhile Karin tried making multiple dishes of food trying to fill gap between supply and demand. Her mother wisely put a stop to that. “It is not your job to feed the church,” she said.
I was appalled by the tension I could feel at meal time, but the church seemed used to it. They just managed.
I was puzzled by some of the ethnic realities. While the majority of the church was West Indian, none of the church offices was held by West Indians.
The Chinese family had their own lives independent of the church. They attended church faithfully. They supported the church generously with their money. But they were not part of the main network of relationships. Karin and I enjoyed a natural affinity with them as outsiders.
Actually, there were two main networks–the West Indians and the Acosta Family. Mr. Robinson seemed to be the most influential person in the West Indian network. He had six kids and most of the other kids in the church were connected to the family through friendships. In church two of the most influential people were Mr. and Mrs. Tobias. They were the oldest Jamaicans. Crusty and confident. They seemed to embody the authoritarian, frowning Adventism I remembered from boarding high school. It didn’t seem to me that people liked them. But the West Indians would not buck them when it came time to make decisions in church board meetings. They were “authorities.”
The senior Acosta had been the second elder in Huntington for a long time. When Mr. Dennis died, it was assumed he would move into the head elder slot. However, he seemed to me to play a very minor role in the church. He was not regarded as a leader or counselor. He was a nice guy who had been honored with the title elder, but he had no clout and hardly any influence that I could tell. So I suggested electing a West Indian as head elder.
There was vigorous opposition from the West Indians. They did not want to attend a Black church. If the head elder was a West Indian, then White people would be less likely to attend the church. So they wanted a White person as head elder to help keep the church from becoming all Black.
The most prominent African American in the church, Charlie Nelson, wanted a Black church. It would be far more effective reaching out to other African Americans he believed. The West Indians did not appreciate his emphasis on Black culture. And the Acosta clan was deeply offended that I would question putting Papa in as the next head elder.
As a young firebrand I was oblivious to the violence I was inflicting on the congregation by my insistence on driving them into the future I believed was their destiny. The primary effect of my driving was to heighten tensions that had been carefully restrained.
The church had delicately balanced their image of themselves as a community church in a suburban society that was overwhelmingly White with the reality of their increasingly West Indian membership. My pushing for formal West Indian leadership in the congregation forced people to think more pointedly about ethnic identity. And as they did so, they did not find a new, sweeter harmony. They were driven apart.
The Acosta family now felt unappreciated. Charlie was more bothered by the failure of the church to effectively minister to “his people after the flesh.” The West Indians became more aware of their own divisions, Jamaicans versus Barbadians versus Trinidadians. The Whites were made more aware of their shrinking, minority status. Huntington Church was not the happy church described by the conference president. After a year of my zealous meddling, it was worse.
I finally invited my Bible study ladies to church. They visited a few times, then did not come back. When I called they were happy to talk, but they were not interested in becoming part of this congregation.
Chapter 41 The New Parish
We moved into the parsonage. The interior was in not much better shape than the exterior we had seen on our first trip to Huntington, tired orange shag carpet throughout, walls in need of paint, the bathroom needing repairs. Karin immediately began planning improvements.
The day after we moved into the house, I drove down to Babylon to check out the church building. Mabel Smalling lived in a large, old house next door. It was owned by the church. The ground floor and basement served as a clothing distribution center. The second and third floors had two apartments. Mabel lived in the top apartment.
She showed me around. The concrete on the front steps, a steep, full flight of a dozen steps, was crumbling. Inside, the sanctuary featured Massive, dark beams above white walls. The windows along the side were unremarkable stained glass. At the front of the room, the platform was in a kind of alcove with a low ceiling. The carpet was threadbare and needed replacement.
Standing in the center aisle, she told me about the terrible pastor who had preceded me.
“Why, one Sabbath when I got to church,” she said, “the pulpit was missing. When I asked the pastor about it, he said he had moved it! We found out later he had gotten Oliver Spencer (he’s one of the new people) . . . He got Oliver to help him, and they put the pulpit up in the attic! I couldn’t believe it. My husband made that pulpit! We got it back down right away, I tell you. I am so glad you are here. We certainly needed a new pastor!”
