Confessions of a Small Town Minister

By David John Ford

Ministry in a small town or rural context is challenging. The minister and his or her family live in a fishbowl, with every aspect of life under constant scrutiny. In addition, few seminaries or Christian colleges and universities offer courses preparing people for small-town ministry. Throw in limited resources and small-town politics, and you might begin to understand the struggle of Ben Wright, minister in Madison, Montana. In a last-ditch effort to find help before he quits ministry altogether, Ben solicits the advice of another minister, the aged and experienced Kain Hoddis. Ben and Kain undertake a journey of discovery as together they explore the joys and struggles of small-town ministry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490860732

David John Ford

David has served in small-town ministry for the past fourteen years, experiencing many of the ups and downs that ministry brings. Previously, he served as a youth minister for four years in a large urban church. He holds a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Alberta, and a Master of Divinity degree in theology from Harding School of Theology. He presently serves as a bivocational minister for a small small-town church in southwest Montana. David has been married to Kris for twenty-five years; they have two daughters, Eden and Jessie, who are both university students. David enjoys hiking and hunting the wild open spaces of Montana. www.smalltownministries.com

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Copyright © 2014 David John Ford.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover photograph by Carrie Roy Photography.

Cover photograph concept, Mike O’Neal

Author photo credit: Ron Richardson

Beloved Wife Words and music by Natalie Merchant © 1995; Indian Love Bride Music (ASCAP); All Rights Reserved; Used By Permission

Biblical quotes noted NIV in the endnotes:

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Biblical quotes noted NAS in the endnotes:

Scriptures taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Biblical quotes noted Personal translation are the personal translation of the author.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover models are volunteers and are close to the author’s heart. Their images appear on the book cover with their permission.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-6072-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-6073-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920757

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/12/2014

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Broken

Chapter 2: Floating Some Ideas

Chapter 3: My Father’s Things

Chapter 4: Tsunami

Chapter 5: Lost

Chapter 6: I’m Not A Pastor Any More …

Chapter 7: Beginning To Heal

Chapter 8: God’s Timing

Chapter 9: Supporting Your Preaching Habit

Epilogue: The Summons

Appendix: Research Interview Questions

Bibliography

End Notes

Dedication

To my mom, Dorothy Ford:

thank you for choosing me,

for dragging me to church as a teenager,

and for always believing in me.

In memory of Charles Eric Limb,

shepherd,

leader,

inspiration.

To all those servants of God at play in the fields of the Lord,

whose ministry to the good people in the small towns and rural churches of this land, may these words give you encouragement to finish the race

καίνÒν óδον έυρισκετε

PREFACE

The seeds for this book were sown when I received a letter in the autumn of 2005, from Dr. Jerry Rushford of Pepperdine University, inviting me to speak at the 2006 Pepperdine University Lectures. The letter indicated that I would be able to speak on any subject pertinent to ministry—the subject and lecture title were up to the speaker. I was to submit a couple of options, from which the organizers of the lectures would select one. I sat down to think, What do I know enough about to speak about at such a prestigious lectureship? Someone, whose name is now forgotten, back along my two and a half decades of informal and formal ministry experience and ministry training once told me preach what you know. That thought came unbidden to my mind as I pondered (’cause I sure wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to speak at Pepperdine!). Preach what I know. Once that was settled, there came a second question, What do I know? Hmm. At that point, I’d been involved in small-town ministry for five plus years, how about that? And so it began. My lecture, delivered in May of 2006, after a trial run before my home congregation, was titled, A Minister for Christ in a Small Town. Not exactly a riveting subject, but the 20 or so people that attended seemed to enjoy what they heard (especially after I announced that I had brought several Made in Montana, gifts—including huckleberry jam and huckleberry barbeque sauce—and that I’d draw names for these gifts at the end of the presentation). There were eight or nine other lectures occurring at the same time at the lectureship, including one presentation entitled, Sex and Baptism that drew hundreds. I was actually surprised that anyone attended my presentation at all (excepting, of course, those who felt obligated to be there—my wife, Kris, and my brother in law Scott Laird, who also made a presentation at the lectures, Scott’s wife, Patty, and friend and fellow Harding student, Mike O’Neal). My lecture included a PowerPoint® presentation with lots of photos of my ministry context. I spoke about the barriers to small town ministry, the desperate need for ministers to understand and appreciate the context of small town ministry, and defining a vision for success in a small town ministry context (good three-point outline, don’t you think?). Little did I know at the time that many who write about this special ministry context discuss the first two points I had addressed—but that was something I was to discover a few years later as I began my research for this book.

