Driving in Dallas (A Metaphor for this Year's Pastoral Transitions)
Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
don’t rely on your own intelligence.
Know him in all your paths,
and he will keep your ways straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6, CEB translation)
I lived in Dallas for almost ten years. I learned a great deal about life during that time I sometimes refer to as my nearly 10 years wandering in the wilderness. It was a beautiful and formative time, but also somewhat disorienting. I always in some ways felt like a stranger in a strange land. There was one part of me that all the way adapted though. I did become a Dallas driver. You sort of have to. If you don’t, you either never get anywhere, or you die trying. Like literally. There were car wrecks every day, and the first 6 weeks I lived there, there was also a road rage shooting about every other day (it was a rough summer).
There are many skills you pick up as a Dallas driver, but perhaps the most useful was the fine art of hitting the brake and the gas at the same time. This skill is most useful when taking an on ramp to 75, or 35, or any of the other major highways in the city. If you don’t come on those highways like you mean business, you don’t come on those highways. So you gun it up the ramp, and then frequently are met with wall-to-wall traffic, so you quickly assess a gap, jerk into it, and slam your brakes. Ok, so technically the gas and brake aren’t active at exactly the same time, but there is so little time between accelerating like you are in a NASCAR race and grinding to a complete and utter halt that they may as well be simultaneous.
Now that you are on the highway of your choosing, navigating the uneven speeds that you will go for the rest of your journey, you have some time, especially in the slow downs, to observe your other drivers. One set that always caught my eye were the people who got on at a ramp, and then immediately took the next ramp off. I always wondered about those people. Could they not tell there was traffic ahead? Did they hit in and then chicken out and bail? Or did they honestly want to avoid the one traffic light that little maneuver saved them?
I used to sit in judgment of those people. Now I understand.
Normally, when you know you are moving to a new church, there is a predictable rhythm. You announce to your current church that you are leaving, and hopefully announce around that same time where you are going (I had one transition where there was a 3 month gap between those two things, and this year I knew I was moving last October and my appointment was announced March 13). So you start letting things go. You stop programs that were particular to you, you make notes of things that are going to continue, passing those on hopefully to lay people, but possibly to your successor. You certainly do not even consider starting something new. You clean up as many messes as you can to make the path clear for the one following you, and you help your people begin the process of mourning the change but celebrating the future that lies before them.
Not this year. This year we are all driving in Dallas.
Those of us who knew we had a pastoral transition ahead of us before the pandemic hit had already gotten on the access road. We had begun the slow down. We could still see the highway, were riding alongside it even, making sure traffic was still headed in the same direction and taking note if any snarls or wrecks were ahead. But we were getting ready to turn away. Those of us who had a pastoral transition ahead had a sense that we were probably taking the next exit, so we had moved into the far right lane in anticipation.
And then the pandemic hit. Everyone, back up on the highway!
Those of us coming from the access road had to do exactly like I said – we had to gun it for all we were worth, then cut over and slam the brakes while we figured out the lay of the traffic. Those who were already in the right-hand lane have been pushed back over by all of us coming onto the highway. And then the highway keeps going from high rates of speed to dead standstills. Also, we know we really need to get off this highway, but the next exit keeps being closed and we have to detour by continuing on.
All of us have had to start up new ministries. We are trying new Bible studies, new patterns of worship, experimenting with sermon styles, and trying to lead a nervous (and many times very divided) congregation through something none of us have ever been through. The pandemic hit and we accelerated like we never have in our entire ministries. The first 5 weeks, I worked 16-18 hour days every day of the week. I finally got one day off, and only because I yelled at people and went on strike. That was a brake slamming moment if there ever was one. And now we are looking at the reality that we are going to have to stop. But we are going quickly up a hill, and the angle is such that we can’t tell if we are going to hit traffic at a dead stop, or if going down the hill will mean we just pick up speed.
And I feel like the other drivers on the road are looking at me like, “What are you doing? Weren’t you off this road already? And if you got on, weren’t you going to just have to take the next exit? Except now, poor soul, all these exits are closed. You are trapped. We are trapped. Uh oh.”
And the thing is, we all know the exit is coming. In our Conference, we will all take the exit marked July 1. Oh, some of us will try to get off sooner, and we may succeed in driving on the shoulder. But the truth is, we are all getting off at the same time. And while we are getting off, a whole group of us will also be trying to get on at the same time. In fact, it is us. We are going to intersect with ourselves in some Twilight Zone, Dr. Who, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy kind of moment. And we will all be hitting the brake and the gas at the same time.
If we don’t die, it feel like a miracle. Of course, the good news is people drive in Dallas every day without dying. I did it for 9 years. Still we can’t take this moment for granted. What will keep us alive will be all of us, all of us, paying close attention to this moment. Thank God I trust Jesus and my colleagues. We all have to channel our inner Dallas driver. Hold our breath. Here we go. Pay attention to each other as we exit and enter. And pray like our lives depend on it.
Lord, help us. May there be no wrecks, and may we keep the road rage in check! And may we all get where God intends us to go.
Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash
