Which of Your Ancestors Really Ordained You?

Dr. Edwin Friedman, a student of Murray Bowen who developed Bowen Family Systems Theory, asks this question of clergy people:  Which of Your Ancestors Really Ordained You?  

The context of the question arises out of a discussion in his book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York Guilford Press, 1995).  The concept he writes about, Family Projection Process, is one of the eight key concepts of BFST.  Family Project Process is the way in which generations of a family project expectations or roles, unwittingly, on family members and descendants.  His premise here is that those who end up as clergy members have been pre-ordained by someone in their family tree.  Interesting, eh?

Here's what I think. . . clergy and their children are expected to act a certain way, right?  You know it's true!  When was the last time you heard someone say (and maybe it was you who said it), "PK's are the worst kids ever!"  Unruly, disobedient, out of control.  Or are they simply like every other child you've come across?  Full of energy, precocious and yet under the scrutiny of many-a-microscope!  So, how does a person end up as a clergy person?  Of course we all know it has to do with the "call from God."  Sure.  But there's more.  We Lutherans should know that there is more, after all it was our own forebear in the faith, Martin Luther who exposited the doctrine of the Priesthood of ALL Believers!  That means that the job I had in the pathology lab was just as much a vocational/baptismal call as my ordination into the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

So what?  You want to know who ordained me, don't you?  Other than the Bishop of the Northwestern Ohio Synod that is. . .

When I was a child my mother and I were the only ones in our household to attend church regularly.  I would wiggle through worship every Sunday but at the end of the service I knew there was a candy bar waiting for me at Wyatt's Grocery Store which was on the route home.  My brother managed to escape church because our father was not a church attender.  He was baptized, sure, but he managed to forego catechism classes, Sunday School, the nine yards! Mom regrets that course of action but give her a break, she was a product of the family system which dictated that if father stayed home, son stayed home as well. And dad was forced to go to church, dropped off at the curb each Sunday to take his catechism and so he was having nothing to do with the whole empty (to his mind) process whatsoever.

                (All you men take note of that story for the sake of your own sons, please!)

So then, before mom there was her parents. They were charter members of the Lutheran Church across town.  Everyone knew them, they owned one of the few restaurants in the area in the 1950's.  They were very intelligent, hard working people.  They were also extremely stoic. . . no horsing around when you were in the presence of Grandpa and Grandma Wilson.  Proper ladylike behavior and words-- always.  Any exception to that rule would get you the look that could kill and you knew you were being disapproved of and that did not feel too good!  (Do you see a pattern emerging yet?  Church as duty. . . proper behavior.  What sorts of people in society have to behave properly?  You guessed it: CLERGY!)

Me with Zach and Hayden who were baptized on Christmas Day!

In the past couple of years I have been able to add to this family history of ancestors that ordained me.  My great great great Grandfather was the oldest Presbyterian minister on the east coast in the 1830's, The Reverend Doctor Lyman Whiting.  Google his name and you will find that at the University of Iowa there exists a whole collection of his sermons in the archives.  Now there's a legacy to live up to, right?  His children were all musicians who played frequently in church and I think, but I'm not sure yet, that one of them married a clergyman. I know his name, Samuel Taggert, and that he was a special agent the American Indians during the Civil War, but I also have a sneaking suspicion that he was also a clergy person.

Well, I can remember as a child lining up my stuffed animals in my bedroom and getting out the old black hymnal (a precursor to the red SBH and the brown one- whatever that one was called).  I would talk to my bears and dolls, we would sing hymns and recite the Lord's Prayer.  They were a holy bunch of critters to be sure!  (I also taught them all math and reading so don't get too excited!)  But as I reflect back on it with this question in mind of who ordained me, there are some very obvious hints that emerge.  I guess I was the one in the family who was ripe for the picking!  And after some very troubling teen years, the idea of being in a profession were one would behave properly had its appeal I suppose.  At any rate, all of this is a very subconscious process but as I take it out and look at it, turn it around in my hands and gaze deeply into it. . . I can see how it happened.

I'm not unhappy with Lyman, Samuel, Helen, Mildred, Robert or Janice.  I love being a pastor.  It is the toughest job and the greatest privilege of my life.  But just so you know, my kids aren't perfect, my husband isn't either-- and I certainly am not!  So don't expect it or you will be sorely disappointed!  But know that I will always do my best to serve the Lord of my life and his people.

God bless you and Happy New Year!!

Amy