The Experience of Searching For A Call

I haven't seen too many people talking about the search process for a new position as a clergy person. I think there are good reasons not to talk about it. You don't want to give away identifying features of congregations you've interviewed with but didn't get the position. You don't want the congregation you're leaving to feel slighted because you were searching for months without their knowledge. And often, it's a hard experience to recount. It takes a lot of vulnerability. 

But that has been a major part of my life for over a year. It all started with applying to one congregation before the pandemic. The final interview had been scheduled for the end of March and then the world shut down. The process dragged out with them until June. In the end, they picked the other candidate. 

Then I went into a flurry of applications. I had already put some out, but the intensity picked up. Many congregations and ministry contexts got an application from me over the past year. I was always good with a cover letter, but I had to learn over the course of interviews how to brag about myself and show off my skills. That's hard, especially when the pandemic kicked my anxiety up and I honestly forgot much of what I had done in the mist of anxiety brain. I created lists of things to mention just so I could remember to do so, and most of them were recent accomplishments. I worked on areas I struggled with in interviews. But when the rejections didn't mention qualities I could work on presenting, simply saying they wanted someone with more experience, I despaired. I tried to show off the experience I had, but I couldn't make more appear.

Probably the hardest part of the process is the necessary secrecy about what you are doing and who you are interviewing with. There are many people you can't share your losses with, those weeks when you got that email saying no again, yet you still have to preach. During this search I had quit one of my two jobs because of the pandemic and was trying to be creative with what we could do at the congregation where I was assisting priest. For months I felt exhausted to the core. I'd tell myself that I would take a break from the application process, then see an interesting listing and make another cover letter. 

It's not that I disliked my assisting priest job or that my family couldn't afford life on a part time salary. Being part time actually saved me from complete burn out. But entering my third year of year long contracts, wondering if there would be money for my position next year, and simply feeling called to something new led me to keep searching, to keep holding out hope.  

I began to gather with group of clergy friends via Zoom just to talk. If I didn't have that kind of support, I was going to burn out before I finished the race. We'd share our struggles together and pray for each other. I needed that confidential gathering where we laughed together, cried together, and shared our lives with each other. Every time another no landed in my inbox, I'd lament with them and they'd say, "I know God has a place for you. Hold on." 

If I was in real distress, my spiritual mentor was a quick drive away. I spent several afternoons spaced apart in her backyard, her ear attuned to my loss and grief, my hopes that the next one would be different, my longings for the community I would be called into. 

Around September, I began looking at the Master of Social Work program at a nearby university. I had considered it before, but had chosen chaplaincy training instead. The costs of getting another master's degree were high and my student debt is deep. But I wondered if going that route, becoming bi-vocational, might be where I was meant to go. I knew that I had the right character to be a good social worker. Was God leading me away from being tied to the Church for income? 

I think it's healthy to have these questions as a clergy person. I have friends who encourage one another to have an exit strategy in their back pocket, something they can do after Church work. I'm not as cynical as some of these friends about the state of the Church, but I think a good review of why we work in the Church and how we could use our skills in the secular world is always valuable. Sometimes your ministry leads you away from congregations and into other areas. Exploration of possibilities led me into so many ministry opportunities, as long as I was looking there was no harm in widening the doorway. 

I got down to my final two application processes. I told myself that if one of these didn't pan out, I would apply for the MSW program. That would be my sign that I wasn't called to full time Church work. I don't know if God paid attention to this bargaining tactic. Maybe God just laughed. All I know is that I got a job. I looked at the email after the Zoom interviews and was flabbergasted that it said they wanted to continue the process with me. I had seen enough emails saying no that I looked at the beginning of the first sentence and expected to see the polite let down at the end. But it didn't have that. It had something else. It said they were interested in me. The rest of the process just smoothed the way for me. A while later I learned that I was it. I was the one. 

I'm still stunned as I sit here that I will be a part of this congregation. The more I learn, the more excited I get. Those backyard conversations, dreaming of what the community I was called to might look like, the qualities I desired, are being made manifest in what I've learned and experienced so far with this congregation. It just feels like a good fit, and in ministry, a good fit is essential. 

But the road to this moment was hard. It made me question a lot about myself and my capabilities. There were weeks when I just crumbled into the couch and couldn't do much, grief stricken that I had put my heart into applying to a congregation and they didn't choose me. There were weeks when I would just pray, "God, please" and then learn the answer was, "Not this congregation". 

Had my Diocese not been so loving, had my bishop not cared for me, had my friends not shared virtual space with me, I would not have made it. This moment shows the power of community. It shows the power of holding space for one another and sitting with one another in the struggles of life. It shows how love can lead us through. And that's why I want to talk about the search process, why I think it's important for me to share this publicly. We often walk through these processes quietly with not many outlets to share our experiences, but those outlets we do have are vital. 

If you are searching, if you are putting your heart into envisioning yourself in context after context, only to hear the word, "no" yet again, hold on. Reach out. Do this with a confidential group of others, people who can listen, lament, and say, "Just imagine what God has in store for you." This cannot be done alone.