We went downstairs to check out the space used for children's Sabbath School and potlucks. The linoleum tiles were broken and peeling off the floor. The men’s room stank. The plaster was cracked.
I liked Mabel. She was energetic, and bright-eyed. To hear her talk, she was a worker.
The Huntington Church was in better shape. It was a classic white rural church, inside a white ceiling made of pressed tin, white walls, frosted glass windows that filled the place with light on sunny days. Up front was a low, open platform.
My first Sabbath as the new preacher in the district, I was introduced in the Huntington Church by the Lay Ministries specialist from the Conference. The congregation was an interesting ethnic mix–about fifty percent from the West Indies, thirty percent Anglos, a few African Americans, several Hispanic families and a large Chinese family. Mr. Dennis, the head elder, was there that first Sabbath. He more than matched his reputation. He was tall and dignified with beckoning charisma.
I could tell this was going to be a fun place to minister.
The next week I was introduced in the Babylon Church by the conference treasurer. The weather was gloomy, but I boldly preached on a Bible passage describing the work of John the Baptist. “And all Judea went out to hear him.” I called the church to a new enthusiasm for serving God. We were going to do such a tremendous work that all of western Suffolk County would be drawn to us. (In the years since Karin has occasionally remarked on her amazement at my grandiosity. Fortunately, at the time, she did not tell me this.)
Huntington's Good People
I began visiting my parishioners. I learned Mr. Dennis was a brother-in-law to Mabel. He had been one of the key leaders of the Huntington Church when it was established twenty-five years earlier after an evangelistic campaign on the North Shore. Everyone in both churches revered him, even Mabel. He was dying of cancer. He had dragged himself out of bed to welcome me that first Sabbath. He was not able to make it again. His was my first funeral.
Mr. Hsu had his own dental appliance manufacturing business. Charlie, an African American was a machinist. Mr. Robinson appeared to be the unofficial leader of the West Indians. He commuted into the city to work. Mr. Johnson was an electronics engineer at Grumman Aerospace. He had built the church sound system, which was state of the art, and was nearly always there to operate it. Usually he was accompanied in the sound booth by one of the Acosta boys. All the kids seemed to like him. He would do anything needed except speak in public or pray out loud in any setting.
The Acosta clan were fascinating. It was three generations. The third generation formed a third of our youth group. The aunts and uncles lived in Huntington and New York City and Puerto Rico. And people seemed to move between these places without anyone thinking much about it. But Huntington, and granddad’s house, was the center.
The Saints of Babylon
The head elder at Babylon was short, five-six or five-seven, and heavy. His hands were hard and massive. His handshakes bone-crushing. He wore a perpetual grin. He hugged men and women indiscriminately. He owned a boat cover business where he worked a hundred hours a week from March through October and sixty hours a week the rest of the year. As I visited others in the church I heard nothing but affection and admiration for Sam.
Hans the second elder was a crusty German engineer. He had no use for anything other than perfect order and the meticulous performance of any assignment. The treasurer was another German, Mrs. Schoeps. She attended fairly regularly when they weren’t traveling. Her husband, who owned a machine shop, attended infrequently. Karin and I were immediately drawn to the Loughlin’s. He was a math professor. She was a nurse. Their four kids were fun. Veronica had a quiet, subtle charm. Her husband wasn’t a member, but her teenage children were in church every week. Jim and Marion were quiet, pleasant people you could trust with your life.
In the Huntington Church, sixty-five percent of the membership was non-white, but all the leading lay officers were White–head elder, head deacon, head deaconness, Sabbath school superintendent, treasurer. In the Babylon Church sixty-percent of the membership was White, but the head elder, head deacon and Sabbath School superintendent were West Indians.
