On a cold winter’s day over lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant, Rev. Gary Haller invited me to be the guest speaker for a first-ever Legacy Dinner at Birmingham First United Methodist Church on a Friday night in May. Sponsored by the Endowment Committee, its goal was to raise consciousness and promote planned giving for the church’s Endowment Fund. But Gary told me I didn’t have to talk about money, which was something of a relief given that I had spent twelve years, from 1993 to 2005, with my hand in these people’s pockets. “Just talk about your ministry, your life, or even what you have been doing since you left Birmingham. It doesn’t have to be a sermon. Let’s call it a reflection.”
On Friday evening, May 6 of 2016, I made good on my commitment. A few months later, my heart doctors at the University of Michigan asked what I had been doing around 7:30 to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, May 6. It seems that an implanted recorder in my chest had detected several abnormalities and irregularities traceable to those 30 minutes. Instantly, I remembered what I had been doing on that night at that locale. So whatever else can be said about what you are about to read, no one can complain that my heart wasn’t in it. Especially my cardiologist.
A Vocational Reflection
Kindly allow me to return you to your early childhood. You were three or maybe four years old when you first saw one. I am talking about those children’s activity books that included multiple pages where you were invited to complete a picture by connecting the dots. The page itself was filled with tiny dots. They were oddly spaced. And there was a barely discernible number beside each dot. Your job was to connect the dots by moving your pencil sequentially through the numbers until something recognizable came into view. But the dots (and their numbers) were not always where you thought they were going to be (like right next to the dot you just left).
This little exercise tested you on three levels.
Could you make straight lines with your pencil (which was a precursor to another lesson…a lifelong lesson…testing whether you could color inside the lines)?
Did you know your numbers by sequence? You had to know that 11 followed 10 or that 20 followed 19, or you were doomed before you started.
Did you have enough visual imagination to figure out what you were drawing before you got to the end of the numbers and connected all of the dots? At what point could you look at a work in progress and say, “This is going to be a house…or a horse…or an elephant… or the East Garden of the Palace of Versailles”? At what point could you jump from what was there to be seen to what was as yet unseen?
Ah, if only we had more pastors who could see, not only what all of us see, but who could see something else, something better, something in the future. Such a pastor could take us to the next dot, to the one after that, and to the one after the one after that. That pastor could then help us see a vision, and maybe even catch it.
Do we have many of those pastors? Unfortunately, no. Most pastors can see what’s there. And most pastors can serve what’s there. But any more than that, good luck.
Which works for most congregations. Because they, too, can see what’s already there. And even more congregations can see what used to be there. But most have a hard time visualizing what could be there.
Many of our churches say “Send us a pastor who can take us to the next level.” But you have to be able to see the next level. It’s called pastoral imagination. But very few seminary professors teach it. Because very few teachers of preachers have it.
But when you’re a kid, it’s easy. If you know your numbers and are adept with a pencil, you just take your pencil and begin to draw. But when there are no more visible numbers (and your picture doesn’t seem to be finished), it’s harder. Kindly allow me to illustrate, both personally and professionally.
Once upon a time, there may have been a road for me marked “Ministry,” but either it was not well marked or I was too blind to see it at the time. Which is why I am now going back in my mind to see how I got here. Was God in it from the beginning? Quite possibly. But only now, as I connect my dots in reverse, am I seeing what should have been obvious earlier. Except it wasn’t. No, not obvious at all.
As some of you know, I am married to a crackerjack genealogist. Which explains why we watch shows like “Who Do You Think You Are” and “Finding Your Roots?” The latter of those shows features the brilliant Harvard researcher Henry Louis Gates, who is the best cure for insomnia that television ever offered. But it was because of Henry Louis Gates that Kris and I spit saliva into individual tubes and sent it to Ancestry.com to learn our biological DNA. Hers was all over the map, including trace elements from Northern Africa, Polynesia, and even Russia. I had no surprises. Over 75% of my ancestry traces to Eastern Europe and Ireland. The name “Ritter” is German. Only 7% of my bloodline can be traced to Germany. But the Germans in my family tree were probably Protestants. While my Eastern European relatives (Slovenian) and my Irish relatives literally scream “Roman Catholic.”
Which is how it played out in the generations closest to me. Three of my four grandparents were Roman Catholic. But only one (my father’s father) was Protestant. Not that it mattered much. All anybody in my family knew was what church they were staying away from. People often ask me if I come from a long line of preachers. Heck, I don’t come from a long line of churchgoers. My parents were married by a Methodist minister because his church was in my father’s boyhood neighborhood and my father remembered going there once (as a child) because they gave him popcorn. And when that minister agreed to officiate at my parents’ wedding, he dictated that it be done at his parsonage. The assumption was that he couldn’t marry them in the church because they had no connection to the church.
