Last week I preached at a church in Virginia. After the service, folks lined up the way they do to shake hands and say a kind word. A woman stepped up, smiled, and asked me a question. “Do you know who I am?”
I did not. I looked at her face and nothing came. That is an awkward moment for a preacher. People expect you to remember them, and you want to. I told her the truth.
Then she told me her first name. That was all it took. I knew her last name before she could say it. I knew her people. I could see her as a teenager in the youth department at First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens. I had not seen her in 33 years.
She is a grown woman now. She is married with four children. They belong to the church where I had just preached, a church led by one of my mentees. He credits our time together with helping him grow as a leader. So the young girl I once pastored is now a member of a church led by a pastor I once mentored. I stood there a minute and let that settle.
One of the greatest joys of pastoral ministry is watching young people grow up and pursue what they were made to do. You do not see the whole picture while it is happening. You see them on Sunday mornings, at youth meetings, at choir rehearsal. You see them when they are in trouble and when they are showing off. Then they leave, and years later you find out how the story went.
Some of those stories have gone very well. One of our young people from First Baptist is touring the world as a featured singer with a world-renowned artist. We heard that voice in our sanctuary first. Another opened a beauty shop that is wildly successful. Another is the pastor of a sister church. We even nurtured a hip hop star and a very successful hip hop producer. The producer learned music production while volunteering at the church. We thought we were getting help with the sound. We were watching a career begin.
It is especially rewarding when they say thank you. Sometimes they can cite something specific I said or did. A sermon. A conversation in my office. A hard word when they needed one. Often I do not remember saying it. They remember. That is humbling. A pastor says thousands of things over the years, and you never know which ones will take root.
I was an activist. I fought for social change and for better public policy. That work aimed at large groups of people. Neighborhoods. Cities. Sometimes the whole country. I believed in that work and I still do. Pastoral ministry is different at its core. It serves one person or one family at a time. A hospital visit. A wedding. A teenager who needs somebody to believe in them. A mother who needs somebody to sit with her.
So success in the pastorate is measured differently. Headlines do not measure it. Personal fame does not measure it. The size of the congregation does not measure it, though plenty of us have been tempted to think so. Success is measured by the outcomes in the lives of specific people. Names and faces. A woman in Virginia with four children and a church home.
I cannot see the whole ledger. Many young people left for college or entered adulthood, and I never heard from them again. I do not know how their lives turned out. I pray they turned out well. Some of them may have had hard roads. That is part of pastoring too. You plant the seed. Somebody else may see the harvest. Sometimes nobody sees it but God.
The ones who stay in touch are constant reminders that a lot of good came out of those 31 years. They are my evidence. On the days I wonder whether it mattered, I think of them.
I believe this is true for my clergy colleagues as well. Every faithful pastor has a list like mine. Somewhere there is a nurse, a teacher, a deacon, a business owner, a father who turned out all right, who remembers what the pastor said when they were fourteen. Most of us will never get a full accounting. We get a few moments like the one I had in Virginia.
She asked if I knew who she was. I did not, at first. But once she said her name, I knew exactly where she came from. I am grateful I lived long enough to see where she landed.
So true. I’m a witness. 🙏🏾