Regarding this book that you are holding: I chose to create a fictional town in order to make this ministry setting less like my own real ministry setting, and hopefully to be more broadly recognizable as someplace in small-town America. One other confession: I also did not want the good folks of my home town of Three Forks, Montana, to be looking for themselves in this page. Through the setting and the characters in the book, I hoped to create an environment that is, at some level, recognizable to anyone with experience in a small town church. I have this hunch that most everyone serving in ministry has considered changing careers at one time or another. I hope every reader will find something among Ben’s many struggles that they can relate to and say, "I know exactly what he is going through."

In order to not intrude upon the flow of thought in the narrative, I have kept the endnotes to a minimum. For further reading on the subject matter contained in the narrative, I encourage the reader to investigate the bibliography at the end of the book.

The choice to write this book in narrative format is also deliberate. Several years into my Christian walk, it dawned on me that most of the Bible (roughly two thirds) is narrative. I began to wonder about why that was. Sure, the stories that form the narrative portions of the Bible are engaging. And, in time, I discovered the power of narrative to teach, convince, convict, and shape one’s character. I also discovered that not all truth comes to us in propositional form: Jesus being the living embodiment of truth being a primary example. These discoveries were largely propelled by Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Alter’s keen observations concerning the literary elements of the narrative portions of scripture, the critical role that dialogue plays within the narratives of scripture, and the role that dialogue also plays in character development within the narratives of scripture infused my thinking, transformed my Bible study and teaching, and eventually, subconsciously, provided the inspiration for the narrative, dialogue-based approach of this book. My desire to engage the reader, and to subtly inform through the vehicle of narrative also explains my choice to tell the story in the first person.

When I sat down to begin writing this book, I experienced a moment of panic. Where does one begin a book? How does one begin? Not knowing the answers to those questions, I fell back upon my previous profession: engineering. In particular, I adopted the familiar problem-solving mode that a decade and a half of engineering school and practice had formed: which means I focused on the solution to the problem, not the problem. My problem solving process began with visualizing the audience: who did I want to benefit most from this book? The reading I had done on small town life and ministry revealed a couple of very interesting facts. First, much has been written from a secular, sociological, or anthropological perspective on life in rural America. Through poetry and prose, demographics and discourse, life in rural America has been dissected, analyzed, lamented, and praised. Second, there is a fairly large corpus of material written on small church ministry, that is, serving in ministry in congregations of (generally) less than two hundred people. These books are typically written to a broad audience and may or may not include evaluation of the ministry context. That is to say, these books could just as easily serve as aids to ministry in a small congregation located in either an urban or a rural setting. Third, there is relatively little written which specifically addresses ministry in a small town and/or rural setting, that is, there is not much written where the above two spheres intersect: specifically addressing rural or small town ministry (for a fairly thorough list of writings focusing on ministry in small-town and rural settings, see the books and articles listed in the bibliography). Of those books and articles addressing small town ministry, many are written from a propositional perspective, that is, they typically list some of the issues faced by small town ministers, and then offer some how to’s to address those issues, or they recount some element of research undertaken in small town ministry settings. And while each piece written about small town or rural ministry contain anecdotes and stories to illustrate the points being made, relatively few are written in a narrative format; the chief exceptions being the books penned by Jan Karon, Michael Lindvall and Philip Gulley. So, my intended audience includes those who are either practicing ministry in small town or rural settings, or those who are training for ministry. I also had in mind people who live in small town or rural settings and who worship in small town churches. Perhaps this narrative might help those people understand something of what it means to serve as a small town minister.

