The Internet Monk Archives

Adam McHugh on the Aftermath of Ministry

Note from CM: A couple of years ago, I called Adam McHugh my “doppelganger.” Reading his stuff and corresponding with him, I felt a true kindred spirit. Recently, I discovered that he’s had some significant changes in his life, once more going through experiences to which I can easily relate. I encourage you to go to his blog, Adam S. McHugh, and read more, but first join me in thanking Adam for allowing us to re-post this piece, which captures some of his thoughts about leaving vocational ministry and the wilderness journey that entails.

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The Aftermath of Ministry
by Adam McHugh

I have a friend whose family moved from Virginia to California when she was young. For at least 5 years after the move, her mother introduced herself in this way: “Hello, I’m Lesley. We just moved here from Virginia.”

These days I’m tempted to introduce myself like this: “Hello, I’m Adam. I used to be a pastor.”

I haven’t been in professional ministry for 4 months now, but life these days mostly feels like pastoral aftermath. Historically speaking, D-Day gets all the recognition, but there was still a year of fighting to go until Germany surrendered. I guess D-Day for my ministry was February 27th, but the great battle continues.

I didn’t expect this. I thought I had already done most of the work of transition in the year leading up to my last day. I didn’t leave because of disillusionment or controversy. I left because my dreams and my vision for the future changed. I had a big dream of moving to wine country, training to be a sommelier (French for “wine douche”) and writing about wine, place, the idyllic countryside, and the transition from big town urban to small town rural.

Currently, I divide my time between two places: wine country on the California central coast and Los Angeles, the two parts of my life united by the 101 freeway. And that is exactly how my life feels: divided. Detaching from an old life is not as simple as driving 3 hours north on the freeway, as much as I wish it were, but I also don’t feel as though I’m returning to that old life when I drive south. If anything I feel most at home now on the 101, in that in-between place. I guess you can get out of the wilderness in one day, but it takes much longer to get the wilderness out of you.

Part of why I was ready to leave ministry is that I didn’t want my job to change the conversation. I didn’t want my handshake to communicate “I’m different from you.” I want to be thought of first as a human being, a man struggling to find happiness and love and meaningful work, just like every other person in the world. And that is happening, but you know what? A little part of me misses the reverence. When I was a hospice chaplain, people would literally hush when I walked into a hospital room. It made me stand out. It made me feel a little bit special. It made me feel like people recognized I had a contribution to make. People don’t do that anymore. My role and position no longer distinguish me. Now people don’t immediately start opening up to me. I have to prove to them that I am a good listener first.

The hospice analogy works, because I am grieving loss. A few weeks ago, I sold most of my biblical commentaries. I had around 100, and now I have about 25. It’s not because I don’t care about the Bible anymore, but it’s because I don’t have the drive or interest to read a 20 page excursus on a Greek phrase anymore. I used to stay up late reading the New Testament in Greek. Now my Greek New Testament gathers dust as I read fiction or Wine Spectator. And I feel guilty and a little lost about that. The “shoulds” are still there. I should be translating Greek and Hebrew. I should be reading all the latest theology books. I should be able to converse easily on the New Perspective on Paul. I should be devouring all the blog posts.

But the desire just isn’t there, and I believe in listening to the actual desires that we have rather than trying to tell ourselves what desires to have. I am detaching from old desires and attaching to new ones, exhaling the old version of me and inhaling the new one. Adam the pastor is being replaced by Adam the sommelier, or better, Adam the human. My vocation is changing. But the process is painful and it feels like a war.

Sometimes when I tell people I used to be a pastor, they ask, “So are you not a Christian anymore?” That response always takes me aback, but I can’t deny that my faith is changing, and sometimes it really does feel as though I am losing my faith. For the last 15 years I expressed my faith through the exercise of pastoral ministry. That was the primary medium for my discipleship and spiritual formation. It no longer is. And when you untangle your faith from your professional role, things start to unravel.

I’ll be honest: right now I don’t know how to participate in church. I don’t know what to pray for. I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t even always know how to talk. And this sounds dramatic, but I have lost some sense of the meaning of life. What is my purpose? What do I get up for every morning? What am I trying to accomplish? God was relatively easy to find in church work and campus ministry and hospice, but where is God when I’m pouring wine and talking about soil type?