Nothing in seminary could have prepared me to understand the social networks of a small, long-established church. These people had known each other forever. They knew who could do what, who would do what. As pastor, I fit into a predetermined slot in the networks, but the networks functioned quite independently of input from the pastor. I entered the pastorate with visions of revolutionary activity, visions fueled by books and conversations with fellow dreamers in seminary. As I got acquainted with my churches and with Long Island culture, revolution appeared increasingly inappropriate as a goal for ministry.
The day after we moved into the house, I drove down to Babylon to check out the church building. Mabel Smalling lived in a large, old house next door. It was owned by the church. The ground floor and basement served as a clothing distribution center. The second and third floors had two apartments. Mabel lived in the top apartment.
She showed me around. The concrete on the front steps, a steep, full flight of a dozen steps, was crumbling. Inside, the sanctuary featured Massive, dark beams above white walls. The windows along the side were unremarkable stained glass. At the front of the room, the platform was in a kind of alcove with a low ceiling. The carpet was threadbare and needed replacement.
Standing in the center aisle, she told me about the terrible pastor who had preceded me.
“Why, one Sabbath when I got to church,” she said, “the pulpit was missing. When I asked the pastor about it, he said he had moved it! We found out later he had gotten Oliver Spencer (he’s one of the new people) . . . He got Oliver to help him, and they put the pulpit up in the attic! I couldn’t believe it. My husband made that pulpit! We got it back down right away, I tell you. I am so glad you are here. We certainly needed a new pastor!”
We went downstairs to check out the space used for children's Sabbath School and potlucks. The linoleum tiles were broken and peeling off the floor. The men’s room stank. The plaster was cracked.
I liked Mabel. She was energetic, and bright-eyed. To hear her talk, she was a worker.
The Huntington Church was in better shape. It was a classic white rural church, inside a white ceiling made of pressed tin, white walls, frosted glass windows that filled the place with light on sunny days. Up front was a low, open platform.
My first Sabbath as the new preacher in the district, I was introduced in the Huntington Church by the Lay Ministries specialist from the Conference. The congregation was an interesting ethnic mix–about fifty percent from the West Indies, thirty percent Anglos, a few African Americans, several Hispanic families and a large Chinese family. Mr. Dennis, the head elder, was there that first Sabbath. He more than matched his reputation. He was tall and dignified with beckoning charisma.
I could tell this was going to be a fun place to minister.
The next week I was introduced in the Babylon Church by the conference treasurer. The weather was gloomy, but I boldly preached on a Bible passage describing the work of John the Baptist. “And all Judea went out to hear him.” I called the church to a new enthusiasm for serving God. We were going to do such a tremendous work that all of western Suffolk County would be drawn to us. (In the years since Karin has occasionally remarked on her amazement at my grandiosity. Fortunately, at the time, she did not tell me this.)
Huntington's Good People
I began visiting my parishioners. I learned Mr. Dennis was a brother-in-law to Mabel. He had been one of the key leaders of the Huntington Church when it was established twenty-five years earlier after an evangelistic campaign on the North Shore. Everyone in both churches revered him, even Mabel. He was dying of cancer. He had dragged himself out of bed to welcome me that first Sabbath. He was not able to make it again. His was my first funeral.
Mr. Hsu had his own dental appliance manufacturing business. Charlie, an African American was a machinist. Mr. Robinson appeared to be the unofficial leader of the West Indians. He commuted into the city to work. Mr. Johnson was an electronics engineer at Grumman Aerospace. He had built the church sound system, which was state of the art, and was nearly always there to operate it. Usually he was accompanied in the sound booth by one of the Acosta boys. All the kids seemed to like him. He would do anything needed except speak in public or pray out loud in any setting.
The Acosta clan were fascinating. It was three generations. The third generation formed a third of our youth group. The aunts and uncles lived in Huntington and New York City and Puerto Rico. And people seemed to move between these places without anyone thinking much about it. But Huntington, and granddad’s house, was the center.
The Saints of Babylon
The head elder at Babylon was short, five-six or five-seven, and heavy. His hands were hard and massive. His handshakes bone-crushing. He wore a perpetual grin. He hugged men and women indiscriminately. He owned a boat cover business where he worked a hundred hours a week from March through October and sixty hours a week the rest of the year. As I visited others in the church I heard nothing but affection and admiration for Sam.
