|
Friends United Meeting |
 |
November 1997
Call to Relationship
By Judith Dancy
The best part of my ministry is the hanging out with people. I didn't know that when I heard the call to pastoral ministry. In fact, when I heard the call I thought for sure God had a wrong number! I had definitely been called to seminary, but the idea of becoming a pastor had not occurred to me. I was there, I was pretty certain, to become a pastoral counselor, or to get some oomph! beside my name ( Judith Dancy, MDiv) as I led seminars and workshops on spiritual growth. Listening was one of my gifts, I knew, and so was teaching. But the chasm between recognizing I had some gifts and realizing I could use them in the public ministry was way too wide for me. Pastoral ministry was what other people did-serious people whose lives hadn't taken the dips and turns my own had taken.
Of course I knew all pastors weren't solemn and pious. After all, I had met Tom Mullen. And Bill Stevens, then pastor of First Friends, Greensboro, while deeply spiritual and as fully an example of integrity as I ever have known, was a blue jeans and Bermuda shorts kind of person, at least on weekdays. It's just that those two, and all the other pastors I knew, seemed so...good. And even though I felt that God could take my sometimes irreverent sense of humor, the fact I was twice-divorced seemed a bit much. A woman with a past as a pastor? It really didn't seem possible.
But the call came, not a voice or a dramatic moment like in the movies, but quietly, over a period of time. Those in my community at ESR, faculty, staff, and other students, walked with me through those days of discernment. Walked with me. Prayed with me. Prayed for me. Listened to me. Talked to me. In short, these wonderful men and women of God embodied God for me as I struggled with becoming that which God wanted me to be.
I was not well-schooled in the Bible (an outrageous understatement); studying theology and spirituality was new to me, too. Mostly it was exciting. Mostly I would sit on the edge of my seat. Mostly I would ask lots of questions of teachers and fellow students and staff. And then, mostly I would return to my room across the street and wonder. Scared. It felt like I wasn't getting it. When I did think I "got it," there were others who "got it" differently. Were they right? Was I wrong? How could God use someone like me in the ministry? I didn't have a clue, and wasn't really sure if God did.
But then the dream came.
The dream came, and seven years later I can dare to share only a part of it. That January night is the pivotal moment of my life, and on my hand I wear a ring to mark its significance. Christ came to me in the darkness, in my sleep. He spoke these words, "Marry me." "I can't, I won't!" was my firm reply. "You will," he said with infinite patience, as he leaned against the wall to wait. Throughout the dream, and it seemed to last for a lifetime, he asked and I refused, until in absolute frustration I said, "Oh, all right. I'll marry you!" A less than gracious acceptance to Christ's proposal, but from the look on his face you'd never have known it. Pure joy, radiant joy.
Christ wanted me. All the doubt I had experienced was burned away in the joy I saw on the face of Jesus Christ. There was something in me which God wanted; which God needed. Even my grumpiness, my hesitancy didn't turn God away. That morning as I awoke I knew that my past had led me to this moment. I knew God could use not only the woman I was becoming, but the woman I had been. I didn't know how, but I was confident I had been given my task: "Be yourself. Not another Bill or Tom or Diane or Joan; just be who you are."
And so I have tried to be. Who I am, however, is maybe not typical Quaker pastoral material. A fellow student at ESR once called me "The world's second most extroverted Quaker!" (Henry Freeman won first place.) Being with people, all kinds of people in all their intimate moments, gives me such energy that I just know God is present with us. Building relationship is a major part of my ministry, and it is what I attempt whether in the pulpit, in Bible study, or in any of the tasks I face as pastor. Another ESR student, a Conservative Friend, was a little curious when she heard of my call to Friends Memorial in Muncie, in 1991. "You mean," she asked me uncertainly, "they are going to pay you just to hang out with people?" A better description of my call to ministry has never been uttered! I have taken those words as my reason for being. Yes, I am paid just to hang out with people.
And I love it!
Judith Dancy is pastor of the Winston-Salem Friends Meeting in North
Carolina Yearly Meeting.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
Return to November 1997 Contents page