Fortunately, God has been in wine ever since Jesus said “this is my blood,” and that is largely why I am doing this new work, but my identity, my understanding of work, how I practice my spirituality, and how I relate to people are all changing dramatically, to the point that I have stopped recognizing myself.

I’m Adam and I used to be a pastor. I don’t know yet who I will be next.

A Modern Bestiary, Part Two

Editor’s note: You can read Mule’s A Modern Bestiary, Part One here.

Stories of saints and animals have always moved me deeply. St. Seraphim and his bear was one of the first I learned about in an Orthodox context:

Saint Seraphim began to go to a “far wilderness,” which was a desolate place in a forest 5 miles away from the Sarov monastery. He reached great perfection during that time. Bears, hares, wolves, foxes and other wild animals would come to the hut of the ascetic. One day, a nun named Matrona saw him sitting on a tree trunk in the company of a bear. Terrified, she let out a scream. The staretz turned around and, seeing her, patted the animal and sent him away Then he invited Matrona to come and sit beside him. ‘But’, Matrona relates, ‘hardly had we sat down when the animal returned from the wood and lay down at the staretz’ feet. I was as terrified as before, but when I saw Father Seraphim, quite unconcerned, treating the bear like a lamb, stroking him and giving him some bread, I calmed down. When I was wholly assured, the Father gave me a piece of bread and said ‘You needn’t be the least afraid of him, he won’t hurt you.’So I held out the bread to the bear, and it was such joy to be feeding him that I wanted to go on doing so.’

The bear became a frequent traveling companion of St. Seraphim, placid and gentle with those who loved the Staretz from the heart, but threatening to those who wished him ill.

Continue reading “A Modern Bestiary, Part Two”

Mayor of My Own City

“Conversatio’s objective was that each person become the self-constituting, good, holy, responsible person God intended him or her to be —to make their “city,” wherever it might be, work.” Paul Wilkes

I took my time to read Augustine’s City of God. For part of my reading, I was surrounded by monks and priests on the grounds of an archabbey. I hoped the atmosphere might inspire my understanding. It was a lot to digest … too much, frankly. I even read an abridged version and still struggled to retain and comprehend all that Augustine offered. Apparently, he wrote the book, stopping and starting over such a long period, that he tended to repeat himself … thus the reason for abridgment. Nevertheless, one thought inspired from that voluminous work has taken root in me. Having also read much of Watchman Nee’s writings, I remember that Nee recommends the hard work of attempting to articulate any tiny flashes of light, first so that we will not forget them and second so that some ministry goes forth.

Since I definitely need help in the area of remembering these days, I will try it for no other reason than that. The idea of ministry going forth on this seems presumptuous as we are talking about the disorganized thoughts springing from a distracted, middle-aged, increasingly ADD-afflicted brain unable to wrap itself in any way around the saintly, substantially brilliant, exhaustively articulated thoughts of the man from Hippo. But here we go …

My idea is that I am to be mayor of my own city, as you are of yours. Put together, our cities help form the kingdom of God. I say this with no penchant for power mongering or self-service, but with humility and fear and exhaustion. I really don’t want to be mayor of anything. That’s actually kind of the problem as I see it. Most of us are happier being citizens in other cities. Although citizenship in multiple interconnecting cities seems part of the plan, it doesn’t seem to be all of it. Yes, we need to be good citizens too, but what happens if everyone’s a citizen and no one’s a mayor? What happens if we abdicate the ruling authority dealt to us?

According to Augustine, God’s City on Earth started perhaps with a metaphorical Adam and Eve and in a metaphorical Eden. Real or symbolic, what matters is that Earth felt the touch of Heaven in the beginning in a way that it has not since sin came into it. We see the spiritual separation of man from God at the advent of humankind’s exertion of self-will and all its continuing consequences and brokenness.

Continue reading “Mayor of My Own City”

My Own Desert Places

They cannot scare me with their empty places
Between stars — on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

– Robert Frost, “Desert Places”

One temptation is to think the wilderness is without — a place, a geography, a circumstance. I’m in the wilderness, I say, and immediately I find myself off course. Yes, the place under my feet may be a desert and barren all around. But more likely I cannot see its fruit or the means it offers for my survival. It may well be that I can flourish in almost any setting. Only the aquifer must be found and I must sink a sturdy pipe through hard dry soil to reach it. That I struggle to do so consistently is the scary part and what makes me view the wilderness as the enemy. It demands from me more than I seem to be able to summons. The barren place without reveals my impotence and lack of creative imagination within.

