Five minutes before service and I was still sitting in my car. I had spent the last five minutes, after I had parked and turned my car off, wondering what had I gotten myself into. The profile of the church building stood in the corner of my eye and I tried very hard to ignore it. I looked over the sermon outline I had prepared, scrawled down in haste as if the Spirit's inspiration would evaporate if I wrote it down slowly and neatly. I could have re-written it, made it nice and neat and organized. Proper, like a lady pastor should be. Looking back now, it was comforting to have something that looked on the outside as anxious and nervous as I felt inside. It was a physical companion I carried with me as I walked into the church as I surrendered in obedience to the Holy Spirit.
I have spent the last year and half doing the ministry of guest preaching to churches in need. Some of the opportunities were from pastors who needed a vacation, but more often than not these were churches who needed a pastor. For over a year, I heard their anxieties, their fears, their joys, and their struggles. I heard about their physical pains as they avoided telling me about their emotional or spiritual pains. When a member died, I could tell they noticed how much space was in the pews. I could see their fears of their church dying when they asked me to pray for the families of the deceased. I could see the stress from shouldering the responsibility of keeping the church doors open when they apologized for the small attendance of 25 or 10 or 5.
I never felt uncomfortable preaching to a choir (no literally, sometimes it was only a five member choir in attendance), because where they (or others) might have seen death, I saw life. I saw a steadfast devotion to God. I saw a willingness to risk being the only one present. I saw devotion to God even when all their friends were absent by death or sickness. I saw a great witness to the hope of the resurrection even as my voice echoed in the nearly empty space. And every day, every time, I was honored to the point of tears to be in the presence of such faithfulness.
But I am not writing about their devotion, at least not this time. Instead, I am writing about how I failed to speak to their fears of their church dying, their anxieties of being without a pastor, and their pain from feeling unloved and abandoned, and especially the pain of seeking a new pastor. I failed to be faithful to them as they had been faithful to God through the gift I had been given of singleness.
You see, in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the process of matching pastors and churches is a long and laborious task. Eligible pastors make an online profile, and newly single churches make their own profile, and potential matches are made. If one party is interested in the other, they begin talking. The talking may lead to meeting, perhaps over coffee. The meeting may lead to more meetings, which may lead to a match. Or, it could lead to one not being interested, one not being picked, or one ghosting with no explanation.
So basically, it is like online dating. For years I have jokingly described it as such for it is the easiest way to explain my job search process to my non-church or non-Presbyterian friends, but the analogy is pretty spot on. And it's a process I understand, having willingly put myself through the torturous process of online dating. The ads make online dating seem so simple and pleasant, but those ads are lying. Online dating is exhausting and it sucks. You can spend hours looking for someone to see you, to be vulnerable with, only to have your efforts shoved back in your face. You can end up feeling more belittled, more alone, and more abandoned than before. And no matter how strong or self confident of a woman you are, it still hurts. It still gnaws at you.
It is the same in the pastor search process. No matter how strong or faithful you are, hopelessness and fear still gnaw at you. Pain and unanswered questions echo inside our minds and hearts, and we try to never show it. And it is especially hard when we are happy for our former pastors. It is hard to hold both happiness and sadness together. We think faithfulness is not worrying and not doubting. We think the best way to preserve the church is to not grieve. We think we need to pick either joy or sorrow.
And for the past year I talked to those fears and anxieties but never talked about them. I never named and addressed their pain directly. God worked through me regardless of my failings to be faithful because that is the kind of God we are dealing with - One who uses broken and messy humans. And in the forgiveness I have received from Jesus, I responded with faithful (nervous filled) obedience. I walked up to the pulpit, set my messy scrawled outline of a sermon in front of me, and looked them each right in the eye as I told them how well I saw their pain, their fears, and their feelings of anger, frustration, and brokenness. I told them it was okay to feel both happy for the former pastor's new position and sad that the pastor is gone. I told them I could understand how exhausting and tired and abandoned they felt. I read the beginning words of Habakkuk, in which the exiled people who feel abandoned and forgotten cry out to God, and how God hears them and speaks to them even in their abandoned state because even in exile God had not abandoned them. God stayed.
You see, I was able to do this because of the gift of singleness. I knew with confidence no other preacher spoke directly to their vulnerable, soft spots because no one preaches on singleness.
And through this gift, I knew better than to promise them an easy road to a match, to a pastor/partner.
I knew better than to say that if they are perfect and pure that then and only then will God give them the reward of a pastor/partner who will lead them.
I knew better than to say this is all a part of God's plan, for as much as it is, those words are more hurtful than healing.
I knew better, because through the gift of singleness by the grace of God, the faithfulness of Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit I have been able to see that the promise of the gospel is not the promise of a pastor/partner but the promise that God stays. That God IS present. That God's faithfulness is not evident only when times are good or when the church's pews are over flowing with bodies. God's faithfulness is not given if we are well behaved and have the right people in the pews. No, God simply IS faithful. We cannot earn it, and bad times are NOT a sign of a lack of it.
I was only able to speak to the truth of God being present when things are crappy and how God does stay in our moments of greatest pain because that is the promise declared in the empty tomb that God stays with us - Emmanuel. And I am only uniquely able to speak to this promise in this way, to beckon persons into moments of vulnerability because I am single. Every time a married person speaks to me about singleness, it is aggravating and distracting because since they are no longer single there is the unspoken illusion of a partner being the reward and not God's presence with us. But I make no such illusion or promise other than pointing to the gospel. In being a single person preaching, I made no such promise that they would be happily wed aka that their church wouldn't die or close down. I simply said I knew a part of their pain and that I knew God was still present, some how and some where, and would be present regardless of what was to come. I told them I didn't know how God was present. I just knew God was and is and will be.
I am not saying that marriage is bad or that married people are not faithful to God - this is not an either or situation. Marriage is indeed a gift, and so is singleness, and this is one of the ways I hope I have been faithful to honoring my singleness as the gift it is.
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