A Visit to Pittsbugh

In response to their invitation, we visited the church at Fifth and Beechwood. I couldn’t have been received more graciously.  They were excited about the prospect of having us come and work with them. They offered me their pulpit.

But I saw some negatives.  They were in an older part of town.  They had planted a new suburban church in Pittsburgh, and their most talented members had gone there.  We would be living in Squirrel Hill, which was a community that consisted mostly of wealthy Jews.  I didn't have anti-Semitic feelings, but I wasn't sure how well I would fit in with the culture,.  The preacher was having to give up ministry because of some serious health issues, and I didn’t feel good about taking a sick man’s job away from him.   

When I met with the elders we sat in his office.   As I looked around at his books I realized that he was quite scholarly, and I was uneasy about where his sympathies might lie. I was more than a little suspicious of academia at this point in my life.  I was probably intimidated by his scholarship, and also by what kind of influence he might leave on the church.

I’m not proud of this part of my life, but the  tensions in Jamestown drove me deep into a spirit of legalism during my last year there.  I also learned that preacher in Pittsburgh had a close friendship with the people in Jamestown whom I thought were giving me fits.  The salary was a little light, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out in a larger metropolitan area.

As I’ve pointed out my motives and attitudes were not always the best, especially during this period of my life.  I think my biases and my experiences inclined me to view the church unfavorably.  However, we were enthusiastically received.  They seemed like wonderful people, so I had a lot of things to think about when we went back to Jamestown.

Where Would I Go After Leaving New York?

Once I made the decision to leave, I had to find a place that would let me come, and minister, and there was also the matter of trying to feed, clothe, and house my family.  In the back of my mind I was still thinking in terms of finding the church that would be the stepping stone to “greatness.”  I had no idea where that might be.  While I was in Abilene for the lectureship, I happened to meet Charles Smith at Mack Eplen’s restaurant.  Charles and I had been enrolled in graduate studies at Abilene Christian a few years before that.  

Charles told me that he was going back to do mission work in the Philippines, and he wondered if I might be interested in replacing him in Kansas City.   I knew nothing about Kansas City at the time.  I had never been to Kansas City, and knew nothing of the church culture there.   I really wasn’t thinking about Kansas City at that moment.   In the back of my mind I probably was thinking about returning to Texas.  I later learned that my friend Truman Spring had recommended me at Argentine.

In today’s world, ministers are usually hired following an investigative process by a search committee.  Throughout most of my years of ministry, you made contacts through the “good old boy” network.  If you had a buddy who knew something about a local church, he might give you a recommendation, and it proceeded from there.  To be honest, I prefer that method to the search committee.  The last time I went looking for a church, I was still trying to stick to the good old boy network.  I’ve gotten to know a lot of people over the years, and from I sometimes ran into church leaders who had been my friends in the past.  I learned they had farmed the search process out to a committee, and I never could get past the committee to be considered by my buddies in the eldership..   

Sometimes the committees know what they were doing, and sometimes they didn’t have a clue.

In my case the “good ole boy” network put me in touch with the Argentine church in Kansas City.  From a different friendship network, I got a call from the Fifth and Beechwood  church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I looked them both over. The Texas churches didn’t indicate the slightest interest. 

I love Texas.  When you grow up in Texas, you get exposed to Texas history, and places like the Alamo, Washington-on-the Brazos, Goliad, and San Jacinto almost become sacred shrines.

My home state and my relatives have been good to me, but for the most part churches in my home state have not lined up at my door to seek what I have to offer.   I don’t really have any kind of problem with that.  It’s just obvious to me that the Lord has had different plans for me.  After all I think I was hoping for a Texas church for the wrong reasons.

Time has convinced me that in terms of my spiritual influence, I’m more suited for churches outside the Bible Belt.   When northern churches look at my resumes and see how many northern winters I’ve gone through, I think they decide I’m tough enough to take it.   It’s not that I love northern winters.  I’ve always that that I really like Iowa except for three months a year.  Most Iowans feel the same way.  There are other reasons to like the Midwest.

 Spiritually, it’s been a great blessing minister outside the Bible Belt.  I’ve been exposed to a variety of cultures and perspective.   I can still talk Texan if I need to but my values are probably more Midwestern than Southwestern. 

The Decision to Leave Jamestown (1)

You really can’t look back and second guess your decisions.    I made the decision to leave Jamestown in 1969.  Not all of my motives were pure, and as I look back on it, I think it gives insight to the convoluted way we often reach our decisions.  

 I would say that the noblest part of my decision was the feeling that the church needed a leadership transfer.  I was the first worker to come on the scene with the intention of planning the church.  My two co-workers joined me shortly thereafter.  I thought people were looking to me as the primary decision maker and I didn’t think that was healthy.   I didn’t think they would make progress in leadership until I was no longer present.

But motives are sometimes mixed, and I’ll have to admit that I was having trouble managing conflict within the church.   Any time people band together for any purpose, they enter into a relationship of potential conflict. You need to know that going in.  We can’t chose to make conflict go away, but we do choose our response to it. 