My desire to write about small town ministry—its perks and pitfalls—meshed with the inherent attractiveness of narrative. We like stories. That is why we attend plays, go to movie theaters, watch TV, read good books, and sit around the kitchen table or in the town’s gathering places sharing stories as we catch up with friends and family. When someone asks us How are you doing? our first impulse is to share the answer in narrative format—to tell a story. We know from every day life experience that stories have the power to inform, to instruct, and to construct. Thus, I adopted the narrative paradigm for this book. I want to engage the reader, to draw them into a story where they meet characters struggling with real-life, real-ministry issues. And if the reader is involved in small-town ministry, or is in training for ministry, or attends a small-town or rural church, I want them to experience, with Ben, Grace, and Kain, the joys and heartbreak, the challenges and victories that come with serving God’s people in small-town and rural settings. I want to acknowledge and validate their experiences. In short, I wish to come alongside them, to experience their pain, sorrow and joy, and perhaps, as Kain does for Ben, to help rekindle a passion for their God and for their calling to serve as God’s agents of grace in a small town context.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Undertaking a task as daunting as writing a book is, at least for this writer, a cooperative project. I certainly could not have done this without the support, encouragement and blessing of a great number of people. There is a danger inherent to making a list of people that one is thankful for: I pray that I have not overlooked some person critical to the process.

As I mentioned above in the Preface, the seeds for this book were sown when I received a letter in the autumn of 2005, from Dr. Jerry Rushford of Pepperdine University, inviting me to speak at the 2006 Pepperdine University Lectures. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Rushford for his desire to include me in the 2006 lectures.

I have been profoundly shaped in my thinking, my faith, and my ministry by the faculty and staff at Harding School of Theology, in Memphis, TN. Little did I know the transformative journey I was undertaking when I signed up for my first class in the spring of 1999. To all of the professors who have taught me, challenged me, expressed a vision for my ministry and my mind, counseled me, and shaped me, I am forever grateful: Drs. Allen Black, Dave Bland, John Ellas, Ed Gray, Carlus Gupton, John Mark Hicks, Jim Howard, Keith Mask, Phil McMillion, Rick Oster, Eddie Randolph, and Mark Powell. Many of you are more than teachers—you are friends and mentors. Thank you to Leon and Marilyn Sanderson for your hospitality, to Steve McLeod for guiding me so patiently through the process of earning a degree, to Don Meredith for the course on library research, and to all Don’s staff at the library for providing such timely and excellent service. And special thanks to Dean Dr. Evertt Huffard and Dr. Ileene Huffard for opening your home and your hearts to me. I have benefited greatly from your hospitality and wisdom. To everyone at HST: you have truly lived up to your motto of Transforming Leaders in the eleven years I was been privileged to be a student at there; I have been transformed.

Thank you to Dr. Dave Bland for allowing me the freedom during my two practicum classes at HST to pursue, in a focused manner, a study of ministry in a small town setting, and for believing in me when I proposed this project. Thanks for the advice and direction over the years, and for taking the time on beautiful summer noon to talk over sub sandwiches at Lenny’s about options for my future. I’ll never forget that you said, We need people trained in theology and in ministry. It would seem that I may have found a way to bring those two together.

It may be strange to acknowledge the influence of someone dead for, oh, about 1,600 years, but here goes: thank you, Augustine. Your classic book, Confessions (required reading for one of my church history courses), helped to open my eyes to the power of story in teaching and in doing theology. This timeless Christian classic is a narrative blend of autobiography and theology—as Augustine sought to inform, instruct, and influence his audience.

Much of my writing happened away from the phone and the wonderful distractions of home. Although they probably were not aware of it, several restaurants and coffee places in and around Bozeman served as my other office for writing this book. To the owners and staff of Rocky Mountain Roasting, Home Page, Johnny Carino’s, City Brew, The Leaf and Bean, and Arby’s on Main in Bozeman, The Coffee Pot at Four Corners, and the Lewis and Clark, Remuda Coffee, and the Three Forks Café in Three Forks, many thanks for the atmosphere and for the caffeinated stimulus.

