Mentoring with Morgan. Karen Schlack
over the whole world. I was on top of the world, for a moment. As soon as I took in that glorious sight, I became blind. I felt my feet below me sliding on the rocks on that tiny perch at the top. I got down on my hands and knees, determined to crawl my way down. Along the way I found a stick I used to test the patch of rocks ahead of me. Then, I heard a voice.
“I can help you get down.”
I ignored it. But the voice continued and the sense of the presence of someone beside me was very strong.
“If you let me help you get down, we can go together. I can see the way. You won’t be alone.”
I clung to my stick for dear life.
“Take my hand,” the voice said. “Let go of the stick and take my hand.”
“Did you take the hand?” Cally asked.
“Yes, I did. And I heard that stick hit the rocks as it went down, down, down that mountain.”
Cally’s belief that I might be called to ministry was the only positive feedback I heard among those who knew me. To most everyone else, it looked like I had fallen off the cliff of a successful career. I was told I must be having a mid-life crisis. I needed to think this thing through.
A chaplain at the hospital where I had worked said, “Did you say you want to serve a church?”
He just shook his head in disbelief. What was I thinking? So many people believed my going into ministry was a mistake, I was tempted to forsake the whole thing. Cally’s encouragement was part of what kept me in the game.
The pastor of my home church cautiously supported my sense of call. But she had some stern words.
“Don’t go into ministry unless you find it is the only thing you can do in your life. Only go there when nothing else seems right.” Then I told her I was spending a large portion of my days looking at seminary websites. She simply said, “Well, there you are.”
Then came one last surprise. When I was packing the house to leave, I called my mother.
I put off that call until the last minute because I didn’t believe she would approve of my decision to become a pastor. She was a Southern Baptist, and in her tradition, women could not become pastors. But Mom had a surprise of her own. She told me a story she had never told anyone.
When I was only a few months old, Mom attended a retreat with Dad. She left me home at the cottage with Dad and went to a church service on campus. In the service, the minister asked if anyone present would dedicate a child of theirs to mission work. Mom stood up. She never told anyone, not my Dad, a minister, a family member—no one! In those days, mission work was dangerous. Many missionaries didn’t survive their journeys to foreign lands. Mom had waited for me for a long time. I was her first-born. She didn’t know if she would have another child.
Her dedication that night was a huge risk. And a huge secret.
“Didn’t you want to give up?” I asked her. I hadn’t gone to church for almost twenty-five years. I will always remember her response.
“Sometimes these things take longer than we would wish.”
Six years after the funeral in the chapel at Louisville Seminary, when I was fifty years old, I became a student there.
Ministry is a call. To all those folks who scratch their heads when a person with a successful career drops everything and goes into ministry, I offer my story. God calls people to do all sorts of things, not just ordained ministry. Have you had an experience where you called a friend and later that friend told you, “How did you know I needed so much to talk today?” God taps ordinary people on the shoulder every day, urging them to do something or say something no one else can do or say. Pastors aren’t the only people who are called. We all are.
That sense of call was the reason I moved to Louisville in 2001. On the Sunday after my arrival in Louisville, I walked from my recently purchased house to the campus. Before going inside, I walked behind the chapel to see the marker of my uncle’s grave and read again those words, “Courage that perseveres.” Then I walked inside. Morgan saw me.
But I didn’t see him. I was awash with all that had happened the week I left my home in Chicago. I had sat in the pew of my home church for the last time. In that service, we were invited to take a stone from a basket and hold it during the service. I took two more stones as I left the sanctuary, and I continue to keep them in the cupholder of my car. When I get behind the wheel, I sometimes glance at those stones or hold one in my hand before I put the car in gear.
As I walked into the chapel when Morgan saw me, I was thinking about the day before. The moving truck was scheduled to arrive at my house at 9 a.m. That same morning, I had a new piano delivered and the old piano taken away. Since the new piano didn’t need to be moved all the way inside of the house, I left it outside on the sidewalk (no threat of rain that day). The moving truck was hours late. My good friend Margaret showed up to help while I was playing the piano on the sidewalk of my front yard. Neighbors gathered around me, even dogs stopped by to listen! By the time the moving truck arrived and was loaded, it was 4 p.m. and we were over five hours from Louisville. Because of these delays, the truck would not arrive in Louisville until after midnight and would not be unloaded until the following morning. When I set out for Louisville along with the moving van, I had to pack another bag so I would have food and clothing to bring with me to the empty house that awaited me.
That was one long drive. By the time I arrived in Louisville, it was dark. I could not read the print on the street signs in the neighborhood. It was midnight before I found the driveway of my new home. I shuffled through my glove box, finally finding a flashlight. Then I couldn’t get the key to work in the realtor box. Finally, I was inside at last. I pulled my sleeping bag out of the car and curled up in the bag on the carpet in the basement of my new house, leaving on the light, just in case.
The next day I walked to the chapel. The moving van had unloaded everything that morning. I unpacked my travel bag, took a shower, and put on my travel clothes. Morgan noticed the hiking boots and day pack I had in tow the day I walked into the chapel. He told himself that day, “this one is a sojourner.” I had a house full of boxes still unpacked. I literally didn’t know where I was going, which was why I walked to the chapel that day instead of driving. I didn’t want to get lost the next day, the first day of classes.
Chapter Two
The Journey Begins
When I was two months into seminary, my aunt, who knew many of the personalities at the seminary, said to me during dinner, “You must meet Morgan.”
“Who is Morgan?” I asked. “Is he a professor or a PhD?”
My aunt just sighed and said, “You must meet Morgan.”
I put it off. I couldn’t imagine who this guy might be and why she thought I must meet him. Then one January morning, I slipped into the Field Education office of the seminary. After chatting with the office secretary for a while, I asked, “Is there a Morgan here?”
Her eyes brightened as she pointed to an open door. “He’s right in there!”
I lingered quietly at the door, peeking inside and sizing up the situation. I thought I saw a bald head hiding behind a large computer screen. Then I got the courage to say his name, almost in a whisper. “Morgan?”
He popped up from his chair and came right to the door. He had wonderful bright eyes and a huge smile. Something about him reminded me of Yoda, the master jedi in Star Wars.
Morgan had a whimsical quality, and he seemed to enjoy listening more than talking. This was a trait I hadn’t encountered very often as a seminary student.
Later that year, Morgan came to the first sermon I preached in front of people at my field education church. I worked and worked on that sermon. Polished up the words. Kept the stories simple and (I thought) compelling. I read the sermon with all the passion I could muster