Welcome to the new Triune Mercy Center web site. I hope you enjoy it. Even more, I hope you’ll come worship with us.
April 20, 2010
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in May 2005, I was awarded a Master of Divinity degree.
Master, mind you. I was no longer a dabbler in divinity, but a master.
As it happened, I was at the beach just hours earlier. I woke before dawn, tugged on black pantyhose and my all-purpose funeral/wedding/cocktail party black dress and rushed to Erskine Seminary in Due West for the ceremony. The housemates I left snoozing, friends of 30 years, would happily tell you I’m not a master of humanity, much less divinity.
But what do they know? Three years of theology, ministry and Bible, and in the eyes of higher education, I had mastered this divinity thing.
So why do I hear Jerry Seinfeld in my head? Can you really master divinity? Isn’t the point of divinity that it’s over our heads? Just a tad out of our reach?
I’m with you, Jerry. The understanding, the mastery of God’s identity, is totally out of our reach. Anyone with an M. Div. will tell you it provides just enough information to let you recognize your inadequacy.
That’s why this on-the-job training is so fascinating. A pastor friend, staring balefully at a Christmas tree standing in his fellowship hall weeks after Christmas, lamented, “They don’t teach you in seminary who takes down the Christmas tree.”
I’d add a few items to that list.
They don’t teach you in seminary:
- How to pace a sermon’s dramatic pauses so they’re not filled by snores from the back pew.
- How to persuade the greeters to come into the sanctuary at 11 AM, rather than stand outside during the entire service.
- When to counsel and when to prosecute. A kicked-in sanctuary door? Burglary entrance through the coal chute? Stolen chain saw?
I may request a refund.
Church is important in Greenville. A well-traveled friend once said it was the only city she’d lived in where people asked not, “Where are you from?” but “Where do you go to church?”
It’s probably a sneakily polite way to ask, “Are you a Christian, or shall I began evangelizing you right now?”
I suspect we have more of our identities wrapped up in our church families than people from other areas do.
Many of my current church family live on the street or in pay-by-the-night motels, or at best, in boarding houses. They don’t have cars or insurance or mortgages or fine clothes. They walk to church, often with everything they own in a backpack or duffle bag.
But I have to hide a smile each Sunday morning when we pass the offering plates.
From my seat up front, I see all the scurrying. Some of the pews don’t have enough people to pass the plate, so the ushers miss them and then the people chase the ushers down to put in quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies.
I know a lot of those pockets leave the sanctuary empty.
After one service, I found a note in the plate. Written on a torn scrap of notebook paper were these neatly penciled words: “I have no money. But you have all my prayers and thanks for all you do for me. May God be with you.”
There’s not a pastor I know – or not one I respect, anyway — who wouldn’t treasure that offering above all others. I know I do.
I tell you all this by way of introduction, for I will be writing in this spot every once in awhile. Clearly, I haven’t grown yet into the robe, the stole, the degree and ordination certificate hanging in my office. And I may never do so.
But we need each other, this wounded flock and I. And they will undoubtedly help me to change and grow.
Already, they have changed my name. I was Deborah the first 22 years of my life, then Deb after my name wouldn’t fit in the narrow columns of 1970s’ newsprint.
Now I’m Pastor, Rev, Pastor D, Pastor Deb, Reverend Moore, and my personal favorite, Preacher Debbie.
I’m tempted to tell my parishioners to cut it out, to just call me “Deb,” but then I see the openness and trust on their faces. They need a master of divinity – even when there’s no such thing.