Is Suffering the Point? A Daughter’s Story of Calling, Sacrifice, and Pastoral Formation
My family began attending Woodbury Lutheran Church when I had just turned four years old. Prior to that, I had never really attended church and had not been baptized, although my parents did talk to me about Jesus and I knew and loved Him. My parents had attended some other churches, but felt their teachings were extra-biblical or even non-biblical. We moved from Roseville, Minnesota to Woodbury, Minnesota and one of the first people to visit us at our new house was Pastor Paul Pfotenhauer, the senior pastor at Woodbury Lutheran Church.
I remember that night, though I was young. Our new house had a large picture window facing the street and my older sister and I were frightened of the way the shadows passed along the wall when cars drove by. To try to show us there was nothing to fear, my parents had turned the lights off and were talking to us about how the shadows were just caused by the trees in the yard as the cars drove by with their headlights on. We were sitting in total darkness when Pastor Pfotenhauer came to the door. He found us in the dark and helped bring us to the light.
Pastor Pfotenhauer welcomed us to the neighborhood and invited us to Woodbury Lutheran Church. My parents were already planning to visit the church because it was only three blocks away and two of my mom’s sisters and one of her aunts were already attending the church. We started attending the church. My parents found it to be exactly what they were looking for: a church faithfully teaching biblical truth, which was what they believed had been missing from the churches they had previously attended.
We had not been Lutheran, but my parents recognized that this church taught the Bible and neither added nor subtracted from it. They didn’t have experience with the Lutheran confessions, the Book of Concord, or the Lutheran Service Book, but they recognized the biblical teaching and faithfulness of this growing, fruitful church. That is how we became Lutheran – because of the faithful preaching and teaching of the Bible we found at Woodbury Lutheran Church. In other words, it wasn’t the mere “Lutheraness” that made us Lutheran, it was the faithfulness to Scripture. When my younger sister was born, she and I were baptized on the same day by Pastor Gene Goldsby; I was almost five years old and I remember my baptism, which is unusual for a child who grew up Lutheran.
Prior to their marriage, my dad was basically agnostic. Through my mom’s influence, Woodbury Lutheran Church, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, he became one of the strongest men of faith I know. Woodbury Lutheran Church offered traditional and blended services at the time. Our family attended the blended services, and my dad began attending Bible studies, teaching Sunday school, and became an elder at the church.
When I was 10 or 11 years old, he went with a group from the church on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. Pastor Todd Stocker and a retired pastor who attended the church, Reverend Dean Schuessler, were also on the trip. Afterward, Reverend Schuessler approached my dad and asked if he had ever considered going into ministry. When my dad talked to Pastor Stocker about it, he said he had also felt led to ask him and would have if Reverend Schuessler hadn’t done it first.
My parents had been feeling called to something more for a long time, though they hadn’t known what it was. My dad was a veterinarian and co-owned a veterinary clinic with a partner. Pastoral ministry had not been on his radar, but with two pastors mentioning it to him, my parents began to discuss and pray about it. Believing this might be the calling they had been waiting for, they began to pursue it seriously. We sold our house, rehomed our pets (they were not permitted in on-campus housing), my dad sold his share of the business to his partner, and we moved to Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri right after I turned 13, my older sister was 15, and my younger sister was eight years old.
Before we moved, my parents discussed it with us, but we were young and it wasn’t up to us. I did not want to move but I also thought that, if this is what God was calling our family to do, we really couldn’t say no. I remember having a conversation with my confirmation small group as my dad was working on admission. I told them about the potential move and that we were waiting to find out if he had been accepted to the program. Someone asked how they could pray for me and asked whether I wanted them to pray that we didn’t go. I answered that I would not pray for that because, if it was what God wanted, I wouldn’t want to pray against God’s will. This was what I believed. And while that sounds like I was onboard, it was still the beginning of an excruciatingly difficult and painful time for me.
I had a strong faith at 13, and I am thankful that I did, because the next four years were extremely difficult. I was caught between believing we were doing what God was calling us to do and being extremely hurt and angry about what that meant. In addition, I felt guilty for being angry, but I found comfort in knowing God was big enough to take it and love me anyway – look at Job and Jonah: they both got angry with God and He did not abandon them.
