How to Grow a Minister, Part 1

with Darth Vader’s voice and the beatnik song “Twisted”

As a cradle Catholic I did not expect to become a minister. It seemed possible that I would become a nun, even a new age hippie nun. But “priest” was not an available career option. 

But then I saw a woman in the pulpit. It was a revelation. Her name was Rev. Barbara. She was a Unitarian Universalist minister and her specialty was worship. She held a reverent and inclusive space for a room full of atheists, agnostics, theists and pantheists with a smile on her face. The dour-faced priests of my youth were exposed for the absurd relics they were. This blew the dust off everything.

Worship became truly nurturing.

I know this attribute is gendered and I can’t help it. This was Rev. Barbara. She cared about holding each person in the light of the holy and she transmitted it. She encouraged us to look at one another that way, too, as sacred holy beings. Her skill and caring spirit made me want to be a minister. I didn’t want to just do the job she was doing. I wanted to feel what she felt. Did I have the capacity to hold a room full of people in a spirit of love? 

Rev. Barbara saw something in me that made her think I could and she encouraged me to go to seminary. And thus began what is often called “the formation process” of becoming a minister.

THE FORMATION PROCESS*

*announced in the booming voice of Edward Earl Jones

**this process is Unitarian Universalism, the religion in which I was ordained, but it can be applied to many faith traditions.

It starts off easy enough:

• Ministers are encouraged to practice self care. If you can’t care for yourself you can’t care for others. Take time for yourself and your hobbies. Try to exercise and eat healthy, too.

• Ministers are encouraged to have a consistent spiritual practice. If you don’t have a spiritual practice, you won’t be able to lead the spiritual practices of others. 

• To learn about your spiritual practice it is good to have a spiritual director and meet with them regularly. 

• And a therapist. 

• And a mentor.

Do you know how many hours a week it takes to be that healthy? It continues:

• Ministers are also required to attend three years of full-time theological school

• have a one-year full time ministerial internship in a local congregation

• attend Clinical Pastoral Education (which is a 3-month full time chaplain school/internship program)

• participate in regional and national denominational activities, 

• and stay connected to colleagues.

If you can accomplish all of this without losing your mind…

• you gather all the evidence of your work

• several recommendations

• a mental health evaluation

• and you write several essays on what you know about administration, teaching, preaching, theology, religious education and pastoral care. 

• Then you go before a committee and they rate you, on a scale of 1-5. One is the best. Everything else requires even more work. 

• After that you are approved for ordination

If that sounded like a lot, get this: I’m summing it up. It’s even more complicated than that. And most ministers attempt to do the majority of this work in three years, all at the same time. 

Some ministers enter the “search cycle” to find a congregation before they even graduate from seminary, so while they are doing all the above work, they are applying and interviewing for their first ministry job. And the entire process of “search” is even more intense and complicated and most of the time, new ministers have no idea what they are doing. 

GETTING THE PARISH MINISTRY JOB*

*Edward Earl Jones starts to sound a little bit like Darth Vader, complete with breathing apparatus 

When a congregation is looking for a minister, they ask several longtime members of their congregation to form a search committee. This committee meets countless times over the course of a year or two as they discern what they want in a minister. Most have never served on a search committee before, and they don’t know what they are doing. Then they accept applications, find a couple ministers they like, and start interviewing.

Throughout the process, and I can’t stress this enough, most people don’t know what they are doing. New ministers don’t know, the search committee doesn’t know, and everyone is required to pretend they do. 

If you are a seasoned minister and you are going through the search process, you have been around the block before and ostensibly know a little less than nothing. But most ministers meet their congregation only once before committing to the job. So if ministry is like a marriage, this is like 90-day fiance. How can anyone know what they are doing?

New ministers know nothing. Many are totally burnt out from three-years of nonstop school and internships and interviews and critique and they just want a job to show for all their money and hard work and sacrifice. A job, any job, just to prove this wasn’t for nothing. So they put their best face forward (even if its not entirely their true face) and they hope for the best and they take what they can get. 

And the congregations—who have also put their best-but-not-entirely-true face forward, who have histories of misconduct or bad behavior, who might not even entirely trust ministers because of the one from 198-whatever who shall not be named—they also hope for the best and take what they can get.

BE CAREFUL NOT TO CHOKE ON YOUR ASPIRATIONS*

*This is an actual Darth Vader quote

As you can imagine, this process often ends badly. Burn out and resignations and recriminations and broken hearts. And blame. A lot of blame. Mostly, everyone blames themselves.

Someone once told me that if you can last for five years in ministry, you should consider yourself lucky. Only then can you be sure you have what it takes. For many new ministers, as they struggle and ultimately burn out before those five years are up, they are cursed with an internal dialogue I must not have what it takes.

When I left my congregation after three years I wasn’t just burnt out, I had physical and mental health issues, I was in deep grief over the traumatic death of my dad, and I was nursing my 78-year-old mother back to health who had all of those issues and more. And I had a son entering high school and a husband nearing retirement and we were surviving a global pandemic. I’d done what most of my seminary friends had done—worked nonstop for three years, worked full time for three more, carried my congregation through Covid—and I had nothing left to give. 

When I called my regional leaders for help, they suggested I take a class on learning to have good boundaries. My mind was mush but I actually considered it. I actually considered that the answer to my problem was I needed another class.

When I left my congregation none of my colleagues called me to check in. Likely because they were simply trying to survive as well. The regional leaders of my denomination didn’t check in. Not even an email. They let me fall aside. I must not have what it takes.

After several years of healing I can now say for certain that no one on earth would have what it takes in those circumstances. And in fact, those circumstances were not unique. Outside of the pandemic, most of it was just human life. The issue is that ministry does not allow space for one’s humanity.

When I think about Rev. Barbara holding an entire congregation of people in a spirit of love and care, my heart hurts a little. Because I’ve done it. I’ve been in that room, praying and preaching from the pulpit, and felt the sort of holy love that can occur. The congregation that I served was truly precious to me. They were a loving, caring, thoughtful group of people who treated me with kindness. And when I stood in front of them I prayed to be fully present. I prayed that they would know and see how wonderful it is to share in community together. 

But even then, when everything between a congregation and a minister is true and loving and caring, even then I had to resign. How can this be? Shouldn’t love be enough?

It isn’t enough. Being a loving caring congregation isn’t enough. Being a minister who has good boundaries and goes to her therapist every week and has a solid spiritual practice and knows all the words to all the hymns… this isn’t enough either. 

As Vader would say, I FIND YOUR LACK OF FAITH DISTURBING*

How do we grow and nurture a minister? Part 2 next week I will attempt to provide some answers to that question.