Hans the second elder was a crusty German engineer. He had no use for anything other than perfect order and the meticulous performance of any assignment. The treasurer was another German, Mrs. Schoeps. She attended fairly regularly when they weren’t traveling. Her husband, who owned a machine shop, attended infrequently. Karin and I were immediately drawn to the Loughlin’s. He was a math professor. She was a nurse. Their four kids were fun. Veronica had a quiet, subtle charm. Her husband wasn’t a member, but her teenage children were in church every week. Jim and Marion were quiet, pleasant people you could trust with your life.
In the Huntington Church, sixty-five percent of the membership was non-white, but all the leading lay officers were White–head elder, head deacon, head deaconness, Sabbath school superintendent, treasurer. In the Babylon Church sixty-percent of the membership was White, but the head elder, head deacon and Sabbath School superintendent were West Indians.
Nothing in seminary could have prepared me to understand the social networks of a small, long-established church. These people had known each other forever. They knew who could do what, who would do what. As pastor, I fit into a predetermined slot in the networks, but the networks functioned quite independently of input from the pastor. I entered the pastorate with visions of revolutionary activity, visions fueled by books and conversations with fellow dreamers in seminary. As I got acquainted with my churches and with Long Island culture, revolution appeared increasingly inappropriate as a goal for ministry.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Chapter 40. The South Side of the Tracks
After our visit with the conference president, Karin and I drove east to check out our parish. Instead of driving out the Long Island Expressway, we took Northern Boulevard so we could get a closer look at the communities of the area. The further we drove, the more impressed we were. I had no idea Long Island was so rich. The homes got larger and larger. It would be more descriptive to call them estates. Palatial homes set in expanses of lawn or nestled in forest. In places the highway skirted harbors filled with sail boats and yachts.
In Cold Spring Harbor, the last town before Huntington, we crossed a low spot where you could look north to Long Island Sound. On the right was a beautiful, small, Episcopal Church set next to an immense lawn and a lake populated with ducks and swans. The yard of the church was filled with people. A bride and groom were standing on the steps with the pastor in his robes.
It was an idyllic vision of quiet, long-term pastoral ministry. A shepherd and his flock. A ministry rooted in lasting, deep relationships. It was the polar opposite of the drama of urban ministry focused on a relentless drive to change neighborhoods, change political systems, rescue people from dramatically dysfunctional lives. But this, too, was ministry. The well-to-do and sophisticated needed Jesus, too. I could imagine becoming friends with these people, becoming part of the social fabric, being part of the life cycle of children, baptisms, weddings, marriage conflicts, funerals. Visiting people in the hospital, representing the face of Jesus in the ordinary patterns of life. Influencing through long-term relationships the shape of an entire community, not just a church.
We drove up the hill out of Cold Spring Harbor and, five miles later, into downtown Huntington. It was a real town. Main street was lined with shops. The sidewalks were filled with people. There were restaurants. We could see the harbor to the north filled with expensive boats. In the center of town we turned right on Highway 110 that ran south toward the Long Island Expressway and ultimately to the South Shore. As we drove, more shops, a book store, restaurants, then less glamorous businesses, an auto repair shop, a printer, a gas station. Then we came to the railroad station. It was surrounded by vast parking lots. We drove under the tracks. As the road came up on the other side, everything changed–drastically. Liquor stores, unkempt houses, a vacuum repair shop, a shoe repair shop, a convenience store. Weeds, trash.
At the corner of Ninth Street there was a bank. We turned right. Past the bank and a vacant lot. Then the church on the right. It was a simple white building with high steps that climbed steeply from the sidewalk. The parking lot was gravel and grass.
Across the street and down one lot was the parsonage. The house was squat and unattractive. It looked like the walls weren’t tall enough for the roof. The yard needed mowing. The bushes were overgrown. We drove around the immediate neighborhood. The parsonage blended right in. Some yards were well kept. Some were wrecks. The streets were filled with parked cars.