Closer to home, I feel a debt of gratitude to all those who live, work, worship, and play in the town of Three Forks, Montana, my ministry context for the past fourteen years. Without you, there would be no Three Forks. You make this comfortable, complex, contradictory town what it is: home, and a great place to raise one’s family. Thank you for accepting me, with all my outsider-ness. It has been a joy to attempt to live out the gospel of Jesus in your midst. As far as I’m concerned, you can bury me there. Oh, and if you saw me wandering the streets of Three Forks this past five years, with my book bag on my back, head down, and talking to myself, thanks for not calling the Sheriff. On those long walks around town these past few years, I was writing. Or at least I was working out in my head the dialogues you will encounter in this book—I was trying to find the cadence of the words, to hear the music of their voices. I’m sure there are more than a few residents of Three Forks who saw me walk past their home or shop or office, and who thought, That poor, poor man. He’s lost what’s left of his mind.

Within the population of those who comprise Three Forks is a group of people who are, in their own ways, committed to serving God with all that they have and are. I am speaking here of the members of Three Forks Ministerial Association, and their spouses and families, past and present: Pastors Charlie Christensen and Joseph Rowan, Deacon Robert Lane, Frs. John Ward and Eric Gilbaugh, Bishops Aaron Baczyk, Scott Kilsgaard, and Lamont Kotter, Reverends Lyle Hamilton and Linda Fritz, Pastor Richard Clark, and Jim Grose. Thank you for inviting me into your midst, for welcoming me, for patiently allowing me to grow, and for encouraging the loss of many of my hard edges in the process. Thank you for surrounding me when I crashed and burned, and for finding a place for me at the table even when I believed had nothing left to offer. You all have taught me much about the high price of serving in small town ministry, and about the everlasting worth of paying that price. As we have remarked together so many times, we have something very special in this town, and our sense of community, of shared purpose despite our differences, and our abiding sense of unity even in our diversity is something that the world needs to see.

I am also thankful for the policy of the board of Yellowstone Bible Camp, that they make the camp facilities available to ministers in Montana for personal retreats. Scott Laird, board member, made this policy known to me. I took advantage of this opportunity, and spent a wonderful week in September for each of the past five years up at the camp, in contemplation, prayer, study, and writing. Much of Chapters 4 and 5, and 9, and the Epilogue were written, and much of the editing of the manuscript was accomplished during those personal retreats.

To the members of the Three Forks Church of Christ, living and dead, present and past, whom I have had the joy and heartache of serving for the past fourteen years, thank you just doesn’t seem adequate. I am forever indebted to you for allowing me to grow, for encouraging my studies, for patiently accepting my eccentricities, for granting me the freedom to seek, ask, and knock, and to always, always, always ask questions. It is an awesome thing to stand before a congregation of the Lord’s people, having gone to the Word on their behalf, and having returned with a message from the Lord to his people. Thank you for granting me that joyous privilege for so long now. Every time we meet together, I am moved by the goodness of God in giving me the gift of you.

To Sandra Cutler, English teacher extraordinaire, I am most grateful. Not only did you help shape my daughters in your English classes, but you also provided critically important comment and critique of an early draft of the manuscript of this book. I hope you recognize the changes prompted by your kind and gentle critique.

I am also grateful for the editorial help from Christina Kamps, Three Forks business owner and newspaper publisher. Christina read a copy of the manuscript in preparation for conducting an interview with me, and in the process found some typos. Thanks for saving me more than a little embarrassment!

There are two men, mentors and ministers, servants and saints, to whom I am especially grateful: Scott Laird and Jimmy Goins. I have known Scott since the fall of 1983. I am in ministry because of, in large part, Scott’s encouragement. He gave me the push I needed to have the courage to take the plunge into ministry. I’ll never quite be sure of exactly what he saw (sees?) in me, and I know that the trajectory of my thinking is, at times, concerning to him. I never have doubted Scott’s integrity, his purity of heart, or his love for me. Of course, it helps that we have a bond thicker than grape juice; I’ll forever be grateful that when Scott moved to Edmonton to serve as campus minister for our church, he brought his beautiful younger sister, Kris, along for the adventure.

