Like Stepping Into a Canoe: Nimbleness and the Transition into Ministry

By William B. Kincaid

What is your hope for your first five years of ministry? Thousands of people graduate every year from seminaries and divinity schools in the United States and immediately encounter a whole range of possibilities, issues, and decisions. Many new pastors experience stymied creativity, an endless list of tasks, the intransigence of church systems, personal and professional isolation, and the pressure that comes with dealing with the expectations of other people. As a result, many do not remain in ministry.
How new pastors navigate the transition into ministry can determine their temperament and patterns for the rest of their pastoral careers. In Like Stepping Into A Canoe, Kincaid seeks to help new pastors stay connected to their call, to understand change and transitions, to value both restlessness and resilience, and to find fulfillment in the early years of their ministry.
Kincaid's five practices of nimbleness correspond to the common transition into ministry issues:

For the stymied creativity, the practice of curiosity.
For the barrage of tasks, the practice of clarity.
For the intransigence of church systems, the practice of agility.
For the isolation and loneliness, the practice of proximity.
For the expectations of others, the practice of temerity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Aug 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781498298483

William B. Kincaid

William B. Kincaid is the Herald B. Monroe Professor of Leadership and Ministry Studies at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the author of Like Stepping into a Canoe: Nimbleness and the Transition into Ministry (2018).

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Like Stepping Into A Canoe

Nimbleness and the Transition into Ministry

William B. Kincaid

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Like Stepping Into A Canoe

Nimbleness and the Transition into Ministry

Copyright © 2018 William B. Kincaid. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotation are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. 

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 by Wendell Berry. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press. 

Cover art by Charles Jolly. Used with permission.

William Stafford, excerpt from Vocation from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Jennifer, Noah and the Transition into Ministry

Chapter 1: Experiencing Changes, Committing to Transitions

Chapter 2: Knowing God’s Presence, Trusting God’s Leading

Chapter 3: A Time to Be Nimble

Chapter 4: Curiosity

Chapter 5: Clarity

Chapter 6: Agility

Chapter 7: Proximity

Chapter 8: Temerity

Chapter 9: Restlessness and Resilience

Bibliography

Dedicated to the students from my Transitioning and Flourishing class at Christian Theological Seminary, with thanksgiving for the ministry of each one

Jennifer, Noah and the Transition into Ministry

Jennifer and her son, Noah, graduated from seminary twenty years apart. While in school they rigorously engaged in their studies of Bible, theology, and history, cultivated meaningful expressions of spirituality, experienced firsthand the joys and challenges of the practice of ministry, and began to articulate and embody their vocational paths with greater confidence and authenticity. After seminary, they both received calls to serve congregations in the Southwest. Their transitions into ministry involved remarkable similarities in some ways, but stunning divergences in others. This is their story.

When Jennifer graduated from seminary in 1996, numerous congregations contacted her with the hope she would become their pastor. Those congregations shared several commonalities. All of them sought a pastor in the traditional sense. Just come and preach and teach and love us. Help us to experience God’s presence and to make God’s love real in our community, one woman said during an interview. The congregations all averaged between 125 and 150 worshippers each week. Those sixty years and older represented by far the largest age group in every church that interviewed her. The congregations supported and participated in both local and global outreach causes. The financial support at these prospective churches remained relatively consistent, though all of them would need to reduce the amount budgeted for building maintenance projects in order to offer Jennifer a full-time salary with full benefits.

In other words, though signs of decline and conflict existed when Jennifer graduated, serious questions of survival did not grip the congregations that contacted her in 1996 as she was about to make her transition into ministry. Most seminary graduates of that era moved into relatively stable congregations and into what some have referred to as ‘ready-made" ministry positions. Wherever Jennifer might have gone, she would not have been dealing immediately with whether the church would remain open or would close. In most of those communities, the church remained part of a social network that, along with schools, civic organizations, and youth programs, functioned to support what they believed to be the common good of the community and to guard against perceived threats. Being a part of that network may at times have undermined the church’s development of a robust Christian identity, but the network generally facilitated helpful conversations about important local issues.

Jennifer visited and interviewed with the four congregations whose values and priorities best matched her own, reaching the conclusion that she could enjoy a fruitful and lasting ministry with any of those four, but she believed God was leading her to Grace Church. Negotiations with the leaders at Grace Church went well and Jennifer began serving there six weeks after her seminary graduation.

Jennifer’s son Noah was ten years old when she graduated from seminary. Twenty years later, in the year 2016, Noah graduated from seminary. He also heard from numerous congregations around the time of his graduation. All of them were sought a pastor, but they seemed to want more than a pastor. The congregations averaged between twenty and forty people in worship. Only one congregation could offer what could honestly be called a full-time salary and even it was at the bottom of the denominational scale. That church offered a paltry one hundred dollars per month toward a family healthcare premium that cost nearly seventeen thousand dollars annually. In all of those congregations, he would be the only paid staff. All of them had lost over half of their membership in the last two decades, their buildings were showing extensive neglect, and funds were running out.

The churches where Noah interviewed were located in communities that faced their own stresses. In some cases, a decline in population had led to fewer public services and increased isolation. The towns struggled to channel the energy of an increasingly diverse population into a mutually supportive, mutually appreciative neighborliness. People invested more of their lives in larger, nearby cities, knowing fewer and fewer of their own neighbors and leaving their own communities with a vacuum of leadership. The churches did little to fill that vacuum. Dissatisfaction with the school system became more pronounced, disagreements among residents more dangerous, and depression about the town more obvious.

