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Leaving first church can be hard for pastors

 
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This is the second installment of a yearlong series that will follow newly appointed United Methodist clergy as they begin their ministry.

1:00 P.M. EST July 19, 2010

Rev. Sara Baron, pastor of Park Terrace United Methodist Church, Apalachin, N.Y. <br/>Photo courtesy Sara  Baron.
Rev. Sara Baron, pastor of Park Terrace United Methodist Church, Apalachin, N.Y.
Photo courtesy Sara Baron. View in Photo Gallery

“I expected it to be really difficult,” said the Rev. Sara Baron, “and it was much worse than I thought it would be!”

After four years as pastor of Morris (N.Y.) United Methodist Church, Baron is moving to her second pastoral appointment – and living through her first transition.

The United Methodist Church uses an itinerant system to appoint its pastors to their churches. Clergy appointments are made annually by the bishop, who sets all the pastoral appointments in the conference. Pastors agree to serve where called and to accept and abide by the appointments. This system of assigning clergy dates back to John Wesley, when clergy traveled widely throughout the church on circuits.

That means each June, many pastors throughout the connection find themselves packing up and moving on to a new place in their ministry.

For Baron, that means saying goodbye to a congregation she considers family.

“I cried for the first three weeks after I found out I was moving,” she said. “The hardest thing before I left was calling the children forward for the last children’s time. I don’t have children, and the children of the church are the closest I have.”

For the Rev. Shalom Agtarap, her second appointment meant not only leaving a church family, but literally leaving family.

The Rev. Shalom R. Agtarap of Ellensburg (Wash.) First United Methodist Church. Photo courtesy Shalom Agtarap.
The Rev. Shalom R. Agtarap of Ellensburg (Wash.) First United Methodist Church. Photo
courtesy Shalom Agtarap.
View in Photo Gallery

“Because my appointment was so close to my home church, my sister and a good friend were sharing the parsonage with me. Now I am in a four-bedroom parsonage with only myself to come home to.”

Agtarap had been serving the past two years as a licensed local pastor at two United Methodist churches in Seattle. After being commissioned last month as a provisional member of the Pacific Northwest Annual (regional) Conference, she was appointed to Ellensburg First United Methodist Church, two hours from Seattle.

“Living with family … provided levity at times when church work began to consume me and reminded me that though I am pastor to many people, to them I could still be the silly little sister,” she said.

Agtarap said leaving wasn’t only hard on her, but also on her congregation.

One of the churches she served expected her to succeed its older senior pastor. Upon learning that Agtarap was appointed elsewhere, the congregation was upset at the decision.

Social media changes itinerancy

Pastors leaving for a new appointment are encouraged to be careful about the relationships they maintain with former congregants, so as not to interfere with the ministry of the next pastor. That practice has a new dimension thanks to social media.

“One of the jobs of a pastor is to love your people. When you’re reappointed, you don’t have to stop loving them, but to disconnect from them,” Baron said. “Facebook makes all of this intriguing. Not long ago, when you were gone, you were gone.

“Within my peer groups, we’ve had some debate about whether you should cut people off (from Facebook). I opted not to. If someone from a previous church wants to look at what I post on my page, they can know I’m alive and well without having an invasion of the space that is appropriately occupied by a pastor.”

‘I am on a journey’

Sad goodbyes aside, both pastors look forward to what lies ahead.

“I am so lucky. I am being moved from a great church to another great church,” Baron said.

The Rev. Sara Baron talks about her experiences as a young clergy person during a workshop at Exploration 2009, an event sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry for young people who feel a call to ordained ministry. A UMNS photo by Kathy Gilbert.
The Rev. Sara Baron talks about her experiences as a young
clergy person during a workshop at Exploration 2009, an event sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry for young people who feel a call to ordained ministry. A UMNS photo by Kathy Gilbert. View in Photo Gallery

And it will be quite a change. Baron’s first appointment was a historic, rural church in a town with less than 2,000 people. Now she’s pastor at Park Terrace United Methodist Church in Apalachin, N.Y., a larger, suburban church that uses video clips and PowerPoint in its services.

“The bishop who appointed me to my first church was thinking of me, and my gifts, and made a really good match,” Baron said. “And the bishop, in appointing me here, also made a really good match. I will be using very different skill sets.”

In addition to growing up with a United Methodist pastor father, Agtarap cites her participation in The Upper Room’s Academy for Spiritual Formation as preparing her for the life of an itinerant pastor. She said the program equipped her with the tools and perspective necessary for dealing with all the transitions she’s experienced, be it adjusting to full-time work after being a student, moving or figuring out what she needed as a person to be fully present as a pastor.

“I am much more aware of my emotions and how gracefully I am held by God throughout all these changes,” she said. “I have been able to temper the sadness of leaving my family and the trappings of a big city by simply reminding myself that I am on a journey.”

*Butler is editor of young adult content for United Methodist Communications in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Joey Butler, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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