Jimmy Goins served a congregation in the northwest Montana town of Columbia Falls for several years; he now ministers to a church in central Florida. I met Jimmy at a men’s retreat in the spring of 2006, when I was seriously considering getting out of ministry altogether, in fact, I was rather like Ben in Chapter 1 of this book the day Jimmy and I first met. Meeting Jimmy was one of those God things; I felt an immediate connection to Jimmy. Maybe it was his compassion, or perhaps the tangibility of his realness. I coerced Scott and Jimmy to act as field supervisors for my first practicum for HST, when I conducted the primary research for this book. And then, when I was drafting my proposal for this book, and praying for guidance as to who should supervise my second practicum, where I would begin writing the manuscript, I kept thinking of Jimmy. My motives were entirely selfish: Jimmy has years of small-town ministry experience, and I had been praying for some time that he and I might form a mentor-mentee relationship. Everyone needs a Barnabas—and Jimmy for me, that Barnabas is you. Jimmy was the first person to read the manuscript, chapter by chapter as I finished them. He provided much appreciated insight and correction, and was unfailing in his encouragement.

Thank you to Natalie Merchant for graciously agreeing to let me share the words of your song, Beloved Wife, in this book. Your music kept me company much of the time I was writing.

Thank you to my good friend, the king’s crown, (you know who you are), for letting me tell your story. I hope you don’t mind the authorial license I took with the details.

There is a small group of people that probably think I’ve forgotten about them after all these years. When I first embarked on my ministry journey in Edmonton, Canada, I was asked by the deacon overseeing the children’s ministry at the church I served to sit on the education ministry committee. Over those four years, I came to hold a deep respect for each of the people on that committee: Bruce Hoddinott, Beryl Limb, Mary Jane Cousins, Tina Clark, and Cindy Hreczuch. Thank you for your vision for ministry, and for your indomitable desire to pass on faith to children. It also helped that I was serving as youth minister to children of three of these wonderful people. When I left Edmonton for other ministry pastures, this group of servants shared with me their conviction that I’d some day write a book. Well, nearly a decade and a half later, here it is. Thank you for inspiring me with your vision. All those years ago you saw something that I didn’t see, and you believed that I had something more to offer. I pray that you are not disappointed.

And to my family: to my bride and soul-mate Kris, and our beautiful and brilliant daughters, Eden and Jessie. You, more than anyone, know the truth of this book. You have lived with me through many of the trials and joys that I have attempted to relate here through the lives and ministries of Kain and Ben. And you know, more than anyone just how much I have invested in this ministry and this story. Thank you for sticking with me through the whole process. Kris, I look forward to living out the rest of this story with you. Eden and Jessie, I’ll never know what it is like to grow up as a small-town-minister’s kid—to live in such a fishbowl as our home has been. That particular story is for you to write some day.

None of these people mentioned bear any responsibility for the contents of this book; the errors and flaws are all my own.

INTRODUCTION

If you bought this book thinking it might be a racy tell-all about the dark deeds of small town ministers, I am sorry, on two accounts. First, I am sorry that you were looking for such a book; second, I am sorry to say that I am about to disappoint you. This book is about confessions of another kind. If you flip to the Acknowledgments at the end of this book, you will discover that I credit a portion of the title of this book to Augustine, the fourth century theologian, and specifically to his classic Christian work, Confessions. In that book, Augustine tells his own story of coming to faith in Jesus: his realizations and reluctances, sorrows and struggles, and ultimately, the victory of God’s love for and within him. In telling that story, Augustine accomplishes two things: first, he invents a genre of literature—theological narrative, which tells a tale at the same time that it seeks to inform and instruct; second, he chronicles the continual unfolding story of God’s work in this world.

First confession: this is a work of fiction—sort of. It is a narrative that addresses some practical theology issues associated with being a minister in small-town and rural America; I guess we could call it a theological narrative. Madison, Montana is a figment of my imagination, as are all the characters in this book. Well, that is not exactly true. As I engaged in the process of writing this book about small town ministry as experienced through the eyes of Ben Wright and Kain Hoddis, I inevitably injected into their characters much of my own experience, faith, and theology. Ben is very much like I am, with some additional issues and struggles thrown in. Kain is very much like the man I would like to become.