I was embarrassed by my disappointment. I had regarded myself as an enlightened liberal when it came to matters of class and race. I had dreamed of making a difference in the lives of poor people. Now here I was looking at a poor parish and dreaming of ministry a few blocks north.
I struggled to pull myself back down to earth. My parish was on this side of the tracks.
We drove to Babylon. Thirty-five minutes straight south. The church was one block south of the center of town and only two blocks from the water. The building looked run down. The gravel parking lot had huge potholes in it. My heart sank. This was not the ministry I had imagined. But it was my job starting January 1.
In Cold Spring Harbor, the last town before Huntington, we crossed a low spot where you could look north to Long Island Sound. On the right was a beautiful, small, Episcopal Church set next to an immense lawn and a lake populated with ducks and swans. The yard of the church was filled with people. A bride and groom were standing on the steps with the pastor in his robes.
It was an idyllic vision of quiet, long-term pastoral ministry. A shepherd and his flock. A ministry rooted in lasting, deep relationships. It was the polar opposite of the drama of urban ministry focused on a relentless drive to change neighborhoods, change political systems, rescue people from dramatically dysfunctional lives. But this, too, was ministry. The well-to-do and sophisticated needed Jesus, too. I could imagine becoming friends with these people, becoming part of the social fabric, being part of the life cycle of children, baptisms, weddings, marriage conflicts, funerals. Visiting people in the hospital, representing the face of Jesus in the ordinary patterns of life. Influencing through long-term relationships the shape of an entire community, not just a church.
We drove up the hill out of Cold Spring Harbor and, five miles later, into downtown Huntington. It was a real town. Main street was lined with shops. The sidewalks were filled with people. There were restaurants. We could see the harbor to the north filled with expensive boats. In the center of town we turned right on Highway 110 that ran south toward the Long Island Expressway and ultimately to the South Shore. As we drove, more shops, a book store, restaurants, then less glamorous businesses, an auto repair shop, a printer, a gas station. Then we came to the railroad station. It was surrounded by vast parking lots. We drove under the tracks. As the road came up on the other side, everything changed–drastically. Liquor stores, unkempt houses, a vacuum repair shop, a shoe repair shop, a convenience store. Weeds, trash.
At the corner of Ninth Street there was a bank. We turned right. Past the bank and a vacant lot. Then the church on the right. It was a simple white building with high steps that climbed steeply from the sidewalk. The parking lot was gravel and grass.
Across the street and down one lot was the parsonage. The house was squat and unattractive. It looked like the walls weren’t tall enough for the roof. The yard needed mowing. The bushes were overgrown. We drove around the immediate neighborhood. The parsonage blended right in. Some yards were well kept. Some were wrecks. The streets were filled with parked cars.
I was embarrassed by my disappointment. I had regarded myself as an enlightened liberal when it came to matters of class and race. I had dreamed of making a difference in the lives of poor people. Now here I was looking at a poor parish and dreaming of ministry a few blocks north.
I struggled to pull myself back down to earth. My parish was on this side of the tracks.
We drove to Babylon. Thirty-five minutes straight south. The church was one block south of the center of town and only two blocks from the water. The building looked run down. The gravel parking lot had huge potholes in it. My heart sank. This was not the ministry I had imagined. But it was my job starting January 1.
Chapter 39. Called to Babylon
I met Karin Lundstrom on the steps of the James White Library at Andrews in January, 1978. We got married in May, 1979. After the summer together in my apartment in Times Square, she returned to her parent’s house in Takoma Park for one more quarter of school to complete her B.S. in nursing. She came home every other weekend. Our absences and reunions gave me a dramatically enriched view of the meaning and experience of Sabbath.
The Center was closing. The denomination had found a buyer–the Church of Scientology. That hurt. How could we relinquish our light house in Times Square to cult? But selling was inevitable. The Greater New York Conference was pumping $25,000 a year into maintenance at the Center. The Atlantic Union Conference (the northeast regional body) was spending another fifty thousand for salaries and maintenance. And, as far as I could tell, the Center was making no impact on the city. It was not producing baptisms. It was not raising public awareness of the church and its mission. Even though I regretted losing my place in the heart of Manhattan, closing of the Center made sense for the denomination.
