Unfit for the ministry?
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, April 15, 2004
FALKLAND, N.C. – It has been three years since Mark Mueller, 45, erstwhile circus clown, magician, cabinetmaker and craftsman of pricey antique reproductions, decided to become a half-time lay preacher at Falkland Presbyterian Church.
The message board at Falkland Presbyterian Church was blank recently, an unintended sign that the congregation, after three years of dynamic growth led by a lay pastor, is uncertain about what’s next. Before he began serving the conservative Falkland congregation, Mueller had enrolled in the three-year commissioned lay pastor program with the Presbytery of New Hope, which he later completed.
Mueller, an energetic, witty, type-A evangelical, wound up preaching one Sunday at Falkland, a rural congregation in a town with a head count of only 118, according to the 2000 census. Some say the number is fewer today because of a pathetic economy in eastern North Carolina and the lingering effects of Hurricane Floyd, which swamped this region in 1999.
Falkland Presbyterian Church wasn’t exactly the apple of the presbytery’s eye.
Resuscitation a near-death experience
Twice, the presbytery had answered – in what proved to be an unacceptable way – the session’s plea for help to resuscitate the church, which was on the verge of extinction. The presbytery sent two fully ordained Presbyterian pastors, with doctor of ministry degrees to boot. The presbytery now acknowledges that neither was a fit. Worship attendance dropped to about 20.
Falkland became a shrinking congregation whose leaders had little trust in the presbytery. Likewise, the presbytery seemed content to let it die.
But something clicked between Mueller and the handful that attended what was expected to be a one-Sunday stand. They later asked him to become their pastor, even though he had no credentials other than an undergraduate degree in psychology from Geneva College in Pennsylvania and his CLP training.
Bypassing the presbytery’s approval
Distrustful of the presbytery’s involvement because of past experience, the Falkland session figured out a way to bypass having to secure presbytery approval for a call. The elders convinced Mueller to take a $20-an-hour halftime job as minister to youth “and their extended family.” For practical purposes, he was the pastor, because there weren’t many youth – or anyone else.
Mark Mueller still wants to be a Presbyterian minister. By his own admission, Mueller was rough. Pastoring was on-the-job training. But he had the heart for his newest endeavor. The result was almost magical. Mueller prayed for, preached to and visited the flock. Worship more than tripled – up to 80 on Easter. So did giving. Members who had left in the past returned.
The Falkland session decided Mueller was the man for the job, and offered him a financial package with a full-time salary. He balked at the first offer, saying it was too much. So the session refigured the terms and came back with another offer – this time higher. It came to more than $53,000. Mueller balked again, but the elders insisted. They reminded him that he and his wife already had one child in college (Montreat Presbyterian College in Montreat, N.C.) and two teen-agers. Mueller agreed.
Thus, in March of 2003, the session asked the Presbytery of New Hope to commission Mueller as the full-time lay pastor of Falkland Presbyterian Church.
And everything began to unravel.
Rift is like a messy union fight
Under his [Mueller’s] leadership, our congregation has come together in a way that it has not come together ever before to our knowledge. We have grown in numbers, in love, and unity. We believe we can continue to grow and improve under his leadership.
From July 23, 2002 letter to presbytery by Carol N. Register, stated clerk of the session Suddenly, Falkland was in the middle of a storm that sounds like a messy union fight, rife with jealously, outrage, attempts to discredit the legitimacy of Mueller’s claimed call from God to the ministry, accusations that he was trying to lead the church out of the denomination and bitterness.
Furthermore, in a presbytery that stretches from economically depressed eastern North Carolina to the opulent Research Triangle Park area with three major universities – Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and N.C. State University – there’s more than a hint of bias toward post-graduate degreed professionals.
The presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, Commissioned Lay Pastor Committee, Committee on the Preparation for the Ministry, and, ominously, an Administrative Commission entered the fray.