It is hard to move. It is hard to move when you are 13 years old. It is hard to move when you’re 13 years old, then again when you’re 15 years old, again when you’re 16 years old, and again when you’re almost 17 years old. I was mourning the loss of my home and my friends and was reeling under the knowledge that everything for the next four years would be temporary and transitory. I remember feeling like the loss from the move from Minnesota was so painful that I didn’t want to get close to anyone because I would lose them, too. Despite this, I made a good friend during our first year at the seminary. We learned American Sign Language together. But her family was in their final year when we were in our first year, so I lost her after just one year. This new loss cemented the idea in my mind that getting close to people wasn’t worth it because it just led to more pain and suffering.
My sisters and I were homeschooled during this time. While that made the logistics of moving easier, it also made it difficult to make connections. That, in addition to my attitude that making connections would just lead to more pain, added to my feelings of isolation. Before moving to the seminary, we were very involved at Woodbury Lutheran and I had an active social life with friends at church; I didn’t feel that I was missing out. However, we lived about thirty minutes away from the fieldwork church we were assigned to attend while at seminary, so I was not overly involved there despite being confirmed at that church.
For our first two years, we lived on campus and we got to know some other seminarians’ kids. But knowing we were all just there temporarily caused me to hold everyone at arm’s length. My reasoning was that if I didn’t get close to anyone, I wouldn’t get hurt when they or we moved again. While that was relatively effective, it led to deep loneliness during our first two years at the seminary. Additionally, the feelings of being unsettled and disconnected led to social anxiety that manifested in physical symptoms – I would get severe stomach aches before social situations, always feeling uncomfortable and alone even when surrounded by people.
Some of the other families we knew did three years of seminary and vicarage in their fourth year. My understanding was that this was to help minimize the disruption caused by moving their families so many times and having their kids start new schools so often, though I can’t say if there were other reasons. While it’s true that my education was not disrupted since we were homeschooled, the moves still disrupted our lives and kept me in a constant state of limbo, loneliness, and anxiety from the ages of 13 to 17. Whatever the institutional reasoning was, what I experienced was that there was an alternative path that could reduce the number of times families moved, and that alternative was not available to us.
Knowing that this route was not available to our family made me feel that we were less important; it made me feel that we were somehow less worthy of a kinder, gentler route. I felt deeply angry at those who made that decision because there was a different way that would have made it less painful for us, but we were somehow not deemed important enough to merit it. That route could reduce the number of moves from four in four years (to the seminary, to vicarage, back to the seminary, and then to a first call) to as few as two. The message I received was that there was a way to lessen the suffering of families, but that it was withheld from families deemed not to need it. I wondered: why were my pain, suffering, and loneliness less important than those of others? Feeling like that disregard came down from representatives of the church was hard for me and added to the feelings of hurt and anger I experienced.
When I was 15, we moved to Oklahoma for my dad’s vicarage year. Saint Louis and the seminary had come to represent pain and loss to me, so in some ways, leaving was a relief. However, it meant being the stranger in yet another new place and all the anxiety, loneliness, and pain that came with that.
It was easier to get involved at our vicarage church than it had been at our fieldwork church – we only lived a few minutes away and it had an active youth group. Against my earlier “better judgment,” I let myself get attached. I loved the youth group and many of the parishioners. I joined the youth praise band, and I attended the 2004 National Youth Gathering with the youth group after getting to know and love them for a year. While on the trip, my friends and I were at the Concordia University Wisconsin booth, and the representative asked me where I was from. I froze – I didn’t know the answer. I wasn’t from anywhere. I didn’t belong anywhere. It was one of those moments that kicks you right in the stomach. I felt so alone. We moved back to Saint Louis just a few days after getting back from the trip. I had just turned 16.
I was sad and angry when we moved to Saint Louis from Minnesota. I was devastated when we moved back to Saint Louis from Oklahoma. I spent the first two years at the seminary fairly isolated to protect myself from getting hurt. It largely worked – I wasn’t sad at all to move away from Saint Louis. But those first wounds weren’t fully healed, and I let my guard down in Oklahoma, which made this new loss even worse.
I thought it wasn’t worth making connections during our first two years at the seminary and that feeling increased during the fourth year. We would only be back for about ten or eleven months – what was the point? In addition, first and second year students were given priority for on-campus housing, so we lived off campus, and I was even more isolated than before. I tried not to, but I let myself hope we would be sent back to the Tulsa area. And if not Tulsa, maybe back to Minnesota, though by this time that didn’t even feel like home anymore when we visited. That feeling I had at the Concordia University booth persisted – I wasn’t from anywhere and I didn’t belong anywhere.
