High Stakes

This past Friday, in the middle of my travels to a few different churches looking for associate pastors, I spent the night at Kim's. She and her mom were in the process of picking out a dining room table for Kim's new house, and I was (willingly) put to work helping measure spaces, and comparing shapes, prices, and relative levels of ornateness.

At one point in the deliberation, being the practical and thoroughly untrendy person that I am, I put this thought out there: "Whichever table you get, it's going to be fine."

"I know," Kim said, "it's just that it's so much money..."

Which sums up, in a way, my feelings about meeting with people from all these churches. I could end up at any of these places, and it would be fine. More than fine, even. And yet, it all still somehow seems high stakes. There still seems to be so much riding on my decisions of where I want to go and what I want to do and what I'll tell my DS my top choices are.

It would be a bad idea, of course, to blog about any of my thoughts on specific churches at this point. But here are some general thoughts that have been swimming around in my head during and since this interview-ful weekend.

1. Unsurprisingly, there have been one or two churches that I had really high hopes for, and walked away--not disappointed--but maybe less excited than I had anticipated, for whatever reason. And on the other side, of course, there have been a few that I went to more to keep my options open than anything else, and that I walked away from much more excited than I would have thought. The more surprising part is how those realizations are really kind of scary. They mean the future might look a lot different than I had planned. In a way, I'm prepared for a future that I don't plan...which sounds terribly pious of me, but I really just mean that I've agreed that the bishop can put me anywhere she wants. But going for an associate position, I do have some say, and the scary part is not that I might end up somewhere I never wanted or expected, but that there's a possibility of me having some level of control, and actually making choices I never expected to make. I don't know why that's scarier, except that it means actually having to face those choices and what I really want and what my call really is, instead of waiting for someone else to figure it out for me. I don't know how I feel about that.

2. On a related note, some of these interviews have kind of blurred together, and I hardly know how to distinguish what one place can offer me, and vice versa, compared to another. I've spent all this time writing about the beauty and purpose of itineracy with the consequence of actually convincing myself, and now part of me wants to say dear Bishop Kammerer, please just place me somewhere and don't make me decide anything. So many of the best and most transformative experiences of my life have been those where I would have chosen otherwise if I could have.

3. Of course, my decisions won't necessarily mean that much, anyway. The churches I want have to want me, and I'm pretty sure if there are discrepancies, the senior pastors are the ones with dibs. And I'm afraid that even if interviews have gone well, there's nothing that really distinguishes me, and I won't be anyone's first choice. And then what if everyone else is matched up with mutually high choices, and there's nothing left for me?

4. I'm also becoming more and more afraid (maybe contrary to thought #3) that the more I sit at tables talking about what gifts I have to offer a church, that I make a good sell now but will just end up being a huge disappointment, that I'll never be as effective in ministry as I might convince people I will be.

5. But I'm realizing something else, too. The best match for me might not be the church I walk out most excited about as a church, or the one I can "see myself in" the most clearly. In other words, the church I'd choose to be a member of might not be the church I should serve. For one thing, I like small churches, and I'm not going to be serving a small church--I need this experience in a big one. And maybe the church whose passions most match up with mine--whose missions program I adore, for example--isn't the church that needs me or that I need, because maybe there's not as much room for growth on either side. None of the churches or job descriptions have been "perfect matches." I think that's a good thing. To a degree.

All this is to say that I still have no idea what's next, but clearly I'm getting to the obligatory point where I'm obsessing instead of enjoying the sense of God-directed potential. Any of these churches will, I'm sure, be a wonderful place for me to serve and learn and grow in the next few years. But still, it all just seems so high stakes.