Tim Graves

When one of our beloved flock are nearing death, we live in dread of the next phone call or text. That’s the way it is for clergy. When the call comes, our carefully planned day or day off drops to the bottom of the priority list.

Costumed in a kelly green tracksuit with yellow stripes down each leg and arm, I left our tiny apartment for a run. I must’ve been a sight! I didn’t get into running consistently in college despite that green polyester jogging suit.

Ministry sucks sometimes. Days can be filled with clerical tedium, with the immense needs of others, in meetings in which petty items are discussed ad nauseum, or in pastoral discussions about deep, fundamental questions of human existence. Many days pastors experience all of these. These are exhausting but they don’t suck.

The first major decision I made was racist. A young white man in his twenties, I was going to change the world. The new director of an urban early childhood program dedicated to providing services within a multiracial, multicultural, mixed-economic setting, I was passionate about the mission. I was not a novice to racial tensions, having given my confession of faith in a storefront church with a strong emphasis on inclusiveness, and educated in the St. Louis city and Ferguson-Florissant school districts.