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<\/a>Jabe Largen Photo<\/p><\/div>\n
Because there are United Methodist Churches in these communities, there must be United Methodist Pastors to serve them.\u00a0 In my experience, through much observation and through participating in many conversations, many pastors experience a major disorientation upon arrival at the new place.\u00a0 Many struggle to comprehend the area and its culture, its language, its food, its history.\u00a0 Many, because of their formation in other places feel as if they do not belong in their appointed place.\u00a0 Many, because of these factors and more, seek to exit their appointments in these foreign places as quickly as possible so that they can soon arrive at an appointment in a place that looks and sounds and tastes and smells more familiar.\u00a0 As Wendell Berry pointed out, rural churches ultimately end up as training grounds for pastors who by way of denominational setups utilize the rural church as a springboard to those more familiar, urban locations.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Such an approach to place, and one\u2019s place in said place is destructive to the church, the community, and to the pastor as well.<\/p>\n With an awareness that many pastors, churches, and communities suffer as a result of the combination of our itinerant calling and the lack of knowledge of our diverse North Carolina communities, I have constructed a guidebook for itinerant pastors to utilize as a training aid as they prepare to enter, or perhaps soon after entering, communities that are foreign to them.\u00a0 I have done this work as a doctoral project through the Candler School of Theology at Emory University with the hopes that all who encounter this guidebook through denominational and seminary trainings can glean something from its pages that can lead them to an appreciation of their new homeplace.\u00a0 In my experience, there are far too few training resources that focus on matters of place and how to acclimate oneself to a new place well.\u00a0 The guidebook seeks to add to the vast resources available to clergy in the North Carolina Conference, by providing such an appreciative place-based resource.<\/p>\n Jabe Largen Photo<\/p><\/div>\n It is important to note that I am defining \u201cappreciation\u201d as a sort of knowledge that sees things in a particular place or situation in a way that encompasses not just a surface understanding of the way things are, but a contemplative understanding that is born only out of experiencing the way things are in a critical fashion.\u00a0 I choose to use the term \u201cappreciation\u201d as opposed to \u201cunderstanding\u201d to describe this type of knowledge, as Howard Thurman pointed out in his landmark work Jesus and the Disinherited <\/em>\u201cunderstanding\u201d can often be weaponized to cement one\u2019s misguided preconceived notions which ultimately lead to harm.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Those who participate by reading the guide will be led through a process that promotes both \u201cwandering\u201d and \u201cwondering\u201d as place is pondered from the moment of arrival, to the process of discovery, to identification of connections and disconnections, on to immersion.<\/p>\n What my guidebook offers is not intended to be a comprehensive, failproof formula for any intended outcomes for itinerants; hence it is a guidebook and not a blueprint. \u00a0If our experience with itineracy and the training of pastors has taught us anything it is that there is no failproof formula for effective, and life-giving ministry.\u00a0 Both Lowe and Plyler have written comprehensively about well-intentioned, yet flawed pastoral training programs for the rural church over the past 100 years.\u00a0 In both cases, the writers historically highlight the difficulty of providing a comprehensive training effort for rural pastorates that consider the diversity and challenge of each place in an appreciative fashion.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n When United Methodist clergy (non-Deacon) go before the various examining boards and committees, it is a guarantee that their thoughts on itineracy are going to want to be heard.\u00a0 In those committee rooms, we say the right things.\u00a0 We affirm the values of itineracy, and vow that we will always adhere to the United Methodist appointment system.\u00a0 Then, one day, we get the call and we learn about a new place that will become our place.<\/p>\n My hope is that my wandering and wondering guidebook will provide some assistance to those new to the process of moving (now, this year, including myself).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photo by Kyle Burrows<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Wendell Berry, What Are People For? <\/em>(Berkeley, Counterpoint Press, 1990) p.95-102.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited <\/em>(Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), p. 66<\/p>\n<\/a>Itineracy is hard.<\/h2>\n
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