Herding Vultures

Third Monday / September, '25

Third Monday / September, ’25

Hello! Third Monday posts are more incidental, personal, and situational updates touching on my life in general and on the possibilities and circumstances of ministry. Let me know what you think at randy@greatheartstable.com or in the comments below.

I

I’m excited to post the second of my two part interview with three pastors’ wives on the challenges and opportunities of being the spouse of an elder or a pastor. You can listen to this on Apple or Spotify. This is, as some of you know, a revisiting in two parts of the original interview that was aired as a single long feature a year ago. Those who have listened have discovered how much wisdom these three women have to offer. I hope you check out both parts.

II

Some of you are aware that over the past five years or so I have addressed the troubling realities that many parents face when their adult children make choices contrary to what these parents hoped for or expected. I have addressed this issue in both a retreat format and as a church conference. Though I have chosen to no longer sponsor the retreats, I’m still the conference to churces. If you’d like more information, you can download an information packet here. I’d love to bring this material to your church!

III

The lake around which my wife and I regularly run recently had a mysterious die off of a significant number of some very large fish. The fish, of course, drew vultures, which very efficiently worked to clean up the mess. On one morning we counted seventy vultures along the half-mile trail that circles the lake, which gave me plenty of time to study vulture behavior.

One thing I learned is that vultures resist being herded. I would adjust the direction I ran to see if I could coax certain vultures into one group or another. Not, I discovered, with any kind of consistent success.

The joke is often made that leadership in the church is like herding cats. Perhaps. But I decided on my run that pastoral ministry is much more akin to herding birds. Sometimes they go the way you want. Sometimes they do not. Or, unlike cats, sometimes they simply just fly away.

IV

I was examining another church’s web-site “history” page recently, and I noticed that the mile markers in its telling consisted of new pastors and new buildings. It struck me that that is often the case. Is this wrong-headed or wise? I’m not sure I can answer that. It does seem to me that I’d like to see another way of telling the story of a church community, but I’m not sure how that would be done. If some of you have thoughts on this, or have figured it out, do let me know!

V

Coming soon to the GHT podcast is a two-part interview I did with Dr. Jessie Swigart of Covenant Theological Seminary. Dr. Swigart has researched what it means to have a professional identity. How does a person come to think, act, and feel as a professional, whether that profession is medicine, law, or some other, including clergy? We covered a lot of territory, including the very idea of a pastor being considered as a professional at all. It was a stimulating conversation. I hope you check it out. It will be on the podcast side only and will release on September 29 here or here.