A Pastoral Story

[Gregory Matthews]

The following contains two stories of an early pastoral experience by a SDA pastor now retired (not me).  You  may find them interesting:

 

https://atoday.org/the-prodigal-and-the-hot-car/

 

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

lol .... the first half of the article was funny.  But the 2nd half is odd.  Why didn't the kid's family report him as "missing"??  Everything the pastor told the police was just hearsay.  Weird.

(I'd be interested in knowing what the now-adult kid is doing these days..)

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Gregory, what's your funniest story from your chaplaincy career?

[Gregory Matthews]

Pam:  I would have to think about that.

I guess the following would  qualify. would qualify:

 

Story # 1

Background:  I was not yet ordained and I was working under the supervision of an older pastor.  

*  Ingathering time had come, and I despised it.  My assignment was to accompany the older pastor while he solicited funds from local business places.

*  It was the morning of our first visits.  Noon time  came and the older pastor pulled out his sack lunch and asked me where mine was.

*  I informed him that I had not planned to waste time by eating when there was work to be done.   But , he should feel free to eat his lunch is he needed to do, while I waited for him to finish.

*  That repeated for a couple of days, after which he refused to bring his lunch and we worked through.

*  Interestingly enough, by about 1 PM, he was so hungry that he could not work any longer, so he announced that it was time to quit and we went home.

*  That repeated itself for the rest of the Ingathering season.

*  He reported to the Conference President that he had never seen a young Intern who loved Ingathering as much as I did!

Story # 2:  [NOTE:  Same pastor.]

*  The pastor and I would out visiting one day when he needed to stop and purchase something.  He asked if I would lend him the money and he seemingly was without funds.   He promised to pay me back in a few days when pay-day came.

*  Pay-day came and went and he did not pay me.

*  So, one day I reminded him.  He apologized and stated that he would get the money form this wife and I would be paid.

*  Then he lectured me on my apparent attitude  about money being more important to me than doing the Lord's work.

*  I promptly replied that he had nothing to talk about as I was not investing my limited funds in purchasing property hoping to make large profits.

*  He immediately got defensive and told me that he had a right to purchase property to prepare for the time when he would retire.

*  I had no idea that he was purchasing property.  

Story # 3:

Background:  As a congregational pastor for 7.5 years, I served under five (5) Conference presidents.

*  This Conference President decided that all of his Intern pastors (not-yet ordained), which included me, should be fired as he did not want any of them to continue to be pastors.

 *  He  succeeded in firing his first intern.  At that time he was told to wait on the others of us to see if he was elected for another term.  So, he did.

*  At that election, it was recommended that he not be retained as President.  He gave an impassioned speech in which he stated that he believed that God would intervene to keep  him in office.  At 10:30 the evening, the vote came in by a 2:1 majority to remove him from office.

*  All of the rest of us Interns were retained and later ordained.

Pam, this may not be a funny story, but, it is one that I remember to this day.  It is all part of the background of my decision to leave congregational ministry, which I loved, and to become an Army chaplain, which is where I believed God was leading me.

 

 

[GayatfootofCross]

7 hours ago, Gregory Matthews said:

Pam:  I would have to think about that.

I guess the following would  qualify. would qualify:

 

Story # 1

Background:  I was not yet ordained and I was working under the supervision of an older pastor.  

*  Ingathering time had come, and I despised it.  My assignment was to accompany the older pastor while he solicited funds from local business places.

*  It was the morning of our first visits.  Noon time  came and the older pastor pulled out his sack lunch and asked me where mine was.

*  I informed him that I had not planned to waste time by eating when there was work to be done.   But , he should feel free to eat his lunch is he needed to do, while I waited for him to finish.

*  That repeated for a couple of days, after which he refused to bring his lunch and we worked through.

*  Interestingly enough, by about 1 PM, he was so hungry that he could not work any longer, so he announced that it was time to quit and we went home.

*  That repeated itself for the rest of the Ingathering season.

*  He reported to the Conference President that he had never seen a young Intern who loved Ingathering as much as I did!

Story # 2:  [NOTE:  Same pastor.]

*  The pastor and I would out visiting one day when he needed to stop and purchase something.  He asked if I would lend him the money and he seemingly was without funds.   He promised to pay me back in a few days when pay-day came.

*  Pay-day came and went and he did not pay me.

*  So, one day I reminded him.  He apologized and stated that he would get the money form this wife and I would be paid.

*  Then he lectured me on my apparent attitude  about money being more important to me than doing the Lord's work.

*  I promptly replied that he had nothing to talk about as I was not investing my limited funds in purchasing property hoping to make large profits.

*  He immediately got defensive and told me that he had a right to purchase property to prepare for the time when he would retire.

*  I had no idea that he was purchasing property.  

Story # 3:

Background:  As a congregational pastor for 7.5 years, I served under five (5) Conference presidents.

*  This Conference President decided that all of his Intern pastors (not-yet ordained), which included me, should be fired as he did not want any of them to continue to be pastors.

 *  He  succeeded in firing his first intern.  At that time he was told to wait on the others of us to see if he was elected for another term.  So, he did.

*  At that election, it was recommended that he not be retained as President.  He gave an impassioned speech in which he stated that he believed that God would intervene to keep  him in office.  At 10:30 the evening, the vote came in by a 2:1 majority to remove him from office.

*  All of the rest of us Interns were retained and later ordained.

