WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? Part 3

When my father took this picture, he had no idea of its prophetic import.

I was moving along in the last blog about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but hadn't gotten to the part about becoming a pastor. I had actually written that part of my story for the first and only time about a year-and-a-half ago as a letter to someone. I was going to use that material in this blog, but I couldn't find the file. While I was writing this, I installed a new used computer. When I moved the old one, I found a floppy disk, and there was the missing file. I am leaving out the parts that duplicate what I had written last time and taken out any personal material that might allow the identity of the recipient to be known. So here it is.

Some of my story has to do with my family, maybe a lot of it does. My mother's family were Catholics, sort of. They came from small towns in Europe where there were only Catholic churches. In theory their ancestors had come from Germany and Bohemia to Hungary to make sure that area stayed Catholic and didn't turn Lutheran. Actually they came because they were promised free land. Anyway, they were culturally Catholic. It was the way things were. In this country my mother was baptized in a Catholic church, but never confirmed. My father's family were Lutheran, sort of. They wanted their sons confirmed in the Lutheran church, but they didn't attend church much themselves.

When my parents married, my mother became Lutheran because my father's religion seemed to mean more to him than hers did to her. Somehow or other her parents became Lutheran, too. It didn't matter much to them. Mass at the Lutheran Church looked like Mass at the Catholic Church except it was in English instead of Latin. Actually they became better Lutherans than they had ever been Catholics.

My parents became involved in Ascension Lutheran Church where my father was confirmed. His brother's family were also active in the church. Everyone was involved in choir, Sunday School, mens and women's groups, and so on. That's the church where I was baptized, confirmed and later ordained a pastor. It's where my mother's memorial service was held after she died. It was the last memorial service because the church closed a few years later. I was brought up in that church. It played a major role in my life. Church is indelibly part of my being a Christian.

In my day confirmation classes were two years long, every Wednesday after school during 7th and 8th grade. I memorized what I was supposed to memorized, paid attention like I was supposed to, and that's about it. I don't know how much I was really affected by what I learned at the time, although it has been part of me in later years. I do know that I had secretly hoped confirmation and first communion (they were together in those days) would be a special religious experience. I don't know what I expected–visions, hearing God, angels, trumpets–I don't know what, but I wanted to feel something. I didn't. I tried to make myself feel the awe of God. I even made my hands shake like I was frightened or something. Nothing. (By the way, I'd never told anyone this part of my story before I wrote the original letter).

I am not "wired" to react to things emotionally. That isn't to say I'm a dead fish; I do feel happiness, sadness, anger, love, fear, but I don't deal with most things in a primarily emotional way. I am a thinker, an intellectual. I deal with things analytically and logically. Fortunately, God knows that about me and has dealt with me at that level. I think God always deals with us the way we can respond.

I can see now that God was shaping my future in my early teen years, but I didn't realize it. We're talking when I was 13, 14, 15. Three things happened, but I can't recall the order. One, I read through the Bible in a year, every word, about three pages a night. I don't know that I learned a lot that way, but it was the first time I had personally made a serious religious commitment of my own. Two, I started teaching Sunday School. I wasn't very good at first, but I worked at it. The second year I was teaching we had a new curriculum. The first half of the year was on Heros of the Church, the second half was on Worship. I did a lot of outside reading on these subjects. I learned a lot. I am convinced the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Three, I found an old, beat-up copy of Albert Schweitzer's book Out of My Life and Thought. Schweitzer was a Lutheran pastor, organist, teacher, author, doctor, and missionary to Africa. His life has been an inspiration to me ever since. (See my blog "Albert and Me.")

I began thinking about actually starting in a job soon, probably in the Chicago Public Schools with maybe a job as a church choir director on the side. I was reading the Lutheran magazine one day, and there was an ad from the Board of World Missions looking for, among other personnel, a person to teach Choral music and English at Nomensen University in Indonesia. That seemed to be perfect for me. I could teach, direct music, and I would be serving the church as a missionary

I applied and interviewed, a very pleasant interview with Pr. Norman Nuding, secretary of the board. It turned out they wanted the person to coach soccer as well as teach which clearly a strike against me. In our conversation I discovered that Pr. Nuding knew Dr. David Larson who had taught me conducting and another pastor I knew well, Marvin Tack (more about whom later). Eventually I got a letter from Pr. Nuding. There had been four applicants for the position. I was number two on the list. Only if the first person declined or washed out of training would I be offered the job. But–and this was important–Pr. Nuding hoped that I might still be able to serve the Lord in some way. This is what provided the impetus for me to think about becoming a pastor.\

Now another thread to follow–pastors I have known. Ralph Riedessel was pastor of my church when I was growing up. He taught me catechism and confirmed me. He was a good man, salt of the earth, solid pastor. He was a rather poor preacher, but he could joke about it. People weren't bothered by that because he was a good all-around-pastor. He was well loved. I have always thought if I could be half as good as him, I'd be satisfied.

The man who followed him was the complete opposite. He was, in my opinion, an awful pastor. I won't name him. He'll be Pastor X. To be fair, the time when he came to the church (the late 60s) was a time of turmoil in society and the church. Things were changing, and people don't like things changed in the church. Pastor X was determined to change things, but he really didn't have the people skills to do it. He didn't read people very well. Anyone who disagreed with him was an enemy and had to be crushed. He couldn't distinguish between what was important and what to let slide. I suppose some people would say he was a strong leader, but I think he showed very poor leadership. You have to learn how to persuade people of your ideas, to win them over, to give and take. He would scold the congregation endlessly about silly things like wiping your feet before you came into church. He'd threaten people with excommunication for trouble-making when what they had done was disagree with him. From his example I learned what not to do in a church.

A lot of people left the congregation because of him including my uncle and his family. This was very hard on my family including me because it was almost like the church was part of our family and now it had been broken to pieces. My uncle's family joined another Lutheran church led by Pastor Marvin Tack. He was another good pastor. Different from Pastor Riedessel in some ways, but the same kind of solid person. I spent time at his church over the years and learned from him as well. I'd say he was one of my models.

So here I am now finishing college. The possibility of being a missionary teacher is closed to me. I am pondering whether I should be a pastor. Actually I was anguishing over it. I had sleepless nights trying to figure out what to do. Was this what God wanted? How could I know for sure? Of course being a private person, I didn't discuss this with anyone. Another big mistake. I could have used what's called a spiritual director, someone who is skilled in helping people discern what God is saying to them. We didn't have any spiritual directors in the Lutheran church. We do now. In fact it is one of the things I received special training for about eight years ago. I wanted to be able to help people deal with those kind of struggles.

Anyway, I was in turmoil. I had learned from my confirmation experience eight years before that I couldn't expect God to write the answer in the heavens. I approached it this way: I would try to become a pastor, and if that wasn't what God wanted, God would do something to show me it was the wrong decision. I am not sure if that was the right approach or not. Here I am more than 30 years later still wondering if maybe tomorrow God is going to tell me this was a mistake. I don't even know how God would do that.

Boy, it's almost taking as long to write about this as it did to live it. I'd better leave off here and continue next week.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne