COMMENTARY: Lessons learned by a young priest

From The Washington Post-

In the perfection of hindsight, I see that I was clueless when I knelt before the Episcopal bishop of Indianapolis on a snowy December night 36 years ago and claimed my prize: ordination as a priest.

I had no clue how to serve a congregation. Other than planning Sunday worship — the easiest of all clergy tasks — I was unprepared.

How to make a hospital visit; how to lead a council whose only instinct was not to spend money; how to grow a church; how to comfort the lost and to humble the found; how to hear what the world needed from us — I knew none of it.

I had worked hard in seminary. If someone wanted a seminar on church politics, or an in-depth exegesis of the Gospel of Mark, I was ready.

But people weren’t asking those questions. They were asking how to survive another 20 years on the assembly line, how to deal with personal failure, how to rebuild a marriage shattered by alcoholism, how to raise children in a dangerous world.

More here-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/commentary-lessons-learned-by-a-young-priest/2013/12/27/2878e33a-6f1a-11e3-a5d0-6f31cd74f760_story.html