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Exactly 193 days from today, I will retire from professional ministry. Having a countdown doesn’t mean I’m bored or sad or so-ready-I-want-to-know-exactly-how-much-time-I-have left. I like a countdown. It’s also approximately 107 days away from meeting grandchild #3 and 125 days from meeting grandchild #4.

I announced my retirement a year from the day so that our Presbytery could get a Nominating Committee going in the hope that there would be a smooth transition in 2026. Although I’m a strong believer in effective Transitional Ministry for congregations, the trend now for Mid-Council Leaders in my denomination is to forego calling someone to lead Transitionally between Executives because we are all leading Transitionally. Everything from the congregation down the street to organized religion in general are in transition.

Some parish pastors give 4 weeks notice before they leave. Some give over a year’s notice. Countless pastors of a certain age will say things like “I’ll retire in 3-4 years” or “I’d like to finish ____ before retiring” and then they stay another decade.

I will have served for 45 years by the time I retire, including three seminary years of field education. We thank Labor Unions for “inventing” the weekend. And since pastors work on weekends, the Presbytery/Conference/Association/Diocese is sometimes called our union.

In a just world, we wouldn’t have to set policies about minimum wage or paid leave or Sabbath. (Note: even God created a policy about Sabbath.) But this is not a just world. Some human beings have spent generations not paying other human beings who worked in their fields and factories. After learning that we had some pastors working for less than a Jimmy Johns sandwich maker, our Presbytery had to set up minimum hourly wages for part-time, temporary pastors – and not just for full-time “permanent” pastors.

One pastor was being paid $3000/year. (Yes, he had agreed to this because “the congregation didn’t have the money to pay more” but this was a de facto decision to close that congregation sooner than later. They would never again find a pastor willing to work 20+ hours/week for that salary.)

All pastors deserve and should have a Sabbatical at least every seven years but too few get one. Sometimes it’s because the congregation resents it for their Pastor (“I don’t get three paid months to take an extra vacation.”) or because the church cannot figure out how to live without their pastor for three months. (My Presbytery has grants for that. Also, elders are called to preach and pray with training.) Sometimes pastors, themselves, won’t take the required Sabbatical for fear the congregation can indeed live without them.

So, 193 days. Being a Pastor is baked into my identity but I also have other identities that will give so much joy and meaning in the coming years. Frankly, I never thought I’d live long enough to retire. (Mom died at 55. Dad died at 60.) But here we are.

Other identities I hope to embrace post-retirement: elderly spouse, mom of middle-aged kids, Grand Jan, rabble rouser, homemade ravioli maker. Mostly I am profoundly grateful that I can retire. March 13, 2026.

Image source.

The other day, one of my colleagues intended to say “Ministers of the Word and Sacrament” which is what we call ordained clergy in the Presbyterian Church USA. But what came out were the words “Ministers of the Word and Sacrifice.”

Please note that blood sacrifices are not required of any of us – clergy, teachers, toll takers, corporate bankers or any other profession or faith tradition, unless you are part of the Baka Tribe or any small number of religious sects or cults who adhere to ancient ways.

Nevertheless some of us have been known to have terrible boundaries in terms of our work lives to the point of martyrdom or unnecessary sacrifice. I missed Senior Night at my son’s last high school lacrosse game for a Session meeting. This was a mistake. I should have missed the Session meeting – or rescheduled it.

We are not called to schedule a wedding on the day of our child’s birthday. We are not called to leave the death bed of a beloved pet in order to attend a committee meeting. We are not called to sacrifice our families for the sake of the Church. Yes, Jesus said this. And also these situations are tough. What if the holier thing is to tend to relationships?

In my 42+ years of professional ministry, I have cancelled a desperately-needed vacation to bury a beloved pillar of the church. I have also left town the weekend of the organist’s daughter’s wedding because my Mom was dying in Chapel Hill. (But I sacrificed having my clergy husband join me to say good-bye to my Mom. He stayed behind to officiate at the wedding.)

Yes, we are Ministers of Word and Sacrifice. But mostly we are Ministers of Word and Sacrament. The tricky part is discerning which of our commitments are the most holy. My first thought is that it’s all about tending to relationships.

Image is Emile the goat from the Season 2 finale of Severance. Emile was spared but other sacrifices were made.