 Ann and I have different conflict management styles.  My style could be described as, “Don’t rock the boat.”   Her style is, “Let’s turn it over and find out who knows how to swim.”   The “don’t rock the boat” approach wasn’t helping the church, and the “turn the boat over” approach just didn’t work for me. As we have progressed through the years, we’ve managed to blend our styles with each other, and I think that’s a healthier way of relating to conflict, but I wasn’t there at that time.

Throughout most of my ministry career I’ve worked closely with elders.  One of the blessings of working with elders is the ability to drop sticky problems into their lap.  Eventually I would become an elder, and I would find out what it was like to have sticky problems laid in my lap.  I didn’t like it, but I realized I couldn’t punt.   Back in 1969, I was looking for a church leadership model that would allow me to punt.   To me the way to handle that problem was to work with a church that had elders.

All of us would like to “baptize” our motives, so we try to convince ourselves that we’re being led by God.  

I would have to say that my motives were so poor at this time that that I don’t think I would be honest with God if I accused him of making that decision for me.  It would be more accurate to say I wanted to leave Jamestown, and I was looking for a way to have God approve my desires.   There would be a price to pay for that, but whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, I chose to leave Jamestown.

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Racial Attitudes (5)

I recall one other incident associated with race that helped me to look within myself.  After I moved Kansas City, I formed a friendship with James Maxwell, current Vice-President for institutional expansion at Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Texas.  He was one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, and he was highly sensitive on the subject of racial issues discrimination. 

He was enrolled in graduate school at the Central Baptist Seminary.  Sometimes I went there to use their library, and I would occasionally run into him.  One day we stood on the steps of the library, and addressed the racial issue head on.  By this time we knew one another well enough to say what was on our hearts.  Our discussion was respectful, but quite direct.  Neither one of us backed down from our viewpoints, which were not precisely the same.  

At one point in the discussion I said, “Jim, I understand how you feel.”  He said, “Norman, you can’t understand how I feel unless you get inside my skin.”  I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody, “I understand how you feel” from that day till this.  I may understand their rhetoric, and even feel sympathy for their plight, but Jim was right, I cannot understand how someone else feels.  He taught me a great deal more than a different perspective on racial issues.  We should never, ever assume that we can completely comprehend what goes on in the mind of another person.

Racial Attitudes (4)

A painful yet ultimately satisfying incident, took place during the camping season while I was in New York.  We had a large number of inner city campers from Buffalo.  They had come, largely through the influence of a black minister.  I guess we thought we were free from racism.  After all we had two black brothers on our board.

For reasons beyond my control I ended up as camp director that year.  I already knew that I was in over my head.  Camp directing wasn’t my cup of tea, and I had absolutely no idea how to make it all happen by mingling different ethnic cultures.  

It didn’t take long for ethnic tensions to surface.  Three black boys became quite disruptive to the whole enterprise.  It reached the crisis point when the black minister from their congregation suggested that I expel the boys from the camp. I declined to take his suggestion based on the report of their counselor, who was white.  

To make a very long story short, h thought I was guilty of overlooking bad behavior on the part of these two boys because I didn’t want to appear racist   He did not think I would have let three white boys get away with the same behavior.  To him right was right, and the behavior of this kind was clearly wrong.  He saw my actions as hypocritical.

On my part I thought I had done the right thing.  The specific incident really wasn’t that significant, but in reality it was the tipping point of a series of events that had gone on all week.   The preacher went his way and I went mine.  I didn’t think I had anything to apologize for.

That night I went back to the staff cabin, and my fellow staff members wanted to discuss the incident with me.  I stood my ground until about 2 o’clock in the morning, and I finally decided they were right.  I had made a serious error.  I had deeply offended an esteemed brother.  I was actually practicing reverse discrimination.  I was letting black boys get away with bad behavior, and that reflected on them, their church, and their race.

I couldn’t wait for the dawn.  At daybreak I sought the minister out and asked to speak with him in private.  I confessed my wrong, and he confessed the fact that he was overly sensitive.   We prayed and forgave each other.  From then until the time I left New York, he and I were good friends.  We visited in each other’s homes and enjoyed one another’s company immensely.   He did me a great service in helping me to understand just how hard it was to be color blind in the emotionally charged atmosphere of 1968.  This was the same year when Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Eventually I disciplined the boys, and two of the three accepted my condition without complaint.  They even apologized to me.  Especially, I recall a poor black boy from the inner city who poured out his heart to me in remorse.  Later I visited  his home congregation and he greeted me with respect, maybe even enthusiasm. I would like to say they all came around, but one young man  remained unrepentant, and we never resolved our conflict. 

In retrospect I wish I had dealt with the problem when it first arose. In an attempt to avoid discrimination, I actually practiced it.  That incident became a lens through which I’ve been able to view ethnic diversity in a different way.