I suppose it is a strange phenomenon, having grown up in a family with a particular distaste – and history, according to family lore – for Church, for me to think I might want to go to seminary. We held my atheist Uncle Johnny – whose life was always bent on helping others – in high esteem. And although my mother ascertained that I should attend Confirmation Classes at the closest Evangelical Lutheran Church in the neighborhood, a Missouri Synod Church, and I had there memorized Luther’s Small Catechism (I am forever grateful), yet there I was, thinking about becoming a pastor, with no experience of what a pastor was all about. I was about 19 when the idea entered my mind.
Of course, I had never seen – or even heard – of a woman pastor. Still, I had the thought: “I could be a Pastor.”
And so I set on the journey of finding a Church Community. I had run away from the fundamentalism that was the theology in the Missouri Synod Lutheran denomination, almost as soon as I’d heard it. That didn’t make sense to me. But were there other places, were there other way to look at Church, at the faith, at life? Maybe so.
I started the journey toward finding such a place where I often begin journeys: at the library. I read about denominations, discovering ideas and understandings I had not heard before. Several – almost 10 – years later, I found myself in a United Methodist Church, where I learned that there were folks whose faith was lived out in social justice, not in right doctrine.
Within a few years, I made my way to seminary – at last! – and within three years, I was ordained and sent to my first appointment within the Methodist system. I had a lot to learn, about church itself, how the inner workings of a church happened (!), and I learned what church community was in real life – or was not. I’d married my husband, Jeff Kunkel, during my last year as a seminary student, and our lives were complicated by being part of a clergy couple. Then, and even now, those in authority had an often difficult time finding an appropriate slot for us both.
And so, after several church appointments, and after leaving a conflicted church situation, we found ourselves as a “clergy couple” in Tracy, CA. Even now, I think of the people of that congregation as my first congregation, in the way I connected to them, and in the way they connected to me. Life in Tracy was less urban than I had been accustomed to living, so there was that adjustment. Still, I remember those two years with fondness for the people there.
Jeff and I were part of a group of clergy from the area who met monthly to have lunch together, to simply be together with other clergy. I was the only woman – as I was the first woman pastor at the congregation in Tracy – but I went to the meetings and expected to be treated as an equal among peers. That’s my way. I don’t remember not being treated as an equal.
One of the clergy in the group was the Pastor of a large Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. One day, as the clergy were gathering, he and I stood together, chatting. We were friendly, and I told him that I’d been confirmed in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. With a glint in his eyes, he asked me: “So when did you fall from grace?”
Without skipping a beat, I said: “Called by God.”
At that, he did not lose his kind and open expression, but simply smiled at me. I’ve always thought of that moment as a time when some Spirit – greater than me and yet in and with me – had somehow moved.
We sat down with the other clergy, and the gathering began.