Madison, Montana is an entirely fictional town. It exists only in my mind. Any person, place or event in the life of this small town that bears any kind of resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place existing or historical, or any event, is purely coincidental. Except, of course, for those who agreed to let me tell their story in these pages.

CHAPTER 1: BROKEN

The flash came and departed so quickly, I might have imagined it, had it not been followed a few seconds later by thunder’s confirming rumble. I glanced up at the clouds that had poured north over the mountains: their bruised countenance unknowingly reflective of my mood. The hidden turbulence of air that created the flash and boom mimicked and mocked the state of my own inner being.

Words passed through my brain, unbidden: By torturous paths we arrive at today. Such were my thoughts as I stood in the gathering rain, protected for the moment by the vine-thatched pergola leaning out over the sidewalk. I pondered my next move.

Today for me signaled a day of admission: loss, defeat, and acceptance that a chapter of my life was about to end. For nearly a dozen years I had served as a small-town minister, but that was about to end. I thought I had been called by God to this task, and that in service to God I had discovered the reason I had been put on this earth. Instead, over time, I had discovered that ministry can chew up and spit out a person—even a person holding the sincere and honest belief that I had been adequately prepared for the task. For me those torturous paths leading to today had meant experiencing heartache over the destructive choices people make, enduring a years-long intra-church conflict, suffering the betrayal and abandonment of close friends, and having to admit and accept my own failures as a minister. Denial always dies a difficult death.

My first career had been engineering; I was, by nature and by training a problem solver. However, in ministry I had encountered the harsh reality that there were some problems I could not fix, some issues I could not resolve. I was a long time learning that there are problems only God can resolve, and that while it was my duty to serve as a conduit of God’s compassion and grace, it was neither my place nor within my capability to fix broken people. I had learned the hard way that I was not the expert in other people’s problems; they did and always would know more about their brokenness than I would ever hope to know. I could listen, ask insightful questions, offer limited advice (which most people would not act upon), but I could not fix them. That is God’s job. The truth is, I can’t even fix my own problems. Illusion also dies a difficult death.

As I said, these lessons can only be learned the hard way; and as a result of these lessons, I found myself in a very deep, dark pit. Thus, this grey day reflected my own inner realities. I felt at this moment that I could completely relate to God’s grief over creating humanity and his heart-rending decision to destroy the world in the flood and start over. Only for me, I had no idea what starting over would look like.

Little was I aware, as I stood there, that sometimes the small things in life end up changing us forever. Small things like a conversation over coffee.

Having begun to face the truth of my failure, I opened the door and walked into Maggie’s Broken Rim Café with my stomach roiling like the late summer clouds overhead. I was early for the meeting—I hoped that arriving early would help settle my nerves. And although I had considered bailing on the meeting, being a no-show was simply not in my character. Besides, at the moment, I didn’t have the courage to call and cancel.

Home for me was Madison, Montana, present population 1663. Located at the junction of Montana Highway 84, running from Bozeman west to Norris, and Montana Secondary Route 207, running north from Madison to Interstate 90, joining with the Interstate just west of Logan. Madison is located in Gallatin County, perched on both banks of the Madison River, where the Madison tumbles out of the Bear Trap and into the Gallatin Valley, where what is locally known as the Lower Madison begins.

The town of Madison was incorporated in 1894, although there had been a few hardy settlers at the present location of Madison beginning in 1864, during the Virginia City/Alder Gulch gold rush. The town is named in honor of James Madison, whose name also graces the river running through it, and who, as Secretary of State in the Jefferson Administration, organized the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and commissioned the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, which arrived at the Missouri Headwaters in July 1805, bestowing the names Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin on the three rivers converging to form the Missouri. James Madison would later become the 4th President of the United States.

Madison is literally a river runs through it town, for the simple fact that the entire length of Madison’s Main Street—Highway 207, slowed down to a sedate 25 miles an hour—parallels the Madison River. Town growth was, for some decades, inhibited by the physical barrier of the river. However, in the 1950’s a concrete double-span bridge had been erected over the river, near Black’s Ford, permitting an explosion of growth on the west side of the river. In the 1970’s a second bridge was constructed, at the north end of Main, where the valley once again narrowed. Most of the town’s residents, and the new high school, also built in the 1970’s, now live west of the river. A random collection of buildings, (historic and new) line the east side of Main Street, facing the river. A treed city park runs on both sides of the river, encompassing the levees protecting the town from occasional incursions by the river, serving as scenic buffers between nature and civilization.