The Center had given me a job–in Manhattan! It had been good for my boss, Ted Wilson. It gave him an administrative position, putting him on a fast track escalator within the denomination. It paid for his Ph. D. at New York University. Over the years it had provided an opportunity for a wide variety of people to experiment with urban ministry. It had served as a center of Adventist hospitality for traveling school groups and missionaries passing through. But as an evangelistic center it was a flop–like every other evangelistic center the church had funded in cities around the world.
It seemed to me an “evangelistic center” was wrong-headed in its very conception. Evangelism is the movement of the church outward, away from itself. But the idea of a “center” was the ambition to draw people in. It was hoped that the public would come to us. Time had proven that what we offered was not sufficiently attractive for the Center to work.
Metro Ministries was going to continue their Wall Street restaurant. Ted was still dreaming of putting together a comprehensive urban ministry based on Ellen White's blueprint. But it was time for me to go. I had no idea where.
In November, I got a phone call from Elder Kretschmar, the president of the Greater New York Conference. Would I be willing to serve as pastor for the Huntington and Babylon Churches, two congregations in the suburbs of western Suffolk County on Long Island?
The first few times I had heard references to “the Babylon Church” I thought it was a joke. In the Book of Revelation, the mythic city of Babylon represents the Dark Force. It is the premier enemy of God and his people. Adventist evangelists preach that Babylon symbolizes apostate Christianity (that is, all denominations other than our own). Right wing Adventists sometimes identify the denomination itself as Babylon—an organized Christian body that has compromised the pure religion of Jesus. Babylon is the Adventist bogey man. So when I heard people refer to the Babylon Church, I figured there was some congregation in the conference that was so messed up people had nicknamed it Babylon. But the Babylon Church was no joke. The Babylon Seventh-day Adventist Church was located on Fire Island Avenue in Babylon on Long Island, New York. (And the head elder's phone number was 666-6696. No joke.)
A suburban pastorate had never been my dream. Memphis wasn’t Brooklyn, but where I grew up was still "city." We played Army and cowboys and Indians in the alleys, climbing fences and sneaking through backyards. When we got a bit older we played football and sometimes even baseball in the street. People in our neighborhood did not drive station wagons. They did not have large yards. They did not have new houses. Our sidewalks were not bright, white and uncracked.
The suburbs was an an alien world. My cousins lived there as did all of my classmates at the Adventist elementary school. I enjoyed visiting my cousins' homes, but I never envisioned living in that kind of environment. In grade school and high school, when I imagined my future it was always exotic—Africa (as a missionary doctor), at sea (with Ed Link or Jacques Cousteau), or in the wilderness of northern Minnesota (as described in books by Sam Campbell). Suburbs were clean, orderly, uninteresting.
Then during college I spent a year as a volunteer at the New York Center. The City captured my heart. The year nearly killed me. I lost thirty pounds. At times I hated the ugliness and the raw displays of human pain, frailty and degradation. I hated the ways life there hardened me. I hated the inescapable noise. But once I was away from it for awhile, I craved the intensity, the vitality and energy I felt walking the streets in Midtown Manhattan. The rawness of humanity made sense of ministry. You could see the needs ministry was supposed to address. And, though I would never have admitted it out loud, doing ministry in New York felt more significant just because of the City's status. Ministry performed in New York was grander and more important than the same ministry done somewhere in suburbia because it was being done at the center of the world. New York had seduced me.
Then I went to Seminary.
In seminary, the books that fired my imagination were written by urban pastors or about urban ministry. The most compelling, engaging professor, Benjamin Reeves, was a Black man with tales of ministry in hard neighborhoods. In the books I read and in conversations with other avant-garde seminarians, the suburbs were associated with racist, self-satisfied, narcissistic Christianity.