No, my people were not religious people. Neither were they materially well-off people. My father was a custodian for the Detroit Public Library system, and he customarily worked a second job to make ends meet. My mother worked part-time at J.L. Hudson’s, eventually becoming a full-time executive secretary when my father was involuntarily retired in his mid-forties on a disability pension. His affliction was brittle diabetes complicated by alcoholism. But I don’t really remember feeling poor, although I certainly don’t remember feeling flush.
Neither cupboard nor closets were bare. But there were few extras. Life was fairly simple. I didn’t hunt, fish, golf or ski. Nor did I know anybody who did such things. I had good male friends (three Catholics and a Jew). I played baseball at the schoolyard, touch football on a vacant lot, hockey in the street, and basketball in the alley (shooting at a hoop attached to Bill Bowman’s garage). I also played the violin, taking private lessons for seven or eight years. I was better off than many teenagers because I had a big paper route. I delivered the Detroit News seven days a week and 365 days a year. As for girls, I don’t remember having much time for them. But as a kid with an all-consuming paper route who also played the violin, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a “chick magnet.”
But I went to church. A lot. I’m talking about the same church where the minister had once agreed to marry my mother and father. He also “christened” me. That’s the Roman Catholic word for what most of us Protestants call baptism.
My parents took me to church. Thankfully, it was just down the block. In the early years, they dropped me off. Then they came back and picked me up. Eventually my mother got involved, joining the church on the same day I was confirmed as a sixth grader. My father came sporadically, sat in the balcony, and never became a member formally. But because the church was close…and because the church was kind…and maybe because the church created a climate of comfort and consistency that I did not always experience at home, I spent a lot of time there. I attended Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, and the youth group. I sang in the choir at every age level. And since our church had a gym, I played on church basketball teams…in a league… with uniforms…and trophies. Because my church sponsored all levels of scouting, I was a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Explorer Scout. I also went on campouts. But every summer I also went to a church camp. I did this for eight consecutive summers. Eventually, some other pastors got to know me, and I became a district youth officer and even an Annual Conference youth officer. As a senior in high school, I was invited to become a youth lay delegate to Annual Conference.
And every Sunday, I went to worship. I was an acolyte. I carried flags. And finally, the cross. For God’s sake, I carried that big, heavy cross down the aisle, leading the choir. At least I assumed I was doing it “for God’s sake.”
I was a church junkie, don’t you see. And ordinary lay people don’t know what to do when they see the same kid in church every time they turn around. They figure he must be one of those odd ones…not “odd” as in “weird,” but “odd” as in “special.” So people began asking me if the church was going to be my life work. And older women with blue rinse in their hair began patting me on the head and saying, “I’ll just bet you’re going to be a minister someday.” So, I thought, “Why not,” “Maybe they’re right,” “This might not be the world’s dumbest idea.”
So I began trying the idea on. After all, I liked the place. I liked the people. I liked the work (what little I knew of it). And I supposed I liked being liked. It’s nice to be liked. So much so, that I began to express an interest in ministry. To the point that when it came to thinking about higher education, my minister said, “That boy is going to Albion.”
Now having earlier heard me say that my people were not religious or economically comfortable people, you should also know that my people were not broadly educated people. I never doubted that they were bright. But nobody in my family had ever been to college. One semester before my father’s high school graduation, he hopped a freight train with Louis Malchie for California. He said he wanted to see the world. But maybe what he really wanted was to avoid the world. My friends in the neighborhood didn’t talk about college. Nor did they visit any. As for me, there was no dot in my picture for college. Where was Albion? I didn’t know. What was Albion? I didn’t know. How was anybody going to pay for Albion? I didn’t know. But it seemed right.
After all, I’d had an eleventh grade English teacher in high school who said, “Mr. Ritter, I see bigger things in store for you.” And I had a high school principal who called me down to his office to say, “Mr. Ritter, your grades are decent, but if you were to click things into a higher gear for the next couple of semesters, I might be able to do something for you.” So I did and he did. I got scholarship money. But I didn’t know that most of it came from Paul and Ethel Halmhuber, who were members of my boyhood church. And it was only forty years later that I learned that they were the great-grandparents of Scott Chrostek.
