How I Became A Preacher

"God doesn't ask us to trade who we are for the label of 'Mom.'" - Lisa Jo Baker

Motherhood
I read those words just a few weeks ago in a wonderful book my mom bought for me called Surprised by Motherhood. (Thanks, Mom!) When I read them, I thought, "Sure. Maybe that's true for you, Lisa Jo. You have all kinds of experience in your field, you've traveled all over the world, you have lots of connections. You were trying to rescue girls from human trafficking, for goodness' sake. Maybe God doesn't ask you to trade all that, but I'm not like you. I have zero experience in my field. I'm living in a city where I really don't know all that many people. Besides that, ministry is not a lucrative career. I'll never be able to get a job that requires childcare, which means I'll never be able to get a job."

Well, last week, I got a job. As a pastor. In a church. That I actually really like.

Here's what happened.

The Beginning
About three years ago, Mike and I decided to leave our church. There were some good things happening there, but overall, it was not a healthy place, especially for us as we began our married life together. We had already been attending another church on Saturday nights and decided that we would just continue to do that for a while. Over time, we got involved there. I had a really great ministry internship. We joined and then started leading a small group. We attended the membership class and became members. We attended some really solid prayer and devotional classes as they were offered. It was a really wonderful place for us as we began our married life together and I finished up my seminary education.

In the meantime, though, a lot of other really big changes happened in my life. I had a baby and quit my part-time job. I graduated from seminary.

Getting Angry
One day, I realized that I was angry. I was angry that my life had changed so dramatically over the past few years, while Mike's had mostly stayed the same. In five years, I moved to a new city, started and finished grad school, got married, had a baby, and transitioned to being a stay-at-home-mom. Everything from where I lived to what I did every day had changed so quickly!

I was also angry that all of my wonderful undergraduate and graduate level education had in no way prepared me to know how to be a stay-at-home-mom. I'm not crafty, I don't like to cook or bake, I have no desire to structure my son's day around learning activities, I don't enjoy solitude, I hate unstructured time with no deadlines...the list goes on. In short, Pinterest is not my friend.

For so long, I had wanted to pastor a church, and now I finally had the education to do it, but it just seemed impossible.

"Waiting is not failing."
I started a blog. I took a class. I continued to lead our small group. I did some small writing projects for my church and in other places. I joined a gym, so I could talk to people outside of my house. I joined a mom's group. These things invigorated me, and sustained me, but they were also incomplete.

My blog lacked the personal interaction that I enjoy about ministry. My class ended. Our small group kept canceling for various reasons. My writing projects ended. I got pregnant and quit the gym. People kept moving away from my mom's group. (I'm still mad at you, Lauren Brian and Katie Savage.)

More than anything, I wanted two things: I wanted a community to invest in, and I wanted to preach the word. I came home from church one day, frustrated that my church would never offer either opportunity. I wrestled with my frustration, and God gave me that phrase: "Waiting is not failing."

But, as Tom Petty also said, "The waiting is the hardest part."

No more babysitting!
While I was finishing my degree, one of my neighbors generously offered to babysit my three-month-old son in exchange for me babysitting her slightly older son. It was a wonderful blessing to me as I finished up my last class, and I wanted to be able to offer that to others.

But here's the thing. I'm terrible at babysitting. I almost always cried through a good part of it. I watched the minutes click by on the clock, just waiting for it to end, praying that I would never have to babysit again, dreading the next time it came around. (Don't take that personally, all my mom friends. It's ok to admit that I'm bad at things, and it has nothing to do with your wonderful kids, whom I really do love.)

Finally, after one especially long, frustrating day of babysitting, I told Mike that I had to find a way to never babysit again. But I felt bad saying no when all I was doing was sitting at home taking care of a baby who slept as much as five hours every day, so I needed an excuse. Out of desperation, I signed up to do pulpit supply so that I would be able to tell anyone who asked me to babysit that I unfortunately could not because I had other obligations.

I know. That's a terrible reason. But sometimes desperation can lead to finally saying yes to God.

Preaching
It wasn't long at all before Mike and I were asked to provide pulpit supply for a church without a pastor. They had most of the weeks scheduled but asked us to do music one week and music and preaching the next week. It was wonderful! The second week, we played an organ/piano duet for the offertory, and they gave us a standing ovation and asked for an encore. Not only that, but I loved preaching. I loved studying the lectionary passage, applying my biblical hermeneutics and preaching classes to developing the sermon, and standing before the congregation delivering the message.

Unfortunately, that experience only fueled my discontentment. I'll spare you the details, but I did not become a better person, especially in my involvement at church, when all I really wanted to do was preach my own sermons.

In the next few months, I had more opportunities to preach, and while the weeks I was writing sermons were often stressful and difficult, the joy and satisfaction I found in preparing and preaching sermons sustained me for weeks afterwards until I got to preach again.

Falling in Love
I preached at a few different churches, but I was really impressed by one church in particular. They weren't very big, but the people seemed really invested. We happened to be there the first week after their pastor resigned, and they were surprisingly organized. They had an order of service. They knew who was doing what. The woman who led music was in regular communication with us throughout the week in preparation for Sunday.

We were not the regular interim pastor, but we came whenever he couldn't, and I started to really like going there. They loved our little boy. They took us out to eat after church. We got to know the names of most of the members.

And they prayed. We went to Sunday School every week between music practice and the service, and I got to hear members of the congregation respond to the lessons each week. They talked about their daily Bible reading and prayer. They talked about the miraculous ways God had worked in their lives. They were generous and kind.