After seminary, wonder-of-wonders, God gave me the opportunity to return to Times Square. I was clearly on track toward an urban pastorate. Instead, the pastorate being offered was at the outer edge of the quintessential suburbs of Long Island, fifty miles from Manhattan. I had hoped to pastor the Greenwich Village Church or maybe a church in Brooklyn. But what could I do? No one else was offering me a job (nor were they likely to).
When Karin came home for Thanksgiving break, she and I drove east from Manhattan for a formal interview with the conference president at his office in Manhasset, a wealthy berg in the endless Long Island suburban sprawl. He was avuncular, asked about our backgrounds, talked about his wife’s ministry. He wanted to know about my sense of call to the ministry. I couldn't tell what he thought of me, but he was impressed with Karin.
There was a parsonage across the street from the Huntington Church, he said. That’s where we would live. The Huntington congregation was going to be our favorite. The head elder, John Dennis, was a prince, legendary for his kindness and generosity. A previous pastor, Nikolaus Satelmajer, had been very active in the community. The church was a warm, welcoming congregation. We would have a great time there.
The Babylon Church was different, the president said. Good people, but they had a history of being fractious and perhaps a bit snobbish. They sometimes quarreled with conference leadership. There had been problems with the previous pastor. The elementary school next door to the church was deeply in debt. The principal was a volunteer who had a full time job as a teacher in the public school system. Two of the teachers–the wife of the former pastor and the wife of the principal—donated their salaries back to the conference to pay on the debt the school owed to the conference. I could see Elder Kretschmar was tempted to say more. It was obvious he didn’t like either the principal or the previous pastor. But propriety required him not to say anything too explicitly negative.
He was done. “Let’s pray before you go,” he said. He walked around his desk and the three of us knelt on the circular Persian carpet he called his prayer rug.
After prayer we stood. “God bless.” He grinned and patted me on the shoulder. “Give me a call, if you need any help.”
The Center was closing. The denomination had found a buyer–the Church of Scientology. That hurt. How could we relinquish our light house in Times Square to cult? But selling was inevitable. The Greater New York Conference was pumping $25,000 a year into maintenance at the Center. The Atlantic Union Conference (the northeast regional body) was spending another fifty thousand for salaries and maintenance. And, as far as I could tell, the Center was making no impact on the city. It was not producing baptisms. It was not raising public awareness of the church and its mission. Even though I regretted losing my place in the heart of Manhattan, closing of the Center made sense for the denomination.
The Center had given me a job–in Manhattan! It had been good for my boss, Ted Wilson. It gave him an administrative position, putting him on a fast track escalator within the denomination. It paid for his Ph. D. at New York University. Over the years it had provided an opportunity for a wide variety of people to experiment with urban ministry. It had served as a center of Adventist hospitality for traveling school groups and missionaries passing through. But as an evangelistic center it was a flop–like every other evangelistic center the church had funded in cities around the world.
It seemed to me an “evangelistic center” was wrong-headed in its very conception. Evangelism is the movement of the church outward, away from itself. But the idea of a “center” was the ambition to draw people in. It was hoped that the public would come to us. Time had proven that what we offered was not sufficiently attractive for the Center to work.
Metro Ministries was going to continue their Wall Street restaurant. Ted was still dreaming of putting together a comprehensive urban ministry based on Ellen White's blueprint. But it was time for me to go. I had no idea where.
In November, I got a phone call from Elder Kretschmar, the president of the Greater New York Conference. Would I be willing to serve as pastor for the Huntington and Babylon Churches, two congregations in the suburbs of western Suffolk County on Long Island?
The first few times I had heard references to “the Babylon Church” I thought it was a joke. In the Book of Revelation, the mythic city of Babylon represents the Dark Force. It is the premier enemy of God and his people. Adventist evangelists preach that Babylon symbolizes apostate Christianity (that is, all denominations other than our own). Right wing Adventists sometimes identify the denomination itself as Babylon—an organized Christian body that has compromised the pure religion of Jesus. Babylon is the Adventist bogey man. So when I heard people refer to the Babylon Church, I figured there was some congregation in the conference that was so messed up people had nicknamed it Babylon. But the Babylon Church was no joke. The Babylon Seventh-day Adventist Church was located on Fire Island Avenue in Babylon on Long Island, New York. (And the head elder's phone number was 666-6696. No joke.)