I saw Albion for the first time on the day I moved my stuff into the dorm. And while the college catalog had a four-year class selection plan for pre-ministerial students (the very plan I had signed up for), I remember thinking on my last night at home: “If I can just complete one year, I will have gone further than anybody in my family has ever gone, and I will feel successful.”
Well, things worked out. I got a job waiting tables. And given that I was a pretty good tenor, I got into the choir. And made some friends. I survived freshman chemistry. Then I was asked to join a fraternity. I don’t know what got into me, but I said, “As ridiculous, frivolous and irresponsible as a fraternity seems, I think I need this.” So I became a T.K.E. Summers, I got good jobs. These included four summers as a tour guide at the Ford Motor Company. Every day I wore a company suit and led people through the Rouge plant. That’s where I got rid of any fear I might have had about talking to strangers over a microphone. Every other kid who got a similar job was the son of an upper level Ford executive. Most of my summer colleagues had fathers who were vice presidents. How did I get my job? It came via a recommendation from a Ford guy at my church.
Are you seeing a pattern here? My church paved my way into ministry. My church opened doors for me into ministry. And my church pushed me through those doors into ministry.
There were no burning bushes (Moses), no smoke-filled epiphanies in the Temple (Isaiah), no blindsided muggings on the road to Damascus (Paul), and not even any still, small voices beside the lakeshore (hymn 349). I never wrestled with God. I never fought God. But one night, in a very quiet and almost unforgettable way, I surrendered and said “Uncle” to God.
Heck, my church called me into ministry. I am talking about all those wonderful people at my church in the city which breathed its last in 1977. Among those people were Cliff and Isabel Bath who were my Sunday school teachers before they were even married. And there was Bob Ward, who was my youth minister before he was even married.
For years I felt grateful to my church. But I also felt guilty that, as calls to ministry go, mine wasn’t all that dramatic. There was nothing all that decisive. Nor was there anything all that divine. Until one day, years later, I realized that God is sneaky sometimes, putting the bite on people like me through dear, sweet old ladies with blue rinse in their hair.
Meanwhile, my little world (my confining cocoon) was expanding as I plowed on toward divinity school. Six months before my graduation from Albion, one of my professors asked me where I was going to seminary. I gave him my two options. Both of them were Methodist. Both of them were Midwestern. Both of them were as safe and comfortable as they were obvious. But then he said, “No, you’re not. You’re going to Yale or Harvard.” I thought it was the dumbest thing anybody had ever said to me. People like me don’t go to schools like that. But he wouldn’t lay it to rest. Every day he brought it up. Finally I applied to Yale and Harvard just to shut him up. I pictured the admissions committees at those schools laughing uproariously at the pretention of my application. But the last laugh belonged to my Albion professor. It came when I was admitted and funded at both Yale and Harvard.
Scared to death, I chose Yale. I had my initial mind-blowing experience the first Friday on campus, when the Episcopalians had a cocktail party on the quadrangle. “Billy,” (I said), “this isn’t Kansas anymore.” But I got good grades and a pair of good field placements in ministry. I worked for two years in a suburban Methodist church on the Gold Coast (between New Haven and New York). And I worked the third year in the worst ghetto in New Haven. What I found out was that, as far as ministry goes, I could not only study it but do it. And halfway through my Yale experience, I realized (in the words of the late Frank Sinatra) that “If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.”
And I suppose it was that realization that put Birmingham into the picture. As a kid growing up in Detroit, I was never in Birmingham…even once. That is until my Albion College choir sang here one night as part of its spring tour. I don’t remember a thing about it. But somebody introduced me to the minister. He was a big man, as I remember…a little bit gruff, as I remember…with a name I remembered. Arnold Runkel, it was. And though I’ve forgotten everything else about that evening, I remembered that name. Another dot, don’t you see.
Then there was my first district superintendent, the late Herb Hausser. The year before I came back from Yale, I told him I just wanted a couple of small churches where I could preach every Sunday. I expected to be shipped to mid-Michigan, or maybe even the Upper Peninsula. I told him the one thing I didn’t want to do was be an associate pastor in a big church. So Herb sent me to Dearborn First as the fourth pastor on a staff of four. The church was huge. And when I arrived, it seemed like the Ford Motor Company at prayer. But I’ll never forget his explanation for my placement. “I see you as someone who will eventually be able to serve any church in the conference, and I need to expose you, from day one, to the kind of congregation into which you will certainly be placed.” Ironically, it was in Dearborn that I played church league basketball with Ed Hagenlocker who, 35 years later (accompanied by his wife, Sylvia) would take Kris and me to dinner at the Ocean Grille and say, “If you have any desire to get serious about expanding First Church’s building for youth and recreational ministry, Sylvia and I will write a seven figure check to start things off. In addition, we will pay the architectural fees for any and all conceptual drawings.” We’re talking a big dot…big time.
