“THIS IS MY STORY - THIS IS MY SONG” Part Three: "The Jonah Man”

Jonah 1:1-10
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, October 24th 2010

(A printable PDF file of this message can be found by clicking these words.)

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been answering questions such as ‘How did you come to faith?” and “What made you enter the ministry?” Today I’m going to try and relate how it was I felt a call to leave my homelands and home denomination for lands unknown. “What made you leave the United Kingdom of Great Britain and come to the United States of America?”

I was sharing with you last week that going into ministry in the established church was something I had kicked against doing. Even when as a twenty something I departed from my home near Liverpool to study at Aberystwyth Theological College (part of the University of Wales) I was still nursing a real hope that… well... God had only called me to be a candidate for the ministry, God hadn’t actually said I had to become a preacher.

But... darn it… by half way through my final year… there were a couple of churches out there expressing an interest in having me as their pastor. For Jonah it took sitting inside the belly of a stinky fish before He realized that, ‘Yes’, maybe doing what God asked could result in a favorable outcome for his life. In chapter 2 of Jonah he concludes a prayer about his plight with the phrase, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord”. Shortly afterward he is deposited on the shores of Nineveh in order to begin his task.

I’m glad that it didn’t take being thrown off a ship into the raging waves by a group of angry sailors, only to be swallowed up by a whale that convinced me to accept the preacher’s role. It was much nicer going to Wales to study, rather than being swallowed by one!

So I accepted ‘A Call’. A call to two wonderful churches in the beautiful Welsh Vale of Clwyd in North Wales, in two market towns called Denbigh and Ruthin. What I didn’t realize about the town of Denbigh was that it housed a large mental hospital and that “Going to Denbigh’ was a euphemism for being sent to the asylum.

Such did however explain why people would look at me rather strangely when they asked what I was going to do after seminary and I’d smile and say, “I’m going to Denbigh”. But after over thirty years of being part of this institution we call the church, I am of the opinion that being a little bit crazy is probably a help rather than a hindrance for pastoral ministry.

I could write a book about some of the experiences I have enjoyed (and endured) in the different churches I’ve served (but I may need a good lawyer first). After being in Denbigh and Ruthin, I moved on to inner city ministry in Liverpool, before accepting a call to minister in the churches of Menai Bridge and Caernarfon in North Wales. Caernarfon boasted the castle where the Prince of Wales was invested with his office, making it a Mecca for tourists from all over the world.

Now all of this is by way of a lengthy introduction to explaining how it was that I came to America. Did I hear a voice from the heavens saying; “Go to the USA?” Was it something that I had secretly been planning and hoping for all along. Did some scripture verse jump out of the bible to direct my path? Would be that it were that simple!

Over the years I’ve learned about the guidance of God. It can be most irregular. As Spock used to say to Captain Kirk, “Illogical, Captain”. As we place our trust in God and commit our way to doing the things God wants us to, wherever God wants us to do them, both God’s methods and the outcome can be wildly unpredictable.

This was a message that Jonah found hard to understand. When he reluctantly marched into Nineveh declaring God’s judgment on its God forsaken inhabitants the last thing he was expecting was that they would listen, respond and set about amending their lives so as to live the way God wanted them to.

Jonah’s waiting for the fireworks. He wants to see the Ninevites get blasted by the judgment of God. The story ends with Jonah in an angry sulk, sitting in the shade of a tree which has died, leaving him even hotter and stickier than ever. God suggests that Jonah is acting foolishly and that as God, He had every right to show mercy where ever mercy was needed. And it was certainly needed in Nineveh. So Jonah, “Get over yourself!”

So there I was, serving the denomination that had bought me to faith, in this beautiful area of Wales, enjoying the mountains and the beaches and the castles and blessed with two children who were blossoming at 10 and 12 years old, and my wife in this wonderful job working in the offices of the Oceanography department. “Settled” would be a wonderful word to describe how things were going.

One of the ministries that Castle Square Caernarfon Church operated was that on a Saturday morning they would open up the church to visitors and invite them in for a coffee and a chat. One Saturday morning, when I wasn’t there, a pastor and his son from the Chicago area walked in. The son was an organist and Alan Jones the organist at Castle Square was just finishing up his practice for Sunday. They got chatting and the son got to play the organ and a friendship was struck up.

A few months later we received a letter asking if we would be interested in doing an exchange trip to Chicago. So we thought about it and prayed about it and decided that a twelve week exchange trip to the U.S.A. might be kind of fun. We would live in each others houses, drive each others cars, minister through the summer in each others churches. It was all set in stone.

