part I

So here we are, Pastor G and I, in our Jesus Year, still young enough to be considered young, but not as young as we used to be. We’ve got nothing on paper, no proposal, no clergy cohort group, no projects on the horizon.

But something interesting has happened. After spending a couple of years working with a program that helps young people discern a call to ministry, PastorG is now working as a college chaplain, which puts her in constant contact with young people asking the question, “Why am I here? What does it all mean?”

As for me, in June I spent several days as a small group leader for nine young women who are beginning seminary even as I write this. They were amazing—passionate, capable—with a maturity beyond their years. Yet they were very much in their early 20s—fresh faces, tank tops with bra straps showing, with ironic pigtails in their hair. Many of them ended each sentence, like, with a question mark? You know, even though it was a statement and not, like, a question?

And I loved them all.

On the third night, they convinced me that my “baby needed calcium” and that we adjourn to the ice cream shop up the street. On our last evening, after we put each woman in the center of the circle and laid hands on her and sang a song of blessing, one of them asked, “Can we bless your baby?” So they laid hands on my pregnant belly, still a small bump at that point. I had to leave early, but I saw them later that evening. They were still in our meeting place, silhouettes by the fountain in the middle of campus. They talked late into the night.

I got a note of thanks from one of them a few weeks ago.

And in the last three weeks, I have had three other young women call or e-mail me about getting together. They are discerning a call to ministry and they want to talk to me, or they want me to talk to them, I’m never sure. I’m always certain that I have something of value to give them, even as I never know quite what to say. One young woman is a member of my congregation who attended our workcamp in Kenya. Upon the group’s return she emerged from customs, greeted her parents, caught my eye and said, “I want to go to your seminary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (And it was said with just that many exclamation points.) And it wasn’t just post-mission-trip elation. She really does. And I helped her discern that.

And I am so future focused right now… what does all this mean for my discernment? Is this a sign that I’m called to be a mentor more intentionally, as an educator in a seminary? Or is this merely a part of my call as a pastor, to help young women find their way? I’ve been so future focused, I almost missed that this all has grown out of a nine-year conversation with PastorG. The journey has borne fruits that I was not expecting. Not a book. Not a curriculum or a workshop or a Lilly Foundation cohort group. The fruits have been internal and intangible, yet real.

Perhaps nothing has been wasted.
Perhaps nothing is ever wasted.