New York City and Remembering My Call

Thanks to the generosity of some pastoral colleagues, who allowed us to stay in their flat on Roosevelt Island, my family had the opportunity to visit New York City. This was a first for Mike and the girls but not for me.

I "lived" in New York City one summer, while I worked with the Youth Group at the Lamb's Manhattan Church of the Nazarene, which was then located in the old Lamb's Club Building on 44th between Broadway and Avenue of Americas. Myself and a young man worked with the church's small youth group. It was the Summer between my Junior and Senior year and was an amazing Summer. I had wanted to work at the Lamb's ever since the mission trips my youth group had taken there when I was in High School.

Going back to New York reminded me of that Summer I spent there and remembering that Summer reminded me of the high school mission trips. It was after those mission trips that my best friend Jenn and I, both of us having been called into the ministry when we were in our early teens, began talking about urban ministry. We dreamed together about working in struggling churches, with hurting children, and teens (we both saw ourselves working with children and teens - perhaps it was too far beyond us at that age to imagine ministering to adults). I remember many discussions about the thrill of urban ministry and the burden God had placed on our young hearts for the city.

Prior to my trips to New York, I can remember having this odd bias against "the big city." I had developed the common belief that the city was a place of depravity and was marked by a wallowing in sinful indulgence, a place where evil was lauded and all that was right and good was stamped out. My trips to NYC showed me that people in the city was in need of the grace and love of Jesus Christ, just as much as we did in suburbia. But I did develop a heart for ministry among those who society pushed to the side.  Because of those trips Jenn and I began to see the city as not simply as a place to go and visit and retreat, but instead we began to see it as a place where we could do ministry.

While in college I attended two different churches, Dorchester Second Church and Bethel. Both are very different Churches, but both churches are located and ministering in urban settings.  When I was in Seminary, I attended Grace Church, again a church that was ministering in a more urban section of town. Everything in my early training was moving toward ministering in an urban setting.

But then the first church to which I was called was anything but urban. The first seven years of my pastoral ministry were spent in rural south central Kansas (outside of Wichita). And I began to lose the sense of calling I had felt for the city. I was pastoring and that was enough. I was exactly where God wanted me, at that time, and I was happy, and content to be there. I plunged myself into a completely different mode of ministry than that for which I had prepared myself and had envisioned for myself. I was the pastor of a small church in a rural town in the mid-West.  And I did that for the first seven years of my ministry.

But after seven years there, I returned to my East Coast roots and to Boston, where I had gone to college and became the pastor in Cambridge where I am now and have been for seven years. A person would think that after seven years of pastoring in Cambridge I would remember that I was called, while still in my teens, to the city, that when I was 16 years old I would lay awake at night thinking and dreaming about being an urban pastor. But I had not really thought about that girl in a long time. I think in many ways I had forgotten that I had seen the city as place God was leading me for a very long time.

I had  forgotten about the young lady who had spent the Summer working with teens in the heart of Manhattan. I had forgotten how she had felt then that God was calling her to THIS kind of ministry. I had forgotten but going back to NYC reminded me; reminded me of her, her calling, and the things she learned that Summer. I remember seeing for the first time the income disparity that is made so evident in the city. The youth group was made up teens from almost every socio-economic level. I took both the child of a soap opera actress and a young man who did not have enough change of clothes for a week away to Teen Camp. As a person, who even when her parents were struggling financially had what she needed at all times, the idea of not having enough clothes was an eye opener. I remember talking with a young man preparing for college about what it was like growing up in the middle of the city, being amazed that he had so much freedom in a place my parents were leery to send me for a week when I was his age. I learned so much from each young person in that group and I am forever thankful for them opening their lives to me and allowing me to minister to them, even as they were teaching me and preparing me.

And here I am 20 years after my 19 year old self spent a Summer there, taking my children back to that same city. And suddenly I remember a wide eyed 16 girl as she took in one of the worlds largest cities for the first time. And I remember the 19 year old trying to take in the struggles of the teens with whom she was working. I remember her, her wonder, and I could feel the palpable draw inside of her to THIS kind of ministry. She knew then, what I have forgotten now. God called me to not merely be a pastor, but an urban pastor. I am now a pastor, not only am I a pastor, but I am pastoring an urban church. In many ways I am exactly where both my 16 and 19 year old selves dreamed I would be. But I have been hesitant to call myself an urban pastor. In many ways I feel as if I do not fully understand the context in which I live. Now, even as I pastor the kind of church she envision, I would pastor, I struggle with thinking of myself as, or calling myself and urban pastor.

Growing up on military bases and in suburbia, my life was very different from that of someone who grew up in a city.  The challenges I faced and my parents faced were so different from those who have spent their lives in and urban area. I know this is where I am called, I can see how God has prepared me, formed me and shaped me to pastor here, but at the same time, I always feel as if there is more I need to know. I feel as if I am missing something important, something key to understanding the context in which I currently minister. I live here, but I am not FROM here. My continual question is how can I truly BE an urban pastor?  How can I develop a true understanding of the people to whom I am called? How can I be the urban pastor I know I am called to be?

I see the young girl, I see her dreams, I see the burden God placed on her heart, how can I be the pastor, the person the woman, she knew I could be?

Perhaps going back to NYC simply reminded me of the burning desire God has giving me to be here. To pastor in this place at this time.  I love the city, specifically I love this city.  And more than anything I love the little congregation and all the people who are in it, which God has given to my care.  THIS is where God has called me to be. And God has been calling me here and preparing me to be here for a very long time. And the burning in my heart is to the very best urban pastor I know how to be. But I think I am also aware more than ever that I need to continue to learn, to continue to grow and to strive daily to allow God to show me how I can learn and grow into a better and better urban pastor, for the congregation given to my care, for the neighborhood in which God is calling us to minister.

P.S. Jenn has also grown up to fulfill her calling, she does urban ministry with a Nazarene Compassionate Ministry Center in Oklahoma City.