Called to Serve: Or, Who is Crazy Enough to be a College Professor and an ELCA Clergy Person at the Same Time

This article is by The Rev. Dr. Bob Gnuse, who has served as very part-time “interim” pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Marrero, Louisiana for three decades. Bob was six years at St. Paul’s College Concordia MO., two years at Concordia Senior College, and then to Concordia St. Louis. He graduated from Seminex in 1974 with an M.Div. and in 1975 with STM. He and retired Pasror David Roschke were together all twelve years from 1962-74.

I have been the part-time, temporary, vacancy pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Marrero, LA since January 1993. That somewhat adds depth of meaning to the concept of vacancy pastor. Good Shepherd cannot afford a full time pastor, so I am their only option. Yeah, they are stuck with me. (I really don’t know what to say about small churches. You merge them, you break people’s hearts.) I preach on Sundays, make hospital and sick calls, perform weddings, and do baptisms. I am also the part-time chaplain for Concordia Lutheran grade school, which is affiliated with Good Shepherd. That means I do chapel services once a week, if possible, and attend monthly board meetings. I also make myself available for counseling at both institutions. I do not attend church meetings, except for annual Congregational meetings. I do not like meetings; I avoid them whenever possible. You clergy understand that; meetings are our least favorite part of ministry. Yawn.

Between 1980 and 1993 I performed vacancy ministry for varying lengths of time at Peace Lutheran in Slidell, Grace Lutheran in New Orleans (twice), House of Prayer Lutheran in Harvey, Gethsemane Lutheran in Chalmette, Bethlehem Lutheran in New Orleans, an earlier time at Good Shepherd, and some occasional services at Immanuel Lutheran, St. Andrews Lutheran, Christ the King Lutheran, Visitation of our Lady Roman Catholic, and St. Philip’s Episcopal. Well, in forty-four years you can manage to go everywhere, I suppose. Three people trained under me at Good Shepherd to become AIMs and later became ordained ELCA clergy; two of them serve parishes in New Orleans now (Rev. Sandra Barnes and Rev. Todd LaGrange). Rev. Deborah Halter was the third. All three were first religious studies majors at Loyola; that made my job in training them very easy. They were really good people. I felt like I was really doing something for the ELCA at large with that task.

Why am I part time in these parishes? I have a day job. I teach Old Testament, World Religions, and History of Christian thought at Loyola University in New Orleans (since 1980). I am currently the James C. Carter, S.J., Chase Bank Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and Full Professor of Hebrew Bible at Loyola. If you stay somewhere long enough, they will put a lot of stuff behind your name. I was also chairperson of the Religious Studies Department at various times for ten years. That’s like herding cats or being the only fire hydrant in a dog kennel. In 2003 I had fifteen full time and twelve part time faculty in the department. I went to schools smaller than that. During those years I managed to produce close to four hundred publications (books, articles, critical book reviews). Okay, so I’m O.C.D. Currently I am on sabbatical and writing my twenty-first book. Why am I still doing this at age 77? Maybe it’s a hobby. This year I was awarded the Loyola Dux Academicus Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship (they ran out of other old people to give it to). It was an honor.

So why do I function as a full time faculty member and part time clergyperson. Because even before I went to seminary I considered that to be an ideal goal—to serve church and university, town and gown. Furthermore, I find that preaching on biblical texts helps me explain them in a more clear and organized fashion to my undergraduate and graduate students at Loyola. It gives me ideas for my scholarship when I think about preaching on a biblical text in a practical and meaningful way. When little children in the grade school come up and hug me after a chapel service, when college students applaud after my two day lecture on Job, or my two day lecture on why the so-called seven homosexual passages in the Bible are not about same sex relations, or the computer tech specialist at Loyola tells me I changed her daughter’s life and that I should never stop teaching, I cry on the inside and resolve never to retire.

People ask me how I manage two jobs. I’m not sure; there’s a lot of conflict. And . . . it all conflicts with yard work in my two acre yard (sarcasm there). Well, seriously, the full time job at Loyola has to take precedence (unless it’s a university meeting). Anything takes precedence over a meeting, especially Loyola meetings. Classes always come first.

The best part of my jobs are lecturing and preaching sermons. In class I will throw a beer bucket across the classroom when I talk about Jeremiah’s oracle of the broken pot in the valley (only hit two students in forty-six years, both at the University of Virginia, and these two ladies pinned the bucket to the floor with their feet and never broke stride in taking notes). Students love it. Yeah, and I get theatrical in the sermons, too.

People ask how do I fit sermon preparation into this schedule? Simple answer: I don’t prepare sermons. I have taught the Bible and collected sermon stories for half a century. I walk into church on Sunday morning, look at the bulletin, and I know what I am going to say both scholarly and existentially or pastorally. I was a theology major in college; that helps too. I also read jokes out of a big church joke book before the sermon. That helps. People probably come for that, their favorite part of the service, I’m sure. My biggest problem is to shut myself up because I will go on forever with biblical information or romantic old stories.

The worst part of my two jobs is the funerals, especially of people I knew. I actually prepare and memorize those sermons. They are tense for me but special for the families. Funeral homes are difficult to work with, because if my schedule won’t allow me to do a funeral, they will not change the schedule, and I cannot do the funeral. Weddings also haunt me because I can only think about how many marriages end in divorce and whether this couple will make it in the future. When I see a person suffering in the hospital I am so tempted to doubt God’s existence despite my philosophy and theology.

When a young priest on the Westbank says I inspired him to enter the priesthood, or when a young man says I inspired him to become a rabbi, or when a woman on the Westbank says my sermons kept her husband from losing his faith, or when Vietnamese nuns say that I inspire them in their mission, so they all come to Loyola to take my classes, or when a young black male tells me that he’s gay and condemned in his conservative Baptist family, but my lectures on the gay texts have enabled him to hold his head up in his family, I cry on the inside and know I can never stop.