This is a collection of stories about a thoughtful pastor at work. After forty years of ministry, Pastor Bill is repeatedly reminded of questions from his ministry that remain unresolved. His engagements have been wide-ranging. He has dealt with intractable issues such as sexual harassment, conflict over music, the idolatry of money, homophobia, a threatened patriotism, and dark doubts about Christian faith. He has been creative through the use of short stories or a clown ministry or a parish nurse program or an initiative to integrate faith with work. And he has sought to lead the church out of itself through mission with Guatemala or ministry with returning prisoners or community organizing or an ecumenical observance of Earth Day.
In all this he has approached his work, like Ghandi, as a series of “experiments with truth.” Pastor Bill believes that only truth lived is truth learned. He realizes that he began his ministry with assumptions about what was true and then set out to test them in dozens of risky trials. Now, in his retirement, he seeks to remember, reflect upon and record the results.
In his story about short stories, Pastor Bill muses that “when your own story becomes unbearable or impossible, eating someone else’s is a small but hopeful thing to do.” For those who love the church but struggle to affirm its future, this collection offers a menu of choices that, in the eating, might just renew our trust that God is not through with us yet.