Pam, this may not be a funny story, but, it is one that I remember to this day.  It is all part of the background of my decision to leave congregational ministry, which I loved, and to become an Army chaplain, which is where I believed God was leading me.

 

 

Thank you for these stories.  

[Bill Cork]

Pam, here's a story from Greg's chaplaincy career.

He was a major, and an instructor at the US Army Chaplain Center and School at Fort Monmouth, NJ. It was 1990. He was a small group instructor, and I was one of his students. It came up that he was Adventist, and I (at the time) was a former Adventist, and that was enough to make me still part of the family. So when he had the Adventist students over to his house, I was invited. Greg thought his military career was winding down, and that gave him freedom to speak and to tell us unabashedly how things were, and how they should be, and how we should act as chaplains. I paid attention.

Fast forward twenty years. Greg and I reconnected at GC in Atlanta. A lot of water under the bridge. I had come back to the Adventist church a few years before and, after a 15 year break in service, had returned to the chaplaincy, too. And as soon as I saw Greg I thought he looked familiar, and within minutes all the memories had come back ... and my great appreciation for him setting me forth into the amazing world of chaplaincy. 

Not a story that's "funny" ("ha ha"), but one that shows the funny ways in which God can work. 

[Gregory Matthews]

Yes the story of the spiritual journey that Bill cork has made is one that is more than interesting.  It is almost beyond belief:

Early on  in his spiritual journey, Bill was a SDA pastor, with a wife and children.  With the passage of time, he came to an intersection in the highway of his life, and he became a pastor of a Lutheran congregation.  Later it took another major change as he transferred from the Lutheran denomination to another denomination and was employed by them in a position in which he served in ministry in a lay (non-clergy) position.  He continued in that position for a number of years.

Yes, as a U.S. Army chaplain, endorsed by the Lutheran Church,  he was one of my students at the Army Chaplain School, where it was my job, in part, to educate clergy as to how to serve in a pluralistic environment and at the same time remain true to their convictions and faithful to their denominations.  As a former SDA minister, I welcomed him into our home along with the other SDA clergy who were attending the course at that same time.

Back to the story of Bill and his spiritual  journey.  During all of this time, Bill's wife had remained a Seventh-day Adventist.  

The time came when Bill decided that he needed to return to the SDA Church s a lay member.  He resigned from the position he had held for years in this other denomination and re-joined the SDA Church as a lay member.  By the next Sabbath, he had accepted the request of a Conference Executive Committee to fill a pastoral position in the Conference.

Bill Cork is now serving as an official of the North American Division.   In addition, he serves as a SDA Reserve (not full-time) Army chaplain.

We go back a long ways and I value him highly in his service to God and the SDA Church.

 

 

[Bill Cork]

One correction, I never got to be a pastor the first go-round. I left while in college, caught up in lots of controversy happening in those days stirred up by people with Australian accents. Left a year after I got married. Had the kids when I was a Lutheran pastor.  :-)

[Gregory Matthews]

Some stories do not have happy endings.  I will tell you one such, at the end of this post.  But, first, I would like to comment on the story of Bill Cork and the elements that made it for success:

*  The SDA denomination has a well established procedure for dealing with clergy that want to    become SDAs.  This process has been developed over the years.  It includes deciding whether or not they shall become SDA clergy. As it has developed, it has demonstrated that it can   give such people the support that they may need in order to make the transition.

*  Bill had been a former SDA member and  had attended Atlantic Union College.  He knew what the SDA church was like and what he was getting into when he came back to it.

*  During the years that Bill was outside of the SDA Church, his wife had remained a SDA member.

*  Bill, at all times had been committed to following where he believed the Holy Spirit was leading him.  He was not making his choices due to thinking that it was to his financial advantage to do so.  He was stepping out in faith and trusting in God to lead even when he did not see the way ahead of him with clarity.

*  Bill was fortunate enough to work with denominational leaders who were willing to let God guide them in the decisions that they needed to make.

*  In short, Bill had a good support group around him when he came back to the SDA denomination that was there to help him.

Now for my story:

During my time on the teaching faculty at the Army Chaplain School, one of my students came to me and asked how he could become a Seventh-day Adventist.  I worked with him to better understand his desire to join the SDA church.  I took steps to put in place the procedure for a non-SDA clergy-person to join the SDA Church, which in this case would include his becoming SDA Clergy.

Now this specific case was a first for the SDA denomination--an active, serving military chaplain wanting to convert.  There were aspects of this process that did not fit the situation that we faced with this military chaplain.  The denomination did not have time to develop procedures that better fit his situation.  So, it attempted, on the fly, so to speak, to put together a procedure that would fit the needs of this chaplain.

 As a result, both he and his wife  joined the SDA denomination and he became a SDA Army Chaplain.

With the passage of time, it became apparent that we had failed to provide him with the support that he needed to make this transition.  The time came when he was no longer recognized as a SDA Chaplain.  NOTE:  It must be recognized that he had some responsibility in this.  However, that is not my point.  My point involves the fact that while we may have done the best that we could, under the circumstances, we failed to give  him the support that he needed.

I hope, and assume, that in this experience, we as a denomination learned something from this and that in the future, if we have a military chaplain who wants to convert to Adventism, we will be better able to provide that man or woman the support that they need.  Denominations are human.  We did the best that we could and hopefully learned from it.

NOTE:  After this person left us, he remained on good terms with us and denominational leaders continued to attempt to positively relate to him.