Advice from Bishop Will Willimon for new pastors...

Advice from Bishop Will Willimon for new pastors...

I am making a transition from doing ministry primarily in a school setting to practice ministry in a church context and I have long found Will Willimon's books and preaching to be so helpful and wise. He has a terrific blog "A Peculiar Prophet" and has begun a series of postings about advice for new pastors (that is some distillation of an essay he wrote for a book which is coming out soon). Check out his first posting HERE and his second posting HERE.

I've posted a bit from his first post below:

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Advice for New Pastors 1

This past year Allan Hugh Cole, professor at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, has edited a book for new pastors, From Midterms to Ministry (Eerdmans). I was asked to write a chapter in the volume, recounting my own journey from seminary to the parish, drawing out any implications that my experience had for new pastors.

This month, thousands of new pastors will emerge from seminary, a few of them coming to join the ranks of the North Alabama Conference. I therefore offer these thoughts in the next few weeks, hoping that they will be helpful to those of us who are new in the pastoral ministry and those who are not.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

In retrospect, my first year as a pastor was perhaps the most painful, frightening year of my entire ministry. Part of the terror that I experienced was my fear of failure, not simply to fail at being an effective pastor (I had little means of knowing what being “effective” would look like), but rather my fear that I had failed to discern God’s will for my life. What I had thought was my tortured, gradually dawning, wrestling with “call to the ministry,” might be revealed as something other than God’s idea. Looking back, I realize now that the early bumps and potholes that I experienced during the course of that first year were so disconcerting because each one of them made me wonder: maybe my friends are right. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to be a pastor. Perhaps the church really is a waste of my life.

Barth’s “Rules for Older People in Relation to Younger”

from "Der Evangelische Theologe blog

I, for one, know quite a few parents and teachers that would quibble with much of this advice, but the tendency to meddle probably leads to these quibbles...I need to give all of this some thought...

Rev. Peter Carey

Barth’s “Rules for Older People in Relation to Younger”

A Late Friendship: The Letters of Karl Barth and Carl Zuckmayer (Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), 45.

1. Realize that younger people of both sexes, whether relatives or close in other ways, have a right to go their own ways according to their own (and not your) principles, ideas, and desires, to gain their own experiences, and to find happiness in their own (and not your) fashion.


2. Do not force upon them, then, your own example or wisdom or inclinations or favors.


3. Do not bind them in any way to yourself or put them under any obligation.


4. Do not be surprised or annoyed or upset if you necessarily find that they have no time, or little time, for you, that no matter how well-intentioned you may be toward them, or sure of your cause, you sometimes inconvenience and bore them, and they casually ignore you and your counsel.


5. When they act in this way, remember penitently that in your own youth you, too, perhaps (or probably) acted in the same way toward the older authorities of the time.


6. Be grateful for every proof of genuine notice and serious confidence they show you, but do not expect or demand such proofs.


7. Never in any circumstances give them up, but even as you let them go their own way, go with them in a relaxed and cheerful manner, trusting that God will do what is best for them, and always supporting and praying for them.