All of the congregations Noah spoke with had discussed at some point—and usually at some length—whether the time had come to close its ministry and sell its property, but in every discussion someone, much to the chagrin of others, noted that the church just may be on the cusp of finding a new reason for staying around. The community needs a light more than ever right now and we can be that light, a young man from Word of Hope Church was fond of saying.

Noah heard God’s call in the young man’s comment and became the pastor of Word of Hope, even though he knew the congregation might close its doors within the year. He agreed to work twenty-five hours per week as pastor, though the salary more fairly corresponded to half that time. He also would work twenty hours each week at a local coffee shop. This offered him the opportunity to make numerous community connections and, not insignificantly, to secure affordable health insurance.

Getting Started

Though making this transition twenty years apart, Jennifer and Noah both experienced relatively early the external shifts that come with many vocations and professional pursuits.¹ For example, they both moved to places where they had not lived before, communities without familiar landmarks or memories. As they moved from being students to being pastors, they adapted to new rhythms and very different work schedules. Elated with even modest salaries and benefits, they now had to manage a new set of economic considerations that included student loans and finally replacing the old cars that had barely made it to graduation day. And instead of talking every day with other seminarians on similar journeys, they now took their place in a different web of relationships that already had a life of its own.

The expectations that the people in their churches had for their new pastors startled Jennifer and Noah. Those congregants did not view Jennifer and Noah as students or learners or even beginners, but as pastors, counselors, community leaders and program directors. It seemed that at least a few in their congregations thought their new pastors emerged from the seminary womb as fully-formed ministers.

Jennifer and Noah began to experience another set of shifts as they settled into their new roles and communities. These shifts felt more internal, having less to do with their new surroundings or with the people they were getting to know and more to do with the way they were viewing and understanding themselves. It’s not just that others saw them differently, but that they were seeing themselves differently. Jennifer wondered almost daily, Who am I to be their pastor? Am I prepared to be their leader? Do I even want to be their leader? Noah wrestled with another question: Will they pick up on how lonely and emotionally fragile I am right now? Both spent a lot of time during their transition into ministry negotiating with their own self-perception while they learned the ropes of being a new pastor.

The excitement of fulfilling a call to ministry and getting to serve as a new pastor carried Jennifer and Noah during most of their first year, but that began to wear off during their second year. By the start of year three, they felt restless, unclear and burdened, both personally and professionally, but were not able to identify or describe the specifics of why they felt that way. It was a vague but seriously empty time that left them asking questions that surprised their families and friends. Did I mishear this call? Am I really cut out for this work? At one point, Noah announced to his wife that he was going to begin looking for a new job as a website designer.

Jennifer and Noah found themselves struggling to make sense of some very common feelings, but those experiences defied definition and left them questioning themselves and much of what they believed to be true about God, ministry, the church and the world. Often, they assumed that they were the only ones dealing with these relational challenges and internal conflicts.

Jennifer and Noah encountered a web of difficulties regarding transition into ministry that can conspire together to bring even the most gifted and committed new pastor to a moment of deep restlessness and profound reckoning. Those difficulties include dynamics in these five areas.

First, Jennifer and Noah both feared that they were experiencing far fewer opportunities to be creative as they moved from exhilarating spiritual and intellectual encounters in seminary to what they found to be the dullness of the church. Their passion for teaching the faith and caring for others seemed to be undermined by long conversations about a new contract for a copier in the church office and a debate about the dimensions of a new microwave in the church kitchen.

Second, Jennifer and Noah knew the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed. Instead of focusing joyfully on the pastoral work that first drew them to ministry—leading worship, interpreting the faith, caring for others, and guiding the life and mission of a congregation—they encountered an exhausting string of time-consuming distractions and intentionally set diversions that claimed their time and energy. It was as if the church wanted to be anything else in the world except the church.

Third, Jennifer and Noah ran headlong into the deadly intransigence of church systems. An opportunity in Jennifer’s community to support the ministry of a nearby homeless shelter got derailed by decision-less and solution-less meetings where people aired twenty-year-old grievances. The indecision, timidity, and exasperatingly slow pace with which church systems act on matters of interest and importance caused both of them to entertain the likelihood that they could best effect change in the world through avenues other than the church.

Fourth, Jennifer and Noah felt an acute sense of isolation and loneliness. They yearned for the early morning prayer group they attended with friends while in seminary. They knew as they approached graduation that they would miss the strong, steady support of their seminary community, but they were still unprepared for the geographical isolation from colleagues and the loneliness that comes from leadership decisions and pastoral situations. Not addressing their personal isolation led to conflict and lack of intimacy with their spouses and children.

Fifth, Jennifer and Noah experienced undue pressure to please others, especially those in the congregation who influence decisions about their employment and the direction of the organization. They wondered why their congregations allowed a couple of families to hold the church mission hostage instead of allowing new ministries to emerge that would bless people in the church and community. The tightrope that new pastors attempt to walk between pleasing a few key people and acting in the best interest of the congregation or agency as a whole can be demoralizing. Despite making occasional progress on congregationally established goals, neither believed their positions were secure. Those familiar with both situations report that Jennifer, as a woman, consistently received less support and more unharnessed criticism than Noah.

The Nature of This Transition

The poet Billy Collins says that moving from the title of a poem to writing its first line is a lot like stepping into a canoe. It’s tricky and a lot can go wrong.²

The transition from seminary into ministry is also like stepping into a canoe. Many early days in ministry feel like we are trying to keep our balance while stepping into a rocking vessel, one that at times seems determined to dump us into the water.

When Jennifer stepped into the canoe, so to speak, it may have rocked a bit, but it felt more securely moored than canoes seem these days. She was able to address the external and internal shifts that new pastors face within a relatively stable environment. The church