reflecting on the minister’s sermon in worship that morning about “Ask, and it will be given you” (Matt 7:7a, NRSV). What he had prayed for was guidance in deciding whether to remain in the grocery business, or try something new, recognizing that it would mean risking all that was comfortable and familiar. But Steve was just about ready to take the risk rather than committing himself to spending the rest of his life doing what he had done all of his life, and what his father had done all of his life before him.
His father, in fact, had retired and moved to Florida a year earlier, leaving Steve to persist, so he thought, in something that was more of a habit than a joy, more of a routine than a passion. And that very night, Reverend Andrews had called to invite him to attend a meeting hosted by the presbytery, encouraging people to consider ministry as a second career. The denomination was forecasting a shortage of ministers, and meetings like this were being held all across the country to ask people who had had some adult experience in business or other occupations to consider whether God might be calling them to ministry. Steve had interpreted it as a sign from God, and the very next week found himself sitting in the church parlor with a woman from the denominational headquarters and two others—a woman younger than he, who was a social worker, and a man somewhat older than he, an insurance salesman—discussing the looming threat posed to the church by too few candidates for too many pulpits. “We need bearers of the promise,” the woman from the national office had said. “We need planters of the seed that will grow into a thriving tree.” Three months later, Steve and Sally found themselves in a tiny one-bedroom apartment three blocks from the Broadview subway station, seven subway stops and a transfer from Knox College.
Over the years of seminary training, Steve had been a good student, managing to keep up his grades while working in a Sobey’s grocery store two nights a week plus Saturdays. He remained true to his conviction that God was calling him to the ministry, and he and his classmates spoke of doing great things, preaching compelling sermons, teaching insightful classes, battling spiritual diseases, opening dull minds. But then, as graduation neared and he began looking closely at vacancies, Steve had been dismayed to discover that the majority of the church openings were quite small congregations in quite rural communities or struggling congregations in the inner city. That was not the vision that had come to him when he had discerned God’s call. He would eventually serve in both kinds of churches—two in small farming communities, four years in the first parish and six years in the second, and then three years in a small financially-ailing church in an unfashionable urban neighborhood where the people were aging even faster than the little brick bungalows. He had never preached to more than thirty people on a Sunday; had never had a class of more than half a dozen, whether it be children or youth or adults; had never saved a soul to the best of his knowledge, at least not in the way that makes a gripping story; had never fundamentally changed a single parishioner’s mind about anything that really mattered. Each of the church buildings had been run-down, could hardly accommodate any new members even if there had been any. If he could just get a congregation with some enthusiasm! If he could just get a church building that would attract new people instead of repelling them!
Then had finally come the call that he had envisioned for so long but had virtually given up on—he had applied, had been interviewed, had been selected by the search committee, and had been approved by the congregation of St. Mark’s, a two-hundred-member church in Woodbridge, a northern suburb of the nation’s nerve-center. It was somewhat surprising to be selected to such a position at the age of fifty-seven, but the congregation had had what they considered to be a bad experience with a younger pastor who seemed a little too faddish and appallingly short on pastoral skills, and the committee felt that a “seasoned” minister was what they needed just now. When he had been invited for an interview, Steve had expressed the right balance of vision for reaching out to the community and encouraging congregational growth, on the one hand, with visiting and caring for those who were already members, on the other. The committee didn’t even seem to mind that he and Sally had no children—he had suspected that that had disqualified him for some other suburban churches to which he had applied in the past, congregations in areas that were burgeoning with young families. There were plenty of children here, but his own childlessness had not been an issue, so far as he could tell. And it would, at last, be an opportunity to have the sort of house that he thought Sally had always deserved.
Sally had been remarkably patient over the years of moving away from home to attend seminary, and then the odyssey from one little church to the next and then the next, playing the role of the pastor’s spouse with grace if not with comfort. She had never demurred, not even that night when he came back from the meeting with the woman from the national office and announced that he thought her appeal had definitely been an answer to his prayer a week earlier, when Reverend Andrews’ telephone call itself had so clearly seemed God’s response to his plea for guidance. Sally had been content, if not ecstatic, to be the wife of a grocer in Campbellton, where she had kept the accounts and occasionally helped at the cash register. She had been content, if not ecstatic, to work as a bookkeeper for the co-op in Chesterville and for the Busy Quill stationers’ and office supply store in Seaforth and most recently for the Danforth Road recreation center. But Steve always suspected that his wife thought that he had not lived up to his potential, had never achieved what she had expected of him since the time when, as he thought, God had specially called him to be a minister. Whatever such thoughts she had, she kept discreetly to herself, not even objecting, in a prolonged way, at least, to leaving her family and friends behind in Campbellton.
The church building in Woodbridge had been adjacent to a large empty field that stretched away to the horizon in the 1960s, when the building was constructed. It had never been a very attractive structure, built in A-frame style, and the sanctuary could only hold about ninety people, which the Session had long felt was keeping the church from growing as it otherwise naturally would. Four years after he had arrived, and the town having become an architecturally anonymous part of the metropolitan sprawl but with a portion of the adjacent field still undeveloped, a realtor had approached the Session with an offer to purchase the church property with the intention of leveling the building and constructing a large retail outlet on it and on the contiguous vacant property; the realtor would even help the congregation find a location in a newer part of the suburb where a new church could be built. After initial reluctance to give up their accustomed address, and some reluctance at paving the way for yet another Wal-Mart, the members of St. Mark’s had voted nearly unanimously to accept the proposal. Now, the new church building was complete, a beautiful and stylish brick structure with a tall steeple that was bound to attract visitors, with a much larger sanctuary, a fellowship hall almost as big as the sanctuary, a nice parlor, a spacious office suite, and half a dozen Sunday school classrooms waiting to be invaded by the younger generation, with even some money left over from the sale of the older property, so valuable had that land been to Wal-Mart.
It was Thursday morning, and the first service in the new building would be on Sunday, and the wrecking ball was poised to demolish the old church building on Monday. Steve McDermott’s mind went back to the insubstantial white frame structure of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Chesterville, and the leaky roof of Knox Presbyterian Church in Seaforth, and the uninviting squat dingy brick structure obscured by overgrown shrubbery that he could never get anyone to do anything about at Morningside Presbyterian Church, two blocks east of Sherbourne Street. Now, finally, a place where his ministry could begin to thrive, only a few years away from retirement! He hoped that he had the energy to deal with the influx of parishioners that he expected and that, after all, God deserved. He walked over to his car and got in and drove to the old church building, where he would spend the day packing his books and files for moving to his new study on Friday, and telephoning the dignitaries who were scheduled to be present for the Sunday inauguration of the new sanctuary to give them last-minute instructions about the worship service.
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