CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

THE DEATH OF AN OLD FRIEND-The APC [Sa, 3-26-22]

 

“Well done, good and faithful servant.” I’m saying that today to The Academy of Parish Clergy. I’m wearing my APC Past-President pin as I do so. I’m mourning the loss of an old friend, a faithful colleague for 50 years.

I’m not quite sure how to grieve the death of a beloved organization. It’s sort of the same as a beloved person, but…

I joined the APC when I was appointed to a congregation after ten years in universities, as a campus minister and PhD student. Those ten years were basically the 1960s, the years of Civil Rights and Viet Nam. Congregations had changed a lot in that decade. I knew I needed help to understand how to do a good job as a pastor in that new church.

Being a better pastor was the whole point of APC. We didn’t talk society or theology. We only talked pastoring and pastoral leadership. How can I do it better?

It worked so well because APC was ecumenical. Methodists of the time—and I suspect still—all read the same books and went to the same lectures. But Baptists and Lutherans and Moravians and Jews Congregationalists and Unitarians and Presbyterians and Disciples and Catholics and Mennonites read different books, and went to different lectures. We learned so much from one another, beyond our usual limits.

That was the basis of APC: The real experts in parish ministry were those who practiced it, and we could get better by “sharing the practice,” which was our method, and also the name of our quarterly journal.

APC was founded by psychology of religion professor Granger Westberg. Granger worked in medical schools and saw there how physicians were required to do continuing education to keep their licenses. He knew that preachers, other than an occasional lecture or retreat, did no continuing education after seminary, except for reading books. He realized that preachers needed a professional organization like the American Medical Association or American Bar Association, one that would insist on the highest standards of competency and ethics… and continuing education.

It was, everyone said, “an idea whose time had come.” Except it was an idea that had a very short time. It failed. For a number of reasons.

First, neither denominations nor congregations gave ministers “points” for being ecumenical. Or for continuing education. APC was often seen as an interloper that was taking time away from the denomination or congregation.

And we didn’t really believe our own motto. We did an excellent job of sharing the practice with one another in small groups, but we never invited pastors to lead our international conferences. Those leaders were professors and authors and social workers and sociologists and editors and street walkers. Anybody but a preacher. Preachers are so humble.

 

Also, as ministers started joining APC, theological schools realized that preachers really wanted continuing education, and they realized they could make a lot of money by letting preachers add another year to the three they had already put in, so that they could have DMin [Doctor of Ministry] after their name. Preachers are so gullible when it comes to degrees and titles. APC was not a degree-granter, so could not compete with the allure of another seminary degree, although those of us who went through the APC Fellow process got to put FAPC behind our names.

 

After an exciting beginning, APC began to decline. Even when I was president 25 years ago. Last month, the board voted to end the decline by ending the organization. Appropriately enough, by Zoom.

Four paragraphs up, I said APC failed, but it didn’t. It was enormously successful. We members really did become better pastors by sharing the practice with one another, ecumenically. It kept preachers like me going. My congregations got such much better leadership because of what I learned from my colleagues in APC. Most of my best friends through the years I never would have met without APC. [1]

So I grieve the passing of this old friend, but I rejoice that it served God and the church so well… in its time. Isn’t that the way of grief when any friend passes on—mourning for loss but  gratitude for presence?

John Robert McFarland, FAPC

1] Even though most of them are no longer sharing the practice in this life, I want to acknowledge the friendship of my APC colleagues: Joe Dooley. Granger Westberg. Fred Skaggs. Suzanne Schaefer-Coates. Perry Biddle. Dean Lueking. Kim Egolf-Fox. Bill Tuck. Jerry O’Bee. Roger and David Imhoff. Earl Davis. Roger Perks. Don Shilling. Fred Harper. Jim Dietz. Paul McFarland. John Freed. Gary Reiff. Randy Saxon. Thor Bogren. Milt Mann. Darryl Zoller. Joann Dold. Dave Nash. Mark Petersen. Clyde Frye. Oletha Williams. Bob Stauffer. Barbara Zontek. Willard Roth. Bob Cornwall. Mel Henrichs. Roland Langford. Scott White. And all the others who, even if their names are forgotten by me, are known to God…