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Bishop's Book Review Open Secrets Richard Lischer is a good story teller. Raised and educated in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, his experiences in his first parish call are poetically detailed in Open Secrets. I have never been to Southern Illinois near where the Mississippi and Missouri come together. No matter. I still recognized many of the parish characters he writes about serving a small congregation in a small town setting. Lischer is not a typical pastor. He earned a doctorate before he began his parish work and would, after a few short years in the parish, go on to teaching. He has spent the last 20 years (now an ELCA pastor) at the Duke University divinity school. |
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Lischer reminds us clergy of our own early mistakes. He writes, “Like most preachers, I grossly estimated the importance of my part in the sermon...How ludicrous I must have appeared to my congregation.” When he was leaving this congregation he says, “I remembered all the sins I had committed as pastor of this little church: the inanities, failures, and missed opportunities. But most of all I remembered my pride, which weighed me down from my very first sighting of the church, impeded all my relationships with my parishioners and never let me run with joy the race I might have run.” Pastor Lischer is too tough on himself. This book is well worth reading, especially for those clergy who have been in the Lord’s vineyard for more than ten years! It made me laugh, smile and pause to reflect on those whom I have worked with in the congregation. Thomas A. Skrenes |
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