Then the phone rang. It was the pastor from Chicago. “Got bad news and good news” he said. “I’ve accepted a call to serve a United Reformed Church in Cornwall, England. I’m guessing you wouldn’t really be interested in doing an exchange trip to a part of England just over the border from Wales. However, there’s a guy from our church who is around about your age, who went into the ministry and is in a place called Red Wing, in Minnesota, I’ve spoken with him and he’s interested. What do you think?”

I thought, “Whatever. Red Wing, Minnesota, Chicago. I’m sure they are much the same” So in the summer of 1994 we exchanged pulpits and locations with Rev Gary Elg and family from Red Wing Presbyterian Church in Minnesota and had a great time. I went back to Wales with the thought that I could put the things I’d learnt to good use in my churches in Wales. That was the plan.

But then, out of the blue, when I got back, I started to receive invitations to consider moving to other positions in Wales and also in England. Some of them weren’t even to do with me being a traditional minister. Maybe that ‘Get out” clause from ministry that I’d expected to come along during my seminary days had finally come to pass. My ship to Tarshish was still in port!

I investigated some of them, but they just didn’t feel right. Sure I thought I could do the jobs, but y’know I was kind of settled and the kids being of an impressionable age and all of that, it would be easier to stay where I was. However, following my Minnesota experience, I had received a subscription to a PC(USA) magazine, the “Presbyterian Outlook” that contained descriptions of pastoral vacancies.

I should explain that the calling process in Wales is very different to that over here. Wales is a small place. As a pastor you didn’t call the church, they called you. So the notion of applying to a church for a position was completely alien to me. And I knew nothing of the Presbyterian USA’s process of filling in forms and matching candidates to churches and going through committees and presbyteries, and still less about the whole complicated process of obtaining Visas and permits and all the rest of it in order to live in the United States.

But, as felt like things were stirring, I entertained a thought. ‘I wonder what would happen if I wrote to one of those churches in he United States?’ So I did. A letter along the lines of, “Hello. My name is Adrian. I’m a pastor. Believe you might be looking for one. What do you think?” Given the PC (USA) calling system, (and those of you who have ever been near a pastor nominating committee will know exactly what I’m talking about) with its interim ministers, mission reports, PIF’s and CIF’s and COM’s, and computerized dating service… the miracle is that I received any replies at all.

A very gracious church in Monroe, Louisiana replied to what must of appeared to them as a very weird letter, explaining the calling process and how they’d need a little more information than “Hello, my name’s Adrian and I live in Wales”. After we corresponded they even agreed to fly me over for an interview. And I went, but I wasn’t the best match for that particular position. At the same time I was in correspondence with another church, but again, things weren’t quite hunky-dory and we never got as far as the come and see stage.

Then one evening, back in Wales, in the middle of dinner, the phone rings. A guy called Mike Smith from a place called Fayetteville, West Virginia, is on the line. He wants more information. I suggest calling the nominating Committee I’d met with in Louisiana and I had a video of me preaching in Minnesota that I could send them. I hung up the phone and went to look for an atlas. “Where on earth was Fayetteville? Come to think of it, where on earth was West Virginia?”

One thing led to another. It took a while for God to convince me that leaving the denomination that had nurtured my faith for a foreign land thousands of miles from my extended family was the right thing to do. I’d always believed that those bits in the Bible about “Going into all the world” to “preach the gospel” only applied to other people. My ‘Jonah syndrome’ was still intact.

But every step of the way doors opened, and things fell into place. Not always tidily, or even without some struggles and many questions to deal with. As it so often does, it became a matter of obedience. Was I going to follow or was I going to back out? If I believed that God was God then was I prepared to live my life according to that conviction, wherever it led? When I sang “Here I am, Lord?” did it mean anything?

“So what made you decide to come to America?” Well that’s about it. A desire to be faithful. A feeling of calling that was confirmed in many ways by many different people. A sense that this was where life was leading me. Time does not permit to tell you of the insight’s ministry in two churches in West Virginia have blessed my life with, or even talk of the process that led to my moving from West Virginia to Long Island. I could mention climbing in through Judges windows in Freeport and being surprised by a Baldwin piano in Texas… but now is not the time!

But… look…. here I am, and I am glad to be here. And I hope that as I’ve shared part of my personal spiritual journey, as I’ve answered some of the questions about my faith and receiving a call to ministry and how I ended up in the USA… that there have been things I have said that can help you in your own pilgrimage of faith.

If like me you are susceptible to ‘Jonah Syndrome’, I pray you will notice that God does not call us all in the same way, to the same tasks in the same places. But God is calling our name and God has a time and a place and a way that we are each called to serve our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ.

And if the love of God can guide somebody like myself to be here in your midst, in Baldwin, then just think what opportunities are open to your selves! To God’s name be the Glory! Amen.