#247 Young Pastor

"You're pretty young to be a pastor." I can't tell you how many times I've heard that in my career. When I first started out, I definitely understood. I was twenty-five years old. I'd gone straight from high school to college to seminary and then entered full-time work as a minister of the Word. I was about as young as you could expect a pastor to be.

But now, nearly six years later, I'm finding the comment more and more amusing. I still understand it to an extent. The people who tell me how young I am are probably just meeting me and don't really know how old I am or how much experience I have. I look pretty young (though I always wonder what these people would think if I didn't have my beard—I'm significantly younger looking then). But I've been doing this for a while now. I'm serving my second congregation. I've got two kids at home. I'm not a fresh-faced seminarian anymore. In fact, I turned thirty-one last week. I'm definitely not old, but I'm excluded by those who "don't trust anyone over thirty."

The thing with the "young pastor" comment is that I'm never quite sure what people mean by it. Are they complimenting my youthful appearance, or are they wondering if I'm really qualified for the job? Despite the fact that most of my seminary classmates were my peers, it seems most people I meet assume a pastor is going to be older than I am. (Maybe they never think too much about pastors starting their careers or have a lot of experience with pastors who enter ministry as a second career.) So I smile and laugh and move on with my day. I'm not losing any sleep over strangers being surprised at my age and/or my job. But I have to say, it won't bother me when these comments eventually go away.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#246 How Many?

I was a mathematics major in college. All my life I've referred to my chosen area of study as math. But when I was a young adult I encountered other English-speakers (people from places like England and Australia and New Zealand) who called this academic field maths. At first I simply thought this was strange. Certainly maths is a reasonable abbreviation of mathematics, even if it doesn't seem quite as natural to me as math. But thinking as a mathematics major, I don't really like "maths" as a term. I took a whole lot of mathematical courses in college—calculus, real analysis, geometry, algebra (both linear and abstract), probability and statistics—but one of the main things I learned is that these weren't different subject matters. Mathematics is one thing. Think of a tree: the branches may go in very different directions, but they all grow out of one trunk. That's the way mathematics works. There aren't many maths; there's a singular math. I think calling mathematics "maths" can be misleading. "Branches" such as algebra and geometry aren't truly separate, even if we tend to look at them one at a time. The branches connect and overlap in all sorts of surprising and beautiful ways. All the math we know is just part of a greater whole.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#245 Say Goodbye

Over the weekend I conducted a funeral for a member of the previous congregation that I served. (That congregation is currently without a pastor, so I got the call and was happy to do it.) In the past five years or so, I've done over a dozen funerals for church members there. As time has gone on, I've gotten more and more comfortable leading and helping to organize funeral services. I can walk families through what to expect. I can suggest songs and Scripture passages. I have a good sense of how I like to write a funeral message.

But, despite all that, I wouldn't really say that funerals have gotten easier for me. In some ways I dread them a bit more. That's because the longer I've gotten to know someone as her or his pastor, the more difficult it is for me to say goodbye. I did some early funerals for elderly church members who had battled dementia since before my arrival. While I certainly felt for the families in their grief, I didn't really have much personal sadness. I never really knew the individuals who had died. But doing the funeral for a person whom I've seen week in and week out for worship or with whom I've had many good conversations in the nursing home is tougher. I have my own sense of loss, even if I obviously wasn't as close to the deceased as a spouse or child would be.

I think funerals are an incredibly important part of my job as a pastor. They are a wonderful opportunity to minister to people in very difficult circumstances. Funerals can go a long way towards providing closure or helping in the grieving process. But learning to love the people I serve means funerals won't ever really be easy.

Grace and peace,

BMH