It’s hurricane season where I live and maybe where you live too, and maybe even where hurricanes hit once in a hundred years. (Prayers continue for Western North Carolina.) The impact of natural disasters is shown almost every day on television and other news sources.

And yet, it occurs to me that some natural disasters are a result of our own human choices: building homes too close to the ocean, campfire carelessness, refusal to use the scientific knowledge God has given us to monitor earthquakes and tornados, climate change caused by burning fossil fuels and farming livestock. (Note: I personally love my car and meat but there are consequences.)

Sometimes “natural disasters” are a consequence of the unnatural choices we make – e.g. decisions which don’t align with God’s intentions. To choose greed, betrayal, selfishness, and ignorance are just a few examples. God did not create us to be greedy, to betray each other, to be selfish, to be intentionally ignorant.

Such choices inflict unnatural disaster upon individuals and families and – in Church World – whole congregations. And at the risk of sounding sexist, consider the findings of Carol Gilligan in her classic study about how men and women differ in terms of decision-making.

“When Gilligan asked women, “How would you describe yourself?” she found that women define who they are by describing relationships. Men defined themselves by separation, or the use of “I” statements.“

I’m hoping this is changing, but if campaigns to bolster hegemonic masculinity continue to thrive, then male people might continue to think first in terms of “I” and “me.” I would hope, instead, that most men would consider others before they make big decisions. “Is this choice good for my kids?” “Is this option the best for my partner?” “Is this course of action going to benefit my neighbors?” “Is this business decision good for the earth?“

Basically – and I know this is a simplification of complicated situations – will my choice result in an unnatural disaster? We also call choices that result in disaster “sin.”

Sometimes in life, there are tough calls we have to make. But such decisions are easier when we consider their impact on other people. “This is going to be good for me. Is it going to be good for other people?“

Your creative future isn’t just about your individual brand. It’s about which communities you help build and belong to. Yancey Strickler

One of my favorite millennials asked me a few years ago, “How are you building your brand?” Yuck. It sounded like I was trying to sell something. Am I trying to sell something as a Church Leader? Are you?

I get that those of us who are trying to sell something we have created (like our books, our Etsy crafts, our start-up businesses, our consulting practices, our 10-day clergy tour of Scottish distilleries) need to promote ourselves and our products. Some Pastors are free-range without a regular income and there are bills to pay.

The Institutional Church’s brand has been diminished over the last fifty years. And I suppose we pastors lean into our own brand of ministry. But the Institutional Church will continue to be diminished if we continue to be so individualistic.

Yancey Strickler, whose work I greatly admire, is onto the something and while he is not a church person as far as I know, his ideas about our future will be the difference between a dying church and a thriving church in the next 1-3 years. Read his LinkedIn post here.

In yesterday’s era of individualism, how many followers you have was the key social indicator. In today’s post-individual era, what groups you’re a part of matters much more.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

If our spiritual lives or church participation are all about our own “brand” which could be anything from “My family’s been in this church for 5 generations” to “Nobody can be the church treasurer but me” to “It will hurt my feelings if my husband isn’t elected to the Deacons Board” then our churches deserve to close. It’s never about us. It’s about expanding the reign of God.

It doesn’t matter how many “followers” we have. It matters what partnerships we have. It matters what we are building and who we include.

Show me a congregation that partners with the local police department, the local homeless coalition, the NAACP, the local college soccer team, and the coffee shop on the corner and I’ll show you a growing, thriving church that understands that their existence is more about their neighbors than their individual selves.

As you know, Regular Readers, I often ask “what breaks God’s heart in your neighborhood?” I know I’m in a dying church when congregants respond with “I can tell you what breaks my heart!!” That was never the question.

We are all broken in some way. And the path to healing involves loving people, creating beauty, noticing the unnoticed. This is best done in community with unlikely partners. And that’s our future, Church.

Throughout the political landscape in the U.S. there are members of Congress and government officials whispering that they cannot talk about what’s actually happening behind the scenes in our nation “for fear of retribution.” I was hoping that one of my own Senators – who is not running for re-election – might use this opportunity to be bold and speak the truth when he sees tyranny and cruelty. Nope.

The Church of Jesus Christ has been diminished and broken by our history of Church Abuse which is often based on “the fear of retribution” and I’ve seen it in living color.

