Dear District Superintendent

RE: Annual Pastor Consultation


It is with a heavy heart that I offer to tender my resignation and surrender my license, if required, as a part-time licensed local pastor and candidate for ordained ministry. I have struggled with my “call” for some time and the evidence that once led me to believe that this was the right path for me no longer seems to exist.

I was at one time enthusiastic for this ministry, but my experience suggests that there is no such support structure within the church for this kind of enthusiasm for the second-career local pastor. While I can feebly suggest that there is perhaps someone else to blame, I can only look within myself and recognize that I cannot go this path alone. And in my own personal experience, I am without support from the church. The only real support and encouragement that I can truly depend on is the support I have received, and still do receive, from my family and the congregation I currently serve.

I began this journey with a mentor whose wife was suffering from cancer. In order to remove burdens from this man (rightly so) for obvious reasons, I was assigned another mentor which seemed to work very well. However, somehow soon after this mentor retired as an active clergy, he was “fired” from being a pastoral mentor.

Several weeks passed until I was finally assigned another mentor who made it clear from the beginning that he really didn’t have time for such. In his defense, he was in the middle of a new ministry that was just taking off and he was almost completely consumed. When we did finally meet for the first time, I had to drive all the way from my work place to him. He did not offer to meet me half way. Upon arrival and during a very brief visit, he actually fought to stay awake! We’ve not met since except via very limited e-mail.

I have watched workshop after workshop be offered during business hours to “all pastors” with no consideration for local pastors who cannot take time off from work to attend without losing vacation time or pay. When I specifically inquired whether such a scheduling could be possible, I was only told that “these things are scheduled months in advance”. There was no suggestion that perhaps more consideration may need to be made to include local pastors, only that I was welcome to attend if I could make it.

These are workshops that are apparently beneficial, if not mandatory, for full-time pastors but only “come if you can” for part-time local pastors. Is it not possible that local pastors and the congregations we serve could somehow benefit from this same information? Evidence suggests that these workshops are important only for those churches that can afford a full-time pastor.

I have witnessed part-time local pastors be removed from charges in favor of young college students who have only expressed an interest in pastoral ministry but who do not indicate otherwise that they are actively pursuing the path of ministry. Instead of giving these young people a rural, typically conservative pastorate in which are found far too many so-called “clergy killers”, would these students and the church not benefit more from the tutelage and direct supervision of an experienced elder at a larger church? “Clergy killers” are difficult enough for seasoned pastors and older local pastors, but a 20-year-old college student is not prepared or equipped for the bile that these "clergy killers" are capable of. In the end, the rural church is without a pastor and the larger church is without what could have been a potentially gifted minister who can easily be discouraged from further pursuit of the ministry by one “killer”.

Second-career pastors attend the licensing schools at their own considerable expense but are tossed aside without question because there are no “guarantees” for local pastor appointments. It also seems that the local pastor is not “allowed” to directly address a bishop!

Here is a case in point. I once made the mistake of sending an e-mail directly to the bishop asking if it may be possible for her to visit the small church I once served. Though the congregation was small, the number of children was disproportionably high! I (and apparently only I) thought it would be wonderful if the bishop could visit this shared congregation of United Methodists and Free Will Baptists on Confirmation Sunday, so I sent the bishop an e-mail.

Rather than respond directly to me that her calendar was full, which I would have expected and understood, she made a long distance call to have the district superintendent make a long distance call back to me to suggest that my request was perhaps out of line. Now that is a system of support, I must say.

It is clear that the ministry of the local pastor is needed only to fill a void that cannot, or will not, be filled by the ministry of the ordained elder, and I thought I had reached a point where I can live with this perceived attitude. Unfortunately, I cannot.

I cannot accept a system that offers support to one element of the same ministry but not to another. I cannot accept a system that suggests even for one moment that a bishop is “too high up” to be addressed directly by a lowly local pastor. And while it may be suggested that this was perhaps one “bad” bishop, it must be remembered that the system created this bishop and appointed her to a lifetime position within the church.

This kind of introspection pains me because this journey was not something I entered into lightly. When I have asked for help, which I admit is sometimes difficult for me, I have been made to feel as though I have quite a nerve daring to ask and made to feel as though I am not a “real” pastor worthy of any consideration. The local pastor seems expected to simply suck it up and move on. The “lip service” that the ministry of the local pastor is needed is abundant, but the evidence that my ministry means something is not.

I do not feel like I am a part of anything. I do not fit in with the typical local pastors, and I do not fit in with the ordained clergy. The few gatherings of local pastors I have participated in were of such a nature as to suggest that many of these people should not be allowed to serve as lay speakers, let alone pastors of churches! And the “clergy circle”, as some have referred to it, seems to be nothing more than an exclusive club reserved only for the intellectually elite elders among us.

Finally, I have to consider my own state of mind and spirit. I am one who believes that each of us is responsible for ourselves. I am not “needy” in any sense of the word, so I have to consider that these perceived situations exist only in my own mind. Perhaps it is that I don’t fit in or feel accepted because I really do not fit in and that I am somehow unacceptable.

Given all these things, I cannot imagine any congregation that deserves such a pastor as I. Maybe it is that I am needier than I am willing to admit, but my need extends beyond the congregation I serve. I am ambitious enough that I need to know I am working toward something, still ambitious enough that I want to work toward something more.

It is the “more”, however, that I am having a difficult time defining.