Call day came and we were sent to Yuma, Arizona – about as far away from everything I did still know and love as was possible. I mean, at least it wasn’t Alaska. But, then again, that wouldn’t have been hotter than… well, you know. Once again, I was angry. It seemed like I was being even more isolated. It seemed like there had to be a better way to handle this for families, unless suffering was the point. But I knew that was taken into consideration and mitigated for other families, so why not ours?
This is my story. My parents and sisters were with me, but I know we all experienced it differently. My parents were excited to get through seminary and on to the ministry they felt called to. I think moving was hard on them, but I know it was especially difficult for them to watch us struggle. It was exceedingly difficult for my sisters and me. Moving during that stage of life is difficult and moving that many times is even worse. We all dealt with it in different ways, but I know we all experienced the feelings of loneliness and loss.
I thank God that my faith was as strong as it was and that I weathered this season with it intact. It was strong enough that the pain and resentment that I felt did not shake it, but I can see how it could have. As I write this, it has been 25 years since we moved from Minnesota, but I still feel my eyes well up and those feelings come back when I think or talk about the repeated losses and unsettledness I experienced. It’s like any grief – it gets less acute as time goes on but it can still rear up and cause pain.
As always, everything does work for good. I met my husband at the youth group in Yuma, and we have been together for twenty years and married for almost sixteen. I even managed to come to love Yuma and still live here as do my sisters and parents and we have remained close. But that doesn’t mean the experience wasn’t difficult and didn’t have long-lasting effects on me that I am still working through to this day. And it doesn’t mean our synod couldn’t take a kinder approach to pastoral formation, especially for men with families. Unless making them suffer is the point.
During the recent LCMS election and convention season, I was troubled to see some of the conversations around pastoral formation. At a time when we are concerned about a shortage of pastors, we need to figure out how to identify and encourage men who could be called to go into ministry. Yet we are implementing restrictions that may make it harder for families like mine to follow that calling. How many families decide against even pursuing a calling because of what it could do to their family and children? Our experience has had a long-lasting impact on me and my sisters. I wonder, had my parents had known just how hard it would be on us, if they would have done it. And if they had decided against it, that would be one less faithful pastor serving LCMS congregations. There must be others who weigh the situation but decide against it for their children. Wouldn’t it be better to have faithful pastors who went through a different formation process than not have them at all?
During the debates around pastoral formation, I was deeply saddened to see pastors on social media making derogatory comments about their SMP brethren. And I was personally offended and disgusted to see people commenting that sacrifice is part of the reason residential-only is the best approach. It made me wonder how many of those making these comments had actually experienced what it is like to be a second-career seminarian with a family. It is one thing to talk about sacrifice in the abstract. It is another thing to be the child who has to leave her home, friends, church, and community again and again because of it.
The idea that sacrifice and suffering are part of the seminary experience is simply not true for everyone. A young, pre-seminary college graduate who is simply seamlessly continuing his education is not the same as a second-career student with a family. The sacrifices involved simply cannot be compared to those of a second-career student who uproots his family, quits his job or sells his business, and moves across the country. And that’s just the first sacrifice. He then does it again when he goes on vicarage, again when he comes back, and again when he gets his first call. And he’s not the only one sacrificing – his entire family is. He is not the same as the man who attends Concordia University and moves on directly to seminary; it is not even close.
If there is a kinder way to form pastors who already have families, shouldn’t we allow for that? Or is making them and their families suffer really the point? Is avoidable suffering somehow necessary to ensure that their doctrine is sound? If you are a pastor, you will sacrifice. If you are a pastor’s family, you will sacrifice. We don’t need to manufacture it; it will come. So, shouldn’t we do what we can to make the sacrifice a little easier to make? To lessen each other’s burdens just a little bit? To bring a little more light to what can be a dark and lonely time? Or is the suffering the point?
Our synod has beautiful, sound, faithful theology. That’s not because we are Lutheran, or because we use the LSB and play the organ. It’s not because we use one particular formation model over another. Rather, it is because we teach, preach, and confess biblical truth.
I am a Confessional Lutheran because I believe the Lutheran Confessions are the most faithful expression of what Scripture teaches. Precisely for that reason, I want the synod to be careful not to confuse biblical doctrine with adiaphora, institutional preference, or particular cultural expressions of Lutheranism.
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