The Summer Edition of Christians in Education, a publication of United Methodist educators, features an article by Janet Thornton-Irvine, “Mature Adults Ministering To and With Youth (or The Ancient Future).”  Thornton-Irvine is Minister of Education in a North Carolina church, with youth an important part of her portfolio.  She discusses her pleasant surprise that, as a 60-year-old, she was chosen for the position, what her first year has been like, and reflects on how much better equipped she is for the job now than she would have been thirty years ago, at the beginning of her career.

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A regular reader of the GRACE Writes blog sent a question. She’d like some advice from readers of this blog to the situation she describes below. This person is in her first ministry position out of seminary and serves as a pastoral associate in education. The issue she describes is a common one. In fact, just this past week I was talking to another recent seminary graduate who was interviewing for a job in a church with a similar situation. Here is the question:

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Every once in a while, at my former church, we’d break out the old (and I mean old literally) hymnbooks for a Wednesday evening hymn sing. People would call out the numbers of their favorite hymns to the songleader and we’d all turn to the page and sing the old favorites. As the evening went on the yelling got louder and more competitive as folks feared that we’d run out of time before getting to their favorite hymn. It was interesting to see “newbies,” and the younger generations at those events. They’d grown up after many of those hymns passed from favor, replaced by more contemporary hymns and tune, praise songs (don’t get me started) or revisionist PC versions that stripped the elegance, meaning, and dignity from the text.

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The recent movie “Pan’s Labyrinth” takes place after the Spanish Civil War when the government is working hard to rid the country of any resistance. A young girl, Ofelia, finds herself in the middle of this conflict as her new step-father is a captain for the Spanish government. As Ofelia and her mother join her new step-father in another town, strange things begin to happen to Ofelia and, she finds her life intertwining with that of mythical creatures. Throughout the movie, you are left wondering if this other world is real or is it just in her head.

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My engineer son has a mantra: “Fix the problem.” As mantras go, it’s a pretty good one. Simple, memorable, intuitive, and to the point. The mantra refers to our tendency to go about addressing issues, problems, or stuck situations by doing a lot of things none of which will actually “fix the problem.” It’s an amazing phenomenon, all the more so for how common it is. Since my son’s brain is wired in the logical-pragmatic mode of the engineer he often is amused at the non-logical way people try to solve problems.

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When we were young my siblings and I would often receive a warning from our mom whenever we ventured from home. With a somber voice and a straight face (but not without a twinkle in her eye) she would admonish us, “Don’t let me see your picture in the paper!” It was a stay against the angst of parents worldwide that their children would go astray in the worst way—but, worse still, that their veering from the path of righteousness and light would be of a public nature thereby causing the anguish of embarrassment for the parents. Offspring are prone to be inconsiderate in that way, at times, it is well known—especially if they are adolescents.

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Ever get one of those phone calls that start out, “Are you ___________? You may not remember me, but . . .” I’ve gotten several of those over the years. Most of the time those voices from the past lead to a delightful re-connection with past acquaintances: long lost friends, former colleagues and students, old college roommates, maybe even a former girl- or boyfriend. This evening I got one of those calls, but it was one that left me with mixed feelings.

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Wait….before you assume I am talking about theological fundamentalists, read further. I am talking about those who insist that “my way or the highway” and am thinking about those good folks in our congregations—whether conservative or “moderate”—for whom the end justifies any means.

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Despite the serious and lofty education most of us clergy receive in seminary (theology, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, hermeneutics, philosophy, etc.) ministry has, decidedly, a pragmatic skills component to it. As one person put it, you have to “know stuff” (and she wasn’t referring to “book learnin’”). Pity the congregational minister who doesn’t develop skills to grease the rails of ministry in the real world. To quote Napoleon Dynamite, “You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills… Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.”

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Every so often someone calls me Rev. and/or asks me to do a wedding – to which I reply that I am not ordained. Although it has been a little over two years since I graduated seminary, I have yet to go through with the ordination process. It isn’t that my church hasn’t approached me about it; it is, well, for several reasons…

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