For the sake of survival, Madison has had to reinvent itself several times over the century and a half of its life. Its continued existence testifies to the tenacity of its residents—a tenacity that made my resolve to leave ministry feel like nothing less than betrayal.

Beginning as a stop-over place and resupply center for the gold rush, Madison eventually grew into an agricultural town, providing needed supplies to the ranches on the lower Madison and also in the foothills above the town. Today, the main industry in Madison is tourism: Main Street and River Street (paralleling the river on the west bank) boast no fewer than four fly fishing, bait-and-tackle, and river-outfitter shops (also offering big game and bird hunting outfitting in season), and a new eco-tour company.

For all practical purposes, life in Madison revolves around the seasons. Life here has a rhythm whose cadence is marked by the cycles of planting and harvest, the rise and fall of the river, the ebb and flow of tourism and hunting seasons, and the sequence of school sports. There are two places in town which serve as focal centers of life in our community: the Madison River High School—home of the Raptors—and Maggie’s. To speak truthfully, Maggie’s is truly the axis around which the town rotates, at least if the passing-on and receiving-of information (i.e., gossip) concerning sports, weather, hunting, ranching, and who’s doing what or whom is concerned. I love the atmosphere of Maggie’s, but it sure wouldn’t have been my first choice for the meeting I was about to have. Frankly, I didn’t want anyone in the town to witness my state of despair, or to overhear anything of what I had to say.

Maggie herself was waiting tables. She moved about the room with an amazing grace and an equal amount of determination. I’m built for comfort, not for speed, honey, was her quip when customers occasionally complained about the speed of service. Locals know better than to complain, of course. Your coffee cup would be filled with Maggie’s own wicked black brew when the time was right, and you could always count on it being fresh.

Whatcha needin’, hon? she asked as she wiped the table where I had sat down with a cloth in one hand and gathered a plate, cups and silverware with the other.

Just coffee, I said, knowing that Maggie’s coffee was probably the last thing my stressed system and turbulent tummy needed. Thanks.

There’s a fresh pot brewing, ’twill be ready in five, she flung over her shoulder as she charged over to the next table needing service. Maggie could juggle more dishes and silverware than any other waiter or waitress I’ve ever seen. How she managed to thread her way between tables and chairs without crunching anyone or dumping a plate of pancakes on someone is still a mystery to me.

Maggie’s has been a part of Madison for as long as, or maybe longer than anyone living can remember; the story of Maggie’s is part of the legend of our town. In August of 1864, Jim Bridger was leading one of his wagon trains along the Bozeman Trail—the northern arm of the Oregon Trail. The train was made up of people heading from Bozeman and points east to the gold rush booming in Virginia City, sixty miles southwest of Bozeman. One of the wagons suffered a broken wheel as it began the river crossing at Black’s Ford on the Madison River. The metal-bound rim squealed a complaint as it encountered the last in a long series of too many large rocks. Without warning the iron rim separated from the wooden rim, and the wheel collapsed. Spokes and rim sundered from the hub and the wagon lurched to a stop. The wagon’s owner, Thomas Mulligan, yelled and hopped off the seat into the torrent, higher than normal due to heavy, un-seasonal rains a hundred miles south at the headwaters of the Madison, in what is now Yellowstone Park. According to eyewitnesses, he was promptly carried off his feet and downstream. Had he jumped off the wagon on the upstream side, he undoubtedly would have been pinned to the side of the wagon by the current, or worse, swept under the wagon and drowned. As it happened, he managed to return to the east bank of the river in the shallows of the next bend, a third of a mile downstream. Mulligan, an Irish immigrant fleeing the potato famines of his homeland had already endured nearly a year of travel by river boat and then by wagon from his place of arrival in America—New Orleans—including a long winter overlay in St. Louis. He had intended on setting up a dry goods store in Virginia City, to supply the miners and simultaneously siphon off some of the gold they had extracted from