OLD AGE PEACE MAKING [T, 3-28-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--OLD AGE PEACE MAKING [T, 3-28-23]

 

I wrote about Jim Pruyne in my last column. I was feeling rather mellow this morning, thinking about Jim, with whom I had some difficult relationships many years ago. I was mellow because I realized I had made my peace with him. Then it occurred… had he made his peace with me?

That’s what Jesus said. “If you’re feeling mellow and realize that your brother has something against you, go make it right with him before that second cup of coffee.” Something like that.

Note that he does not say how that passage is usually exposited: “If you have something against your brother…” No, it is “If your brother has something against you…” It might be totally unjustified, what that brother has against you. Jesus, though, doesn’t care who started it. He’s telling you to finish it.

That is part of old-age peace making. Not just, am I at peace, but what about those who were on the other side of those thorny relationships?

There were seven campus ministers at IL State U, representing various denominations. Jim was senior, meaning he had been there longer than the rest of us. Indeed, he had started there part-time on weekends while he was still in seminary, when ILSU was still Illinois State Teachers College, in the town of Normal. He stayed in Normal until he died, 65 years later. He was senior emotionally as well as chronologically.

Also, in 1969, he had a brand-new building, dedicated to campus ministry only, while the rest of us worked in makeshift quarters--old houses or church basements. He seemed to think that his seniority and edifice gave him a preeminent position in determining how all of us should go about our ministries.

But none of us were brand new. We’d had successful ministries on other campuses. And our student groups were larger than his. And—this is easier to recognize and admit now than it was then—we had turf to protect.

Two other elements were at work at that time—ecumenism, and the changeover from “student work” to campus ministry.

ECUMENISM: “The ecumenical movement” was generally thought to be uniting all the denominations into one, as The United Church of Canada had done. Jim figured that since we were ministers in higher education, we should be the vanguard, even before anything was done formally by our denominations, uniting all our student groups into one, which, of course, would meet in his building. Also, we would work as one staff, with, of course, him as our chair.

STUDENT WORK BECOMING CAMPUS MINISTRY: When bishops and their ilk talked of my appointment, they spoke of “student work.” That was the job description: to minister to the students on our campus. But campuses were changing. What administrators and faculty did had ever more to do with what students experienced. The student workers felt that they needed to be involved with administration and faculty as well as students. We needed to minister to the whole campus, hence “campus ministry” instead of “student work.”

That was right in Jim’s strike zone. He was dedicated to staying in Normal forever. Students came and went, sometimes at dizzying rates. Faculty and administrators were his Normal-forever peers. It was also more prestigious to hang around with profs than with students. Jim’s idea was that, as chair of the staff, he would minister to the faculty and staff, and leave the “student work” to the rest of us.

Jim was personable. I liked him. He had a lot of good ideas. I really wanted him as a friend. He was not pugnacious or arrogant. He did, however, have a presumption of preeminence.

So, we staged what today would be called an intervention. The seven of us campus ministers had always met together as a group to share ideas and support. At our next meeting, we took turns explaining to Jim the problems we had with how he was treating the rest of us. He became upset and walked out.

He tried for a long time, though, to create a domain where he was emperor. I’m sure he didn’t think of it that way, but it is the way entrepreneurship looks to others.

He did manage to get five small, struggling Sunday evening student groups to merge into one. After their merger, they had one small, struggling group instead of five. That’s the nature of reality, the reality you don’t recognize if you’re working at the theory level rather than the practice level. Yes, Christian groups need to be united, but spiritually and in witness, not necessarily structurally and in organization.

My Sunday evening group, the largest by far, did not want to merge. We stayed as we were. I was roundly pilloried by for that by Jim and other folks who focused on ecumenism. But I knew that several groups give more students chances for leadership and witness and fellowship. I wanted that for my kids. That Wesley Foundation group is still going strong today.

Often, the best thing I did in my appointments was to hire good people. So it was with Anne Paxton as administrator at The Wesley Foundation. She was mother to generations of students, and savior to four iterations of campus ministers. When she retired, after 30 years, there was a banquet to honor her. I lived a long way off, but I made a point of being there.

Jim was there, too. He looked the same, just a little older, but I had grown a beard and gone bald since he last saw me. Nonetheless, he recognized me, and greeted me as though we were just old friends, running into each other. We had a nice conversation, caught up on our families.

So, I think he had made his peace with me. I hope so. Even in old age, peace-making always goes two ways.

John Robert McFarland