Went Where Sent

On a recent Sunday morning, an acquaintance told me she had to go to church that Sunday night as her church was voting on a new preacher.  I knew what she meant.  In churches with a congregational governing style, prospective preachers make a visit, get acquainted, preach a trial sermon, and then the congregation votes.  As a United Methodist preacher I was always grateful for a governing system that simply sent me to a church for at least a year without a trial sermon and a congregational vote.  There have been some Sunday mornings when I struggled to string two sentences together in the sermon and such would have surely been the case had I had to go somewhere to preach a trial sermon.

 

Having a year for a church to figure out a preacher and for the preacher to figure out the church usually results in a longer pastorate than a year.  I figure that in most of my appointments, the folks in the church might have figured they could do worse than me so they decided to keep me around.  I look back over the preaching years with thanksgiving that in most cases the people in the church were gracious enough to put up with me for as many as ten years in one case and nine years in another.  I started preaching when four years was considered enough and preachers were moved by the Bishop, but by the time I finished, longer pastorates such as mine were becoming more the norm.

 

Some church folks do not care for long term appointments for their preacher.  Some like more turnover.  I know one guy who left one of my longer pastorates after four years and came back from his new church before I left the one he had earlier left.  Some people just need more change than others.  Some preachers are that way, too.  They get itchy feet.  They start thinking the grass is greener somewhere else.  Of course, nothing is wrong with change, but generally the church and the preachers work better when the cloud of change is not forever hanging overhead.  I am grateful for all the churches I served.  Maybe some, more than others.  Sometimes I went where sent not sure I wanted to go, but always sure that God had a hand in what was happening.