• Priests who don’t report child abusers for fear of financial, legal, and systemic consequences.
• Children who don’t disclose abuse for fear of disappointing someone/standing up to a powerful person their parents respected and/or God.
• Staff members who don’t report rampant bullying or corruption for fear of losing their jobs, especially when the bully controlls future employment as well as current employment.
• Church members who don’t stand up for what’s right and faithful for fear the congregation would split.

Imagine you are at a meeting and the leader declares something that is absolutely untrue. What do you do? Say nothing (but chat about it with others after the meeting)? Say nothing and go along with what the boss says. Stand up and correct the misinformation?

It takes faithful courage to speak the truth when retribution is a real threat. Especially in these days for our government officials, speaking the truth could not only get your fired; it could cost bodily harm.

Fear of retribution must never be part of any church’s culture, but sadly it is more prevalent than we’d like to admit. The cure for this – I believe – is trusting the power of God more than we fear the power of leaders/bullies/bosses/colleagues. It only takes one person to stand up to the bully. But it’s so much easier when several people stand together.

Image from the Liam Neeson movie “Retribution” (2023) which is not about employment issues.

Policies and Procedures are our friends. Yes, the Spirit moves in fresh and creative ways, and yet rules protect us. (I had a seminary friend who was literally fired after his first Easter sermon because there was no policy in his denomination/congregation that you couldn’t just fire the Pastor anytime you felt like it and his sermon was apparently underwhelming.)

I have some thoughts about rules – especially for these days of shattered norms drenched in disorienting misinformation and unrelenting turbulence.

• Thought 1 – Healthy congregations value relationships over rules. Yes, we have a No-Pet policy in the church office, but the administrative assistant’s pit bull is being put down at 4 this afternoon and she needs him to be here today.
• Thought 2 – Sometimes it’s okay to make exceptions for the sake of a congregation’s well-being. There’s a rule in my denomination about an Associate Pastor not being eligible to become the next Senior Pastor. But I know a church that was struggling financially to the point that they were considering going to a one-pastor staffing model. One day, their Pastor died suddenly on a handball court and the Presbytery decided that it was healthy and pastoral to make an exception. The Associate Pastor became the Pastor and it was a comfort to everybody.
• Thought 3 – Sometimes the rule must stand firm, again for the health of the congregation. We have a rule in my denomination that our churches can only call pastors who are members of our denomination or in good standing in denominations with whom we have a formal relationship. (On a regular basis, I have to tell church friends that, “No, the Baptist preacher who never went to seminary cannot be your Pastor.”) This rule ensures our leaders align with our theology. It’s possible that the ineligible but charismatic preacher you met at the funeral home might preach that “women are not called by God to be leaders” or that “God hates LGBTQAI+ people” or that the modern state of Israel is the same as the Israelites of the Hebrew Scriptures. None of those things are true according to the interpretation of Scripture in my denomination. Bad theology hurts people.
• Thought 4 – The fewer the rules, the better. Church policies and denominational constitutions should not be the size of the OED. Speaking of a no pet policy (Thought 1) I was once on a committee writing the personnel policy for a church and someone at the table wanted to spell out exactly which pets would be okay (fish) and which would not be okay (dogs, cats, ferrets, snakes, hamsters, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs). No. Give people some credit. Nobody’s bringing their pony to church.

Flexibility can be a holy thing. When we consider the people more than the rules, we are allowing the Spirit to move for the situation at hand. Jesus was about loving the people. The rules were about protecting the people but exceptions were made. Here are some Biblical examples.

So God created humankind in God’s image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

It occurs to me this week that the most painful news stories have one thing in common: they are a result of somebody forgetting that all of us have been created in the Image of God. All people, including:

• The pretty teenager who landed a job in a fancy Palm Beach spa only to be “stolen” by a different Palm Beach employer for more nefarious purposes.
• The miraculous quints born into poverty in Canada whose parents essentially handed over to the circus.
• Every immigrant arrested by ICE including the 90 Venezuela immigrants imprisoned in a Salvadorean prison in April, most of whom had actually not entered the United States illegally nor were “criminals.”

The starving in Gaza, the crushed in Kyiv, the kidnapped in Mozambique, the bullied, the harrassed, the betrayed. Each of these people was created in the Image of God. Those who are starving them, killing them, kidnapping them, hurting them are also created in the Image of God.

This is the most universally ignored Truth in our world right now: All people were created in the Image of God. To wound them, much less destroy them is to wound and destroy The Creator of Life.

