PAYING THE PIPER [Sat, 6-13-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Story Teller—PAYING THE PIPER [Sat, 6-13-26]

 

I was chatting with a medical professional, an obviously competent woman, who laughed brightly when she said, “You’ve been retired longer than I’ve been alive!” Great; I was already feeling old enough.

I retired 30 years ago today, the last day of the Central IL Conf. of the UMC, last day both for 1996 and forever, since later that day the CIC was merging with the S IL Conf. to form The Illinois Great Rivers Conf. When Vernie Barnett, the head of pensions for our conference, introduced each of us who were retiring, he told how many years each of us had preached. For me, it was 30. Which was both right and wrong.

It was right because I had 30 years of pension credit. It was wrong because I had been preaching, under appointment, for 40 years. But I had the kinds of ministry that didn’t always lead to pension credit.

Counting part-time interims in retirement, I preached a total of 60 years.

I was good at preaching from the start of those years. I don’t know why. I certainly did not have much self-confidence. But from the first, at age 19, I was good at it. Not really at preaching, the way it was usually understood in those days, but at just standing up in front of people and talking, telling stories.

I think I was comfortable, standing up in front and talking, because, if you don’t get in the way, you can let stories tell themselves. I wasn’t up there by myself. I knew the stories had my back.

One man said, “You don’t talk at us or to us. You talk for us.”

There was one problem, though, with being a preacher, all those forty years: people.

That’s the same problem in a lot of jobs. People have a tendency to get in your way in almost any job. The problem is exacerbated, though, by the strange backward familial nature of the church—the preacher is the parent, but the children [congregants] handle the money and provide the housing. They are sometimes [often?] parents who say, “My house, my rules.”

If the children don’t like the rules you are laying down as the parent--about how you should treat black folks and women and immigrants the same as everyone else, and how you should not be greedy but share your toys with the poor, and how you should do your chores and get to bed on time and leave them downtown women alone—they get back at you by cutting your allowance.

In the Methodist Church, the pastor’s salary is set each year at the Church Conference [annual business meeting], which is presided over by the District Superintendent. I had a District Superintendent who told me, as he completed his term: “I have sixty pastors in this District. I have spent more time during my six years on your salary than all the others combined.”

One year, Harry Keal came to Charge Conference to try to deny me a salary increase. And those increases were never really increases in buying power; just cost-of-living adjustments, like 2 %.

Harry agreed that I was a good preacher, but he did not like the stuff I preached, the stories I told. He did not want to say that, though. Indeed, every time someone tried to lower my salary at Charge Conference--and that was pretty much every year, and sometimes in between—they said it was because of budget constraints. Everyone saw through that, because there were other lines in the budget that should have been cut, too, if we really had money problems, but they never even mentioned those.

Harry was a farmer, and tried to make his case on the basis of free trade economics. “When I take my corn to the elevator, I have to take what the market dictates.” Young farmer Steve Holaday said, “Yes, but the other farmers in the Co-Op don’t sit down and decide what you’ll get for your corn. That’s what we’re doing here.”

Today is the anniversary of my official retirement from the ministry. I look back on those 40 years before retirement, and I give thanks. It was a great honor to get to stand up in front and tell the stories of God. But I also give thanks that there isn’t anyone available to say my pension should be cut, because I’m not giving thanks in the right way.

John Robert McFarland