Now, you just heard me mention Kris. I was 23 when we met. I had one more year at Yale to finish. She was 17 when we met. It was one month after her graduation from high school. I was serving as a vacation fill-in in Novi for four Sundays. The pastor, who was leaving for California, was none other than LaVere Webster (another dot). On the third Sunday of July, I was in the Novi pulpit. Kris was in the third pew. And my life has never been the same since. Fifty years ago, this July 2nd, she said, “I’ll go with you on this wild and crazy ride.” Although she never knew at that time that she’d have to do much of the steering. Dot. Dot. Dot. Bingo.
People have asked if we ever expected to end up in Birmingham. Not really. We knew the possibility. But we were not without reservations. Frankly, we wondered whether we would be a good fit for the culture. But in 1992 I was asked by Bishop Judy Craig to lead a $6 million campaign for the denomination. I was at Nardin Park United Methodist Church at the time. Anticipating my reservations, she told me I would have a co-chair…a layman named Jay Hook…from First Church, Birmingham. For two years Jay and I were linked at the hip, traveling the state and pitching a program. During the same two years, Jay was linked maritally with Joan. During those same two years, Joan was on First Church’s Staff Parish Relations Committee, chaired by Dale Parker. And during those same two years, Bob Ward was moving toward retirement. We’re talking more dots about to be connected.
Do I believe in divine design? Not in the way the Calvinists do. I have never believed that our lives are planned out and fore-ordained (what some would call Presbyterian Predestinationalism). No, as a character in Robert Penn Warren’s classic novel, All the King’s Men, proclaims at the end of the book: “I’ve gotta believe it could have all been different.”
Nothing in my background ever suggested I should have become your pastor. But as I look back on everything that has happened, I have to believe, if not in a doctrine of divine design, at least in the possibility of divine steerage (allowing for a lot of play in the wheel). And as concerns my ministry, while I still wrestle with the question of whether God has called me to it, I have grown quietly confident that God has used me in it.
And maybe still does. The other day my grandson, Jacob, with more seriousness than many nine year olds can muster, asked, “Boppa, how come you don’t preach anymore?” Well, I do. Occasionally. But if retirement has three distinct phases (go-go, slow-go and no-go), I am more or less sliding into slow-go. But hey, in the midst of writing this, just yesterday, I talked with a woman in Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina facing life-threatening heart surgery, a banker in Bloomfield whose stepson killed himself in a dorm room in Indiana, a woman in Livonia who I last pastored 36 years ago and who (with good reason) is really angry with God, and a very well-known local television personality who is wrestling with a new career possibility as a United Methodist pastor.
And then there’s the delightful stuff. A few days ago I had a telephone call from Eleanor Chambliss. Eleanor was our lay leader, a Trustee chair, and a co-chair to raise $6.5 million for the Christian Life Center. She also was, and still is, Sue Ives’ mother. Today, she’s a South Carolinian. She lives just outside of Charleston, where she is now an Episcopalian.
We talk a couple of times a year. She may call me. I may call her. This time we were on her dime. “I don’t need anything special,” she said. “But all day long I thought it would be nice to hear your voice. I used to feel the same way about Dr. Thomas and his voice. Of course, he’s gone now.” Which he is. G. Ernest Thomas concluded his ministry 22 years before I arrived here to begin mine. So what was Eleanor doing? Connecting some dots. That’s what Eleanor was doing.
The late John Dunne once wrote, “I date my life from the beginning of my ministry.” If I had read that at age 30…maybe even at age 40…I would have thought it ridiculous. But now, at 75, I both understand and pretty much agree. Because as the years slid by, I began to realize that who I was and what I did for a living had become indistinguishable, one from the other. “Minister” is who I am. And maybe, even who I have always been.
As for heaven, I’d just as soon trust it. But I am willing to wait for it. I recall the old Baptist preacher who screamed: “How many of you want to go to heaven?” Everybody in the congregation raised his or her hand but one. So the preacher shouted the question a second time. Same lone holdout. Finally the preacher left the pulpit, walked down the center aisle and stopped beside the man’s pew. “Don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?” he thundered. To which came back the answer, “Of course I want to go to heaven when I die. I just thought you was getting up a bus to go right now.”
All things considered, I’ll wait for a later bus.