I honestly do not know how this works, but I believe that our Creator cannot be destroyed and justice will one day prevail. In the mean time, please indeed pay attention. Terrible things happen when we forget who we are.

Pictured above: Virginia Giuffre (1983–2025), the Dionne Quintuplets – Annette, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne, and Cecile (all born in 1934; Cecile died this week at the age of 91), incarcerated immigrants in the maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Like you and me, each was created in God’s Image.

I’m increasingly aware of the use of the word “everybody” as an unintentional indicator of privilege. When we assume that “everybody has flown in an airplane” or “everybody has a car” we overlook the many people who haven’t or don’t.

Last fall, at an affordable housing event in Charlotte, a formerly homeless speaker asked everyone present to hold whatever keys they happened to have in the air. We dutifully hoisted our key rings high.

As the speaker pointed out, all of us had house keys or keys to apartments. Most of us had car keys – some of us for more than one car. Many had office keys. A few had boat keys or keys to vacation homes. And the speaker shared that – before he ever had a home – one of his life goals was to carry a key. It was a powerful reminder: not everybody has a house key, much less a key to a car or boat or office.

When I was first introduced in my role in The Presbytery of Charlotte in 2018, someone with a microphone said generously, “Jan knows everybody.” It was supposed to be a compliment I guess, but I cringed just a little.

Not only do I not know everybody; I didn’t know most of the people in the room that day. What does it say to the people whom I didn’t know (and they didn’t know me) who were sitting there who have never heard of me much less met me? This is how we get an “in” group and an “out” group.

I’ve shared before that the dumbest staff meeting I’ve ever attended in my life started with a get-to-know-you question that assumed that everybody had been to Paris. We were asked to go around the table and share the name of our favorite restaurant in Paris. I wish I was kidding.

There were people at the table who had never left the state, much less traveled outside the United States. And this wasn’t merely about an inability to read the room. (LORD, help each of us read the room better.)

It’s about privilege. It’s about the sacred assumptions that everybody’s life has been like our life.

Those of us who’ve grown up with vacations and regular dental appointments and air conditioning in the summer and heated car seats in the winter often forget that not everybody grows up with this. And in Instagram World, you would think that everybody travels in the summer and eats curated meals.

My point is not that it’s bad/shameful/hoity-toity to travel or eat pretty food or fly in a plane or have a boat. My point it that I am blind to my own privilege most of the time, and maybe you are too.

We who do not believe we are privileged need to get out more and notice our neighbors – and not just the ones who look like we look.

• 12% of the U.S. population in 2023 had never flown in an airplane (as you can see in the chart above provided by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics)
• 48% of Americans have a valid passport for travel outside this country according to the U.S. Department of State (2024.)
• 22.2% of Americans have a Bachelor’s degree according to Educational Attainment Statistics (2025).
• Only 3.3% of Americans have a Doctorate or Professional degree, according to the same source. (I see all you Presbyterians with D.Min, JD, MD, DDS, PhD degrees.)

Most of the people who read this will – like me – be drenched in privilege. We are beyond fortunate. And we also have a responsibility to know and serve those who don’t have a pocketful of keys or a passport.

My first pastoral call was in a village of 400 souls and my effective salary was $18,000/year plus a manse. (Note: the town had 400 people; the church had about 120 people.)

40 years later, my salary is more than the average pastor and it feels extremely generous. And yet I work with many pastors whose salaries are not nearly enough to live on in the state of North Carolina, much less in Greater Charlotte.

Someone mentioned to me just yesterday that pastors, teachers, and doctors do not follow those callings for the money. True (although most doctors seem to be living above the poverty line.) And yet financial stresses negatively impact our ability to delight in our calling. It’s not okay if the teacher cannot afford to eat without a second job.

Our seminaries do not have the class sizes they used to have and maybe that’s because the #1 college major is Business Administration. Actually one fifth of all bachelor’s degrees are business degrees. We all know that a business degree will help land a post-college job more easily than a BA in history or art, or a seminary degree.

Maybe it’s because of financial fears (74% in U.S. believe children will be worse off than their parents according to Pew – January 2025) or maybe it’s because of optimistic aspirations (“nearly half of young adults are ‘obsessed’ with the idea of being rich” according to Fox Business News – January 2024) but majoring in business feels like a practical decision. College is an expensive privilege and it seems foolish to prepare for a career in literature or music or religious studies in a world where the cost of living keeps going up while wages remain stagnant.

