pastoring
Credit: Candace Sanders
In the July issue of Sojourners, Peter Chin of Rainier Avenue Church in Seattle discusses why so many pastors are stepping away from ministry in the wake of the pandemic, and how this phenomenon could fundamentally change the landscape of the American Christian faith. Editorial assistant Liz Bierly spoke with Chin about the current pressures on pastors, God’s loving-kindness, and how we courageously move forward. Read Chin’s full feature, “Here Is the Church, Here Is the Steeple – Where Is the Pastor?” in the July issue.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Bierly, Sojourners: What drew you to pastoral ministry?
Peter Chin: I think pastoral ministry was definitely a call out of the blue. I had been preparing for medical school all throughout my adolescence and was taking the MCAT and doing all the pre-med requirements, and then just felt a very stark and sudden calling to ministry, which was very unexpected for me and for my family. But it did feel like a calling, and it remains that way. I don’t often feel fitted for it, to be honest, but I do feel like it’s a calling that I’m continuing to be faithful to.
Volunteer hands out masks for coronavirus disease survival kits as part of an outreach program to the Black community to increase vaccine trial participation in Rochester, N.Y., Oct. 17, 2020. REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario
Early in the pandemic, during one of my “church check-ins” over Zoom, I opened the floor for our members to share any challenges they might be facing as a result of the shutdown so we could be more responsive and supportive. After a few responses, the call went surprisingly silent. I prodded the group and one of our wisest, most active retirees surprised me with her contribution: “We’ve been through challenging times before. We are resilient people. We are okay.”
Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. Photo courtesy Tom Ehrich
My first career: print journalism. Current status of that field: on life support.
My second career: pastoring neighborhood churches. Current status of that field: on life support.
My third career: writing and publishing books. Current status of that field: on life support.
My fourth career: implementing client-server data management systems. Current status of that field: on life support.
Do you see a trend here? I did. So now I try to stay nimble and to keep moving. My publishing business is entirely electronic. I have cycled through three websites and three subscription systems in 10 months. I do more of my church consulting online.
Church members gather at Blount Street in Raleigh, North Carolina for Moral Mondays. Courtesy Dave Biesack / Flickr
Since state legislators were taken over by the Koch brothers, many progressive clergy have spent our entire discretionary accounts on travel to our state capitals. We attend on behalf of equal marriage, the living wage, campaign finance reform, fracking, or low wage workers. While trying to be faithful, we are, also, in the great words of Joseph Sittler, “macerated” by our citizen involvements.
But an experiment is occurring in North Carolina to de-macerate and reunite our spiritual souls with our political bodies. Instead of episodic lobbying, on Moral Mondays, clergy visit with their representatives as chaplains. They change the language from the pragmatics of the political to the hope of our God. They pass through the wilderness of the secular and its optimism and arrive at the land of hope. They talk about the downtrodden in meaningful ways with state legislators.