A suburban pastorate had never been my dream. Memphis wasn’t Brooklyn, but where I grew up was still "city." We played Army and cowboys and Indians in the alleys, climbing fences and sneaking through backyards. When we got a bit older we played football and sometimes even baseball in the street. People in our neighborhood did not drive station wagons. They did not have large yards. They did not have new houses. Our sidewalks were not bright, white and uncracked.
The suburbs was an an alien world. My cousins lived there as did all of my classmates at the Adventist elementary school. I enjoyed visiting my cousins' homes, but I never envisioned living in that kind of environment. In grade school and high school, when I imagined my future it was always exotic—Africa (as a missionary doctor), at sea (with Ed Link or Jacques Cousteau), or in the wilderness of northern Minnesota (as described in books by Sam Campbell). Suburbs were clean, orderly, uninteresting.
Then during college I spent a year as a volunteer at the New York Center. The City captured my heart. The year nearly killed me. I lost thirty pounds. At times I hated the ugliness and the raw displays of human pain, frailty and degradation. I hated the ways life there hardened me. I hated the inescapable noise. But once I was away from it for awhile, I craved the intensity, the vitality and energy I felt walking the streets in Midtown Manhattan. The rawness of humanity made sense of ministry. You could see the needs ministry was supposed to address. And, though I would never have admitted it out loud, doing ministry in New York felt more significant just because of the City's status. Ministry performed in New York was grander and more important than the same ministry done somewhere in suburbia because it was being done at the center of the world. New York had seduced me.
Then I went to Seminary.
In seminary, the books that fired my imagination were written by urban pastors or about urban ministry. The most compelling, engaging professor, Benjamin Reeves, was a Black man with tales of ministry in hard neighborhoods. In the books I read and in conversations with other avant-garde seminarians, the suburbs were associated with racist, self-satisfied, narcissistic Christianity.
After seminary, wonder-of-wonders, God gave me the opportunity to return to Times Square. I was clearly on track toward an urban pastorate. Instead, the pastorate being offered was at the outer edge of the quintessential suburbs of Long Island, fifty miles from Manhattan. I had hoped to pastor the Greenwich Village Church or maybe a church in Brooklyn. But what could I do? No one else was offering me a job (nor were they likely to).
When Karin came home for Thanksgiving break, she and I drove east from Manhattan for a formal interview with the conference president at his office in Manhasset, a wealthy berg in the endless Long Island suburban sprawl. He was avuncular, asked about our backgrounds, talked about his wife’s ministry. He wanted to know about my sense of call to the ministry. I couldn't tell what he thought of me, but he was impressed with Karin.
There was a parsonage across the street from the Huntington Church, he said. That’s where we would live. The Huntington congregation was going to be our favorite. The head elder, John Dennis, was a prince, legendary for his kindness and generosity. A previous pastor, Nikolaus Satelmajer, had been very active in the community. The church was a warm, welcoming congregation. We would have a great time there.
The Babylon Church was different, the president said. Good people, but they had a history of being fractious and perhaps a bit snobbish. They sometimes quarreled with conference leadership. There had been problems with the previous pastor. The elementary school next door to the church was deeply in debt. The principal was a volunteer who had a full time job as a teacher in the public school system. Two of the teachers–the wife of the former pastor and the wife of the principal—donated their salaries back to the conference to pay on the debt the school owed to the conference. I could see Elder Kretschmar was tempted to say more. It was obvious he didn’t like either the principal or the previous pastor. But propriety required him not to say anything too explicitly negative.
He was done. “Let’s pray before you go,” he said. He walked around his desk and the three of us knelt on the circular Persian carpet he called his prayer rug.
After prayer we stood. “God bless.” He grinned and patted me on the shoulder. “Give me a call, if you need any help.”
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