The average annual living expenses in the USA now is $61,334 according to this source and the minimum starting salary for a Pastor in my Presbytery is only $58,019 with no manse/rectory. This is for a person with a 4 year college degree and a 3 year graduate degree.

Does God still call people to low paying vocations?

Do we encourage our children to major in engineering even if they feel the tug to teach school in Appalachia? Do we ignore a clear calling to design theatre sets or serve as a park ranger because we will not be able to support ourselves/our families with low incomes?

Something I’m noticing: many devout followers of Jesus are steering their children away from ministry and other non-profit professions. I have a friend whose child was excited about their call to serve – not for a season, but for a career – working with refugees in Africa. The parents essentially forbid their child from going through with it, setting him up – instead – with a family friend in real estate.

Do we say we believe that God continues to call people to serve in a variety of ways, but we actually believe that God only calls us (and our children) to jobs with six figure salaries? Are we Prosperity Gospel people deep in our hearts?

There is nothing holy about poverty. And even if we do not qualify for government cheese, it’s nice to be able to afford braces for our children or a dependable car with air conditioning.

Our least well-paid pastors where I live are among the most gifted pastors in the Church. Please know that – if we are paid well as Church Professionals – it’s sometimes more about the context (big, wealthy church) than the pastoral expertise.

Thoughts? Do we in the Church need to completely rethink how our pastors are paid? (That answer would be a big yes, but I don’t have easy answers.) Do you?

Image of the front of the meeting place of the Presbyterian United Church in Schaghticoke, New York in the Presbytery of Albany. The village now has a population of 545. The church membership is now 26 (2024 statistics.) I served the congregation from 1984-1989.

There are moments that the words don’t reach.
There is suffering too terrible to name.
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable.*

Nobody wants to be in this club. Whether suffering happens because of natural disasters in the Hill Country of Texas or the mountains of North Carolina, or because of human evil manifested in school shootings, the suffering is indeed too terrible to name. And it happens in accidents and through illness. The unimaginable.

What do we do when our hearts break with these families, but it hasn’t happened personally to us? We still have our children and grandchildren. We still have our loved ones who’ve miraculously survived somehow.

We’ve been told what not to do, but we forget. Bless Kate Bowler for reminding us, but still we are imperfect and clueless empathizers.

It can’t happen right away, but I wonder if – at some time – we can share stories together. This strikes me as the role of Church in times like these.

It’s not the role of Church to fix a grieving family or expect them to bounce back or use this holy time to recite platitudes. We provide some food. We offer to run errands. We ask them how today is going – even years later, because yesterday might have been horrible but today is better.

Sharing stories seems to be one opportunity to provide space for grieving – not today, not next week and maybe not ten years from now. But maybe sometime. Maybe we who have not experienced such a depth of grief can learn from shared stories, remembering that everyone’s suffering is their own. What was soothing to one family might not be soothing to others. Maybe it would help if we invited people to share their stories. Or, if they never want to share, we accept that too.

When I was a parish pastor, we invited friends who’d endured a great measure of suffering the chance to tell their story. Every week for a season, we sat and heard people we love tell us what happened:

• The dad of twins but one of the twins died at birth.
• The spouse of a husband with early onset of dementia (i.e. his thirties).
• The mom of children who died in an accident.
• The parents of children who’d died by suicide.

We heard whatever they wanted to share. We just listened. They offered what had really helped and what didn’t. (Again, there is no perfect response. Every situation and every person is different.)

The worst thing we can do is nothing: avoid those who grieve, forget them especially during difficult seasons. We don’t have to drop by their home with a chirpy, “I know today is ____’s birthday and I thought we could go out for burgers.” Just call. Or send a note. We aren’t reminding them of something that they haven’t already remembered. We are called to love people the way they want to be loved. Ask them. And if they reject our offerings, don’t take it personally.

We can do better, Church. And we have a fresh opportunity to be Church this week. Don’t hop in the car and drive to Kerrville “to help.” Send money here or here. Let’s not make it about us. Yes, pray. And also send funds if possible. And then pray some more.

*First verse of “It’s Quiet Uptown” by Lin-Manuel Miranda from Hamilton. Image source.