“Search and Call”

I’m in my ninth month of interim ministry at Broadway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Columbia, MO.  The congregation’s Lead Pastor Search Committee, after a nationwide search process, has narrowed down their field of candidates. They’re getting close. To which I say, Amen.  Believe me when I tell you that as an interim pastor, the substitute teacher whose shelf life is dated by the arrival of your successor, you pray for the success of the Search Team. 

It’s been said, “Everybody should be on a pastoral search committee … once.” Ask somebody who has shouldered the weight of seeking their congregation’s next pastor.  Samuel was sent to rural Bethlehem millennia ago to anoint the next king of Israel.  Seven of farmer Jesse’s sons passed before him, each of whom looked promising to Samuel, but the glass slipper didn’t fit any of them. On a whim (or was it the Holy Spirit?), the ‘ol prophet asked Jesse if he had any more sons. In came David and the rest is history. 

I hope Broadway’s search committee hasn’t had to go through such contortions, but there are always unexpected twists and turns along the way.  There sure were for me.  

I received my first call to ministry long distance. In my second year at Vanderbilt Divinity School, age 22, I was invited by an upperclassman to fill in for him at the small church he served in east central Tennessee, sixty miles from Nashville.  I had one sermon I had preached on Youth Sunday in high school. I preached it, got paid $75, and figured that was that. 

Wrong. That week got a call from the head elder of the Carthage Christian Church. “David Shirey,” he said, “We had a congregational meeting after the service on Sunday and we’ve called you to be our next pastor.”

“But Mr. Read,” I said, “I wasn’t looking to be your pastor.” 

To which he said, “David Shirey, that wasn’t a question, that was a statement, son.” 

Three years later, when Jennie and I were seeking our first full-time call, a church from Iowa called.  They had received my relocation papers, liked what they saw, called and introduced themselves, then asked me, “Do you farm?” They then explained the church owned a few hundred acres of farmland and worked it together as a congregation to raise money for their budget in addition to their tithes and offerings. I told them I didn’t know a thing about farming, but I was willing to learn if everything else seemed to be a good fit. They told me they’d get back with me.  And they did … six months later.  By then, I had accepted a call to Compton Heights Christian Church in urban St. Louis.  They wished me well and I wished them the same.

Four years later, a church in Wilmington, NC, called.  After a few telephone conversations, they flew me out for a visit. That Friday night, after the Search Committee took me out for dinner, I called Jennie.    

“This isn’t the place,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“I can’t understand these people,” I said, still adjusting my midwestern ears to their southeastern NC dialects.

A day or two after I got back to St. Louis, the chair of the Search Committee called to tell me they were unanimous in wanting to fly me back out, this time with Jennie. 

I declined, to which Harvey, the chair of the Search Committee said, “I’m sorry to hear that, David, but we respect your decision.”

I told him I’d send a letter explaining my decision which I then wrote, signed, sealed, addressed, and put on the kitchen table.  Before leaving for the church the next morning, I told Jennie, “Please put this in the mail for me today.”

That morning, I went into the sanctuary to pray and was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had made a mistake.  I walked home for lunch and told Jennie what had happened. “I really think I made the wrong decision.  I wish I hadn’t left that letter for you to mail.”  Whereupon she walked into the other room, returned, and, without saying a word, placed the letter on the table in front of me.

“You didn’t mail it?”

“I couldn’t,” she said.  “Something stopped me from putting it in the mailbox.”  I suspect it was the same Something that had visited me in my prayer time in the sanctuary. 

I called Harvey that evening and said, “I told you I decided to decline further conversation, but I feel I have made a mistake. Would you be open to my reconsidering?”

“Let me give you a few days to think it over,” he said.

I did, and then gave them nine years of ministry. 

Fast forward sixteen years to Arizona.  After Jennie’s cancer diagnosis in 2013, I promised to seek a call somewhere back east closer to home. The Regional Minister in Kentucky called and asked me if I’d be interested in being a candidate at historic (founded 1816) Central Christian Church in Lexington. When I mentioned that twelve years of church planting in the desert had taken its toll on me and I sort of hoped for something that would be a bit easier (the words easy and ministry cannot be joined), he said, “David, this won’t be a nap in a hammock.  It’ll be a complete rebuild.” 

To which I said, “Then, No.”  Whereupon a friend in Kentucky called me, chided me, and told me I needed to at least talk with the Search Committee at Central.

So, I consented, had a couple telephone interviews, and then wrote a letter to the Chair of the Search Committee telling him I was removing myself as a candidate for the position. This time, I mailed the letter myself.

A few days later, I got a phone call from the Chair of the Search Committee in Lexington. “David, this is Josh.  I received your letter in the mail today.  I can’t accept it.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I received it. I read it.  I read it again.  And I just can’t accept it as your final answer. (Had he talked with Harvey in North Carolina?) I respectfully ask that you spend two or three days praying about this.  I’ll call you back Friday.”

I assured him I had already given much prayer and thought, but that I would give it a few more days. 

I retired from Central in 2022 after an exhilarating eight-year ministry during which I didn’t get a single nap in a hammock. 

Jennie bought me one for my retirement. I set it up in the backyard.  Loved it.  And I was happily retired for nine months when I got a call asking if I’d be willing to be a candidate for the interim lead pastor position at Broadway, 475 miles from home. The person who asked me to consider it told me straight up, “This will be a tough one. And you’re the right person.”

To which I said without hesitation, “No.”

To which he said, “Would you just pray about it for a couple days and talk it over with Jennie?”

Nine months later, here I am in Columbia, MO. 

Here’s the thing: You may never be on a church search committee and you may not be a pastor subject to periodic seasons of seeking to discern a new call, but all of us are in God’s sights and all of us are called to follow where God leads.  One of my mentors said he begins each day’s devotional time asking, “What is mine to do today?”  Another mentor, the late Fred Craddock, said, “You never retire from following Jesus.”

One of these days soon, some blessed soul, having stumbled his or her way through the twists and turns of the Search and Call process, will say Yes and then No and then Yes again, and end up the newly called Lead Pastor of Broadway Christian Church.      

Me?  I’ll be back in Lexington.  I’ll get my hammock out of the garage, put it back together, set it up under the shade of the maples out back, and take a nap. But having asked that morning in my prayer chair, “What is mine to do today?” I’ll keep one eye peeled and both ears open.