Therefore, more often than not, I take an easier way made possible by this age of miracles. I go into debt to buy overpriced, mediocre quality groceries. I put the cost of a vacation at the nearest oasis on my credit card, and there I read brochures extolling greener pastures. I fall asleep, drunk on dreams. Then two weeks later I awaken and open my front door, and here I am again in the midst of a trackless wasteland. I squint against the blowing dust that slaps my face and feel myself beginning to sweat. The midday demon slowly chokes the breath out of me. I survive the afternoon, parched and overwhelmed with futility. I twist and turn in perspiration-soaked sheets through the night, both longing for and dreading the morning.

Not in a million years would I have thought, in these days, that my main vocation would be searching for water.

Street Corner Philosophy

Eloquent, yet accessible.

Enjoying an Abnormal Normal

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, “What is it?”
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod; I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

– Robert Frost, “A Time to Talk”

Last week I enjoyed what I consider to be a “normal” week (ideally). In terms of my life, it was abnormal. In terms of what I think life should involve, it struck me as delightfully (though abnormally) normal.

I spent time every day with members of my family.

We ate supper every evening together at the table.

I had time to visit with neighbors as we puttered around our houses and yards.

I was able to run errands and go to the store on occasion and talk with people from town while getting things I needed.

We had meaningful work and projects that we participated in together around our house.

I had a decent night’s sleep every night.

I felt no pressure to constantly check the web, my phone, and my email.

I read for enjoyment alone.

I sat on my front porch.

This is the life from which we used to take vacations. Now it requires taking a vacation to enjoy anything resembling this kind of daily experience.

It is criminal, what we have done with the rhythms of life.

Too soon will come the final rest, when conversation ceases.
And will I be carried to that place whole? Or in pieces?

The Homily

“At the end of the seven years, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked to heaven. I was given my mind back and I blessed the High God, thanking and glorifying God, who lives forever:

“His sovereign rule lasts and lasts,
his kingdom never declines and falls.
Life on this earth doesn’t add up to much,
but God’s heavenly army keeps everything going.
No one can interrupt his work,
no one can call his rule into question.

“At the same time that I was given back my mind, I was also given back my majesty and splendor, making my kingdom shine. All the leaders and important people came looking for me. I was reestablished as king in my kingdom and became greater than ever. And that’s why I’m singing—I, Nebuchadnezzar—singing and praising the King of Heaven:

“Everything he does is right,
and he does it the right way.
He knows how to turn a proud person
into a humble man or woman.”

(Daniel 4:34-37, The Message)

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. (2 Corinthians 12:9, NASB)

This morning I want to share something very personal. I hope you will allow me the leeway to do this. I promise next week to return to upsetting you with my thoughts on God’s grace.

I have shared in these pages how I have struggled with depression. I’ve written about darkness that engulfed me for the last year or more. I have endured great physical pain in my life, but nothing to compare with the emotional pain of this depression. For me, the darkness reached the breaking point a few weeks ago. I could not take any more. I told God if he truly is merciful he would take my life. I prayed to not see another sunrise. I could not go on any longer.

Then, two weeks ago this last Friday, I was in great pain with muscle spasms in my back. For two hours I lie on my living room floor, stretching, trying to relieve the pain. I had taken twice the normal strength of my pain medication and could hardly walk straight, but I finally decided I had to do something, so I pulled on shoes and socks and headed out to walk in the heat. Even though it was now 1 a.m., it was still in the 80s. I thought perhaps working up a sweat would ease the spasms. As I walked out the door, I grabbed my iPod shuffle and turned it on.

Continue reading “The Homily”

Saturday Ramblings 7.6.13

Hi iMonks. Welcome to our week’s end, a time when we gather to spruce up the iMonastery after a busy week of … a busy week of … ok, well, maybe it wasn’t all that busy. But we did make a mess nonetheless, and now is the time to grab a broom and sweep up the place. We call the scraps Ramblings, and as it is Saturday, they are Saturday Ramblings. See how this works? Now that you are informed, are you ready to ramble?