As I prayed for the congregation each week while preparing sermons, I found that I quickly felt at home there. Without realizing it, I began to fall in love with that church.

Where to now?
Then it all came to an end. We had been scheduled to preach a few more Sundays, but they had scheduled candidates to come interview and preach on those Sundays, and they expected to hire one of them as the pastor. The music leader, who was our main point of contact, told us about both candidates and was really excited about them.

I was happy for the church, but I was also really disappointed. Summer is the best time for doing pulpit supply because that's generally when pastors go on vacation, so not only did that feel like the end of our time at that church, but the end of my chance to preach.

That Sunday evening, Mike and I went to see The Isaacs in concert. They were wonderful! A strange thing happened, though. They said multiple times that they wanted to be a source of encouragement to people who were going through a tough time or felt like they were in a dark place. My head said that was me, but I just didn't feel that way. I felt at peace. I felt hopeful.

On the way home, the music leader texted me and asked if we would consider pastoring the church. She said she knew it was a long drive and we had a toddler and another baby on the way. However, on the way to the concert, Mike and I had talked about the possibility and decided that if they asked, we would go through the process and try to discern God's guidance for us, along with the church. So I texted her back and said yes, we would consider it.

Unfortunately, when Mike and I switched churches, we also switched denominations and no longer had any kind of license or credentials that made us eligible to be senior pastors. We didn't hear anything for a few weeks, but they did need someone to fill in one more Sunday at the last minute. It was then that we found out that the district superintendent had informed the church board that we didn't qualify for the job.

Again, I was disappointed, but I prayed that God would bring the right person to the church, and in the meantime, I was actually relieved to have a few weeks off from preaching. I was enjoying my weekly routine more--trips to the library and park, mom's group, visits to the seminary, and even quiet times at home.

A Church Home
Then we got an email from the district superintendent. He asked if we would consider doing long-term pulpit supply for the church. We set up a meeting with him to clarify what he meant by that and then set up a meeting with him and the board the next week. Just a few hours after the board meeting, we got an email from the district superintendent notifying us that the job was ours if we wanted it.

That was one week ago today. Yesterday, I preached my first sermon as a pastor.

Logistics
Lots of questions are still hanging in the air. How can I still preach when the baby is born? How can we effectively pastor a church forty minutes from our house? How can Mike work a full-time job, while I take care of two kids and both of us try to pastor a church? How can we fulfill the pastoral obligations without any credentials?

I always preach from the lectionary, for a few reasons: I think it's a really good discipline to not just preach on my favorite Scriptures, I like the idea of traveling the same path through the Bible as lots of other churches all around the world, but mostly because I have only preached ten sermons in my life, so I don't know how else to do it.

Two weeks ago, the Old Testament reading moved to the book of Exodus. One of the major themes of Exodus is God's intervention on behalf of his people. God sent Moses into an impossible situation and then fought the most epic battle in the Bible on behalf of the Israelites. It's impossible to preach through this book and not stand in awe of both God's profound compassion for his people and his incredible power to move heaven and earth on their behalf.

Reading about the dramatic delivery of the Israelites from slavery makes little things like providing childcare and traveling forty minutes seem like minor concerns. Of course, the exodus is also a reminder that saying yes to God can have consequences completely beyond our imagination, both good and bad!

Last night, I couldn't sleep. It's possible that all the emotional ups and downs of the last few weeks were overwhelming my brain. (Have I mentioned that I'm pregnant and my emotions are off the charts?) I got up and started browsing the interwebs, and I came across this video of Shauna Niequist, which included these words:

"It wasn't narrow theological boundaries that kept my mom from pursuing her passions; essentially, it was logistics."

She went on to say:

"What option do we have? Are we going to leave the world-changing and the kingdom-building to the people who don't have logistical challenges? Are we going to leave those things to the people who aren't scared, to the people who are perfectly prepared? There aren't any of those people." 

Those words felt like they came straight from God. They gave me such assurance that saying yes to God's call is always the right choice even if the logistics seem impossible.

The Pastors Coblentz
So now Mike and I our pastors. It's all happened so fast. We actually didn't even know that our last Sunday at our previous church would be our last Sunday. Two weeks ago, I thought maybe I would still get to do pulpit supply here and there. I was excited about life with a toddler and the new baby on the way. I had accepted that as Christians, we are always "strangers in a strange land," and it might be a long time before I found a place where I could serve and invest in ways that I longed to do so.

I know that we have a hard road ahead of us. I don't think anyone ever walked into their first pastorate and was surprised by how easy it was. And I know that it's not only our lives that our changing but the lives of members of our congregation too, and some people deal with change much better than others.

But I'm excited. I'm excited to be preaching through the book of Exodus. I'm excited about this group of people that we've found to partner with in ministry. I'm excited about playing music every week with Mike. I'm excited about this unknown journey that I feel like my education actually has prepared me for (as much as possible!) I'm excited to be doing this with Mike who, in the past few weeks, has surpassed my already extensive knowledge of his selflessness, optimism, creativity, generosity, passion, and insight.

Yesterday, I preached about God's calling to Moses in Exodus 3. Moses asked God his name, and God replied with the enigmatic eyeh-asher-eyeh: I am who I am or I will be who I will be. God didn't just work in the past; God is working in the present. I'm excited to see what God will do in our little church in the days to come.

I hope being a PK doesn't mess up our happy kid!