The first church I ever pastored on my own wasn’t very big. I was an Episcopal priest then; I’m a Catholic priest now. Back then, on a good Sunday we’d gather just over a hundred souls. Faithful, diverse, families of all kinds, folks of all kinds – in many ways it was an ideal parish. I knew them all, and they knew me. A community, in the sense that Wendell Berry uses the word: we were members one of another, bound to each other supernaturally and sacramentally as friends, as family, as church. It felt like a thing provided by nature: charismatic, messy, unmanaged, holy. God was in it, I think. It was a beautiful thing.
But it was also enough to kill a man. It was a lot of work: visiting parishioners, making sick calls, planning worship, writing and printing newsletters and worship aids, teaching, keeping peace in the flower ministry, overseeing a daycare, worrying about money, preaching. I loved all of it, but it added up. It was exhausting. Now I’m a Catholic priest caring for a much larger church; the scale of ministry is entirely different.
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