How many hot dogs did you eat on Thursday? Now that you have finished consuming your tube steak, wanna know what goes in them? (The $2300 hot dog actually sounds pretty tasty …)

We are getting not one, but two new saints, and both are past popes. Pope John XXIII (that’s 23 for those of you who are Roman numerally-challenged) convened Vatican II, which I think counts as a miracle in itself. And Pope John Paul II made it cool to be a Catholic. Way to go, gentlemen.

The current pope, Francis, made his first trip as pope away from Rome a memorable one, traveling to the Italian island of Lampedusa, a destination for many African immigrants who travel perilously by boat to reach Europe. You know, I am thinking Pope Francis might just mean what he says about giving himself to the poor and disenfranchised.

Francis kept busy this week. When he wasn’t on the road, he was writing his first ever encyclical. He did, however, have help from Pope Emeritus Benedict. Well, hey, why not? We are going to ask Martha of Ireland to give us a complete report on the popes’ report in the coming weeks.

And when Francis wasn’t on the road or writing, he was cleaning house in the Vatican bank. Seems there was some hanky-panky going on to the tune of 26 million greenbacks. Do you get the idea it is not easy being pope?

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 7.6.13”

Reconsider Jesus – The Compassionate Healer

The following is an excerpt from Michael Spencer’s upcoming book: Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark. For the next number of Fridays, we will be giving you a “sneak peek” into this devotional commentary. Your thoughts and comments are welcome. (Note: There are some edits still to come, but if you do notice something particularly egregious, feel free to send me an email about it.) If you would like to be contacted when Michael Spencer’s book is available for purchase, drop us a note at michaelspencersnewbook@gmail.com.

The Compassionate Healer

Mark 1:30-45

30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. 31 And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 32 That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered together at the door. 34 And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons…

39 And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. 40 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” 45 But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. – ESV

…When Jesus casts out demons, heals a person with leprosy, or performs one of the other miracles we see in this passage, he is doing something radical in his world. He is rejecting a whole way of thinking about people and their problems. When the society of that time was confronted with what it called demon possession it was common for them to take sticks and beat these people into submission, or to give them poison thinking that if they vomited they would vomit out the demon. It is unbelievable what a person like this might have been through.

My father was put in a mental hospital in the late 1960s in Louisville and I was never able to visit him, but the people who did said the wards were like going to hell. People are not treated well when others don’t understand what is going on. In Jesus’ time they would write off these marginalized people, saying “It proves I am a godly person if I have nothing to do with that person.” “It proves I am a godly person if I avoid the leper.”

Jesus rejected this whole way of thinking about people and their problems. When Jesus saw a demon possessed person, a leper, or even a mother-in-law with a fever, Jesus saw a hurting person. He gave them love, acceptance, kindness, and dignity. Having anything to do with a person with leprosy would have made you unclean yourself. For Jesus to reach out and touch a leper, was not just a mere action, it was reaching across all of those barriers that society had put up and instead saying that this person is lovable and valuable in God’s sight.

We need to remember this: If we are not saying, “Give me compassion for the excluded, and compassion for the hurting” then we are not yet following Jesus. As we go through our world, through the courthouses, the hospitals, the classrooms, and the community, we will see all sorts of people of whom our world says, “They are in that unacceptable group and deservedly so.” Jesus calls us to be willing to go across that barrier, not just out of some sort of feel good duty, but out of true genuine compassion. The gospel tells me that I am unacceptable. I am unclean. I am under the power of the devil. I have the leprosy of sin and Christ has loved me and included me and cleansed and forgiven me. Therefore I can go and eat dinner at a table with someone with whom I wouldn’t normally eat, talk with those with whom I wouldn’t normally talk, and befriend those who are not supposed to be in my group. That is following Jesus.Continue reading “Reconsider Jesus – The Compassionate Healer”

The Gettysburg Address

Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett's Charge, Rothermel — Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett’s Charge, Rothermel

One hundred and fifty years ago, more than 30,000 soldiers had died or were wounded after three days of battle at Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863. Four and a half months later, in one of the greatest speeches of American history, President Abraham Lincoln took part in a ceremony to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at the battle’s site. With a remarkably concise address, he reiterated the principles of human equality in the Declaration of Independence, memorialized those who had given their lives at Gettysburg, and resolved that their deaths would not be in vain.

This is worth meditating upon again, this U.S. Independence Day, 2013.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The text above is from the so-called “Bliss Copy,” one of several versions which Lincoln wrote, and believed to be the final version.