SUNDAY MORNING MUSINGS OF A MEANDERING MIND

Sunday Morning Musings Of A Meandering Mind.

Mornings are my thinking time. Once my daily routines begin, I don’t have time to think. And mental exhaustion sets in close to midnight and I’m too tired to think.

So this morning I was thinking about the beginnings of my ministry. Seems so long ago. I was ordained in 1986 while I was working for New York Life and thought I could do both. Wrong!!!!

Both are very intensive mentally and time consuming in process. So I eventually resigned from New York Life and took my first full-time pastorate at the First Church of God in Farmington, but I had already become acquainted with the duties which were necessary in addition to teaching and speaking which were my first love.

I remember my first wedding. Some insurance clients wanted me to marry them down at their property on the Niangua River. I told them I would have my pastor do it, but when I asked him he reminded me I could do it. I was scared to death, afraid it wouldn’t “take”. As I found out later, some did, and some didn’t, but it was never up to me. But I never did understand the concept of how two people could stand before me, totally single (at least in a legal sense) and I could say a few words and they were married. Still blows my mind. My last wedding was performed in one of our city parks about 10 years ago. In between I did formal church weddings and home weddings (mine or theirs) and one in the State Prison in Farmington!!! And of course I’m still an ordained minister, so I could still do it, if I felt like it, which I don’t.

I remember my first baptism. I was baptized in the river, and every other baptism I had seen was in the river, so for the life of me I don’t know why I thought I needed to wear a robe! But for some reason I had that thought, and even though it was a private baptism at Highland Park, I borrowed a robe from the minister at the Christian Church which was way too long and I nearly fell in getting in. Not a good start. I had wanted to practice on Milan but he didn’t trust me. Probably a wise decision.

As time went on and my fibromyalgia and arthritis became so bad I wasn’t physically able to do it, so I did a little research and found out that in the Church of God you didn’t have to be ordained to baptize someone, and one of my mentors and role models, a woman pastor, was usually assisted by her spouse so as I have been wont to do all my married life I called on Milan. It was such a blessing to him to be able to help me in that way. He loved doing it. We went into the water together but he did the actual immersion, and he enjoyed it so much. Many of them were the youth he had worked with for years anyway so it turned out perfectly. And when he got to baptize our granddaughters, it was a glorious experience for him.

I have no idea how many baptisms we did together because I lost count - but dozens of them especially when I was pastor in Farmington but many of those were elderly people who came to the Lord late in life, or had wandered away from God but came back and wanted to be baptized again for a rededication and those were always so very special.

I do not remember my first funeral. It just dawned on me this morning that I can’t remember it. I have done more funerals that weddings or baptisms. My last one was a church funeral for my beloved brother-in-law, Bill Nichols. It was definitely one of the most difficult although they are always hard, of course.

You would not believe how hard it was for some people to accept a woman minister. I respect their belief, as I expect them to respect mine. There was an older minister at Farmington who kind of believed he was the “town pastor’ and was often called upon to do funerals. He actually worked at a funeral home there so he could be readily available I guess. Also I may have cut in on his “business”, although I never accepted money for conducting a funeral.

As an employee it was often his job to drive the hearse with the pastor and casket to the cemetery. Several times he wasn’t aware I was doing the service so he would come to the hearse in his arrogant way and open the door to step in, see me in the passenger seat, and take off for the hills. It got to be a joke with several of the funeral directors and they knew they had to have somebody standing by to drive the hearse when that happened.

I could tell you many stories like that, but here is my favorite. I was in a meeting somewhere, I think Farmington, when a male pastor came up to me and said he had an observation to make about women preachers, i.e. it was like a dog standing on its hind legs - it could probably be done but God never intended it to be so! Then he laughed and looked around at other preachers standing there. He thought he was so cute and witty! I just thought, poor soul. He had probably never read what Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28 that There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I refuse to argue the issue with anyone. I have done all the research on Paul’s writings as well as others, including studying the original Greek, but even more so I have used common sense. If people want to use his words against me, they have to accept the fact that he believed in and condoned slavery, and I just can’t go that far!

©Joan Rowden Hart 2022