Finally, the presbytery made two things clear: 1) It would never commission Mueller as the lay pastor of Falkland Presbyterian Church and 2) it intended to reshape the church – whose session had unanimously adopted a Confessing Church resolution – to its own way of thinking.
Mueller was out of magic.
“It is with deep regret and much sadness that I must inform you of my decision to resign from my position at Falkland Presbyterian Church,” Mueller said in his March 18, 2004 letter that he read to the congregation. Many cried that day. On Sunday, April 18, he will preach his last sermon at Falkland.
Mueller taking seminary course
He still wants to be a Presbyterian minister. He is taking a correspondence course in theology through Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and plans to become a full-time seminarian at the seminary’s campus in Charlotte. But Gordon Conwell, an evangelical seminary, lacks PCUSA-sanctioned pedigree in many presbyteries, including New Hope. His father, Dr. Walter Mueller, also a member of the presbytery, once taught at Gordon Conwell and wrote a book (1972) on New Testament Greek that is still used by seminarians.
So what happened at Falkland?
Mueller provided The Layman copies of a paper trail that go back to 1999, when he applied to be enrolled in the presbytery’s lay pastor program. Lay pastor candidates, like seminarians seeking to be ordained as ministers of Word and Sacrament, must undergo a psychological evaluation.
Excerpts from letters endorsing
Mueller to presbytery
He has always been kind and courteous with me as well as in all his interaction with the people at Falkland … Mark’s primary desire has been to honor and serve Jesus Christ through his life and service to the church. He is honest and sincere and has demonstrated the gifts of ministry.
At present we have the redevelopment of a small congregation and the development of a future minister. The most prudent and faithful decision we could make at this time would be to let the good work continue.
Rocky Stone, pastor
Farmville Presbyterian Church moderator of the Falkland session
His strengths are many including biblically oriented, spiritually devoted, self-starter, morally strong, mentally agile, creative, hands-on person, service oriented, skilled in many fields, humorous and fun-loving.
Sefton B. Strickland Jr., pastor
Spring Hill Presbyterian Church (Lucama) where Mueller is an elder, teacher and youth adviser Mueller underwent five hours of testing and interviews by a Charlotte psychologist, who gave the presbytery a confidential report on Sept. 21. The report was generally positive and compared him favorably with seminarians in many areas. But there was one glaring exception. The psychologist said Mueller had “a decreased indication of a desire to witness and proclaim the Gospel to reach all persons compared to other seminary students.”
Evidence of commitment
Mueller took exception. He argued that possible answers on that section of the testing, called the Theological School Inventory, fell short of conveying his deep commitment to witness and evangelism. Now, more than three years later, Mueller says that his commitment to witness has been demonstrated in the growth of Falkland Presbyterian Church.
The Theological School Inventory “presented a big problem for me as I was taking the test,” Muller wrote in response to the psychologist’s assessment. “The questions dealing with evangelism, or spreading the Good News, were directed to a particular style … not mine. Therefore, the test shows that my interest for spreading the Gospel is low. This is definitely not the case. On the contrary, telling others about Jesus is most important to me … just not the way as expressed on the test.”
Presbytery advice: Don’t quit your day job
The inventory results came back to haunt him. In May of 2000, he received a letter from Caroline Wylie Smith, former moderator of the presbytery’s Committee on Preparation for Ministry. She was more convinced by the psychological assessment than Mueller’s response.
“Mark, we were concerned about your complete confidence that God is calling you to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament,” Smith wrote. “You were so sure that this is what God has called you to do that when your psychological evaluation raised certain questions about your appropriateness for ministry, you declared that the test was not a good evaluator of you … We felt that you were not open to the Committee’s participation in your discernment of God’s will for your life.”
Nonetheless, she encouraged Mueller to continue the lay pastor training but not to give up his day job: ” … continue making beautiful wooden furniture and cabinets. This is a call as valid as any other.”
There were other messages from the presbytery that pointedly told Mueller that he was unfit for the ministry, including one from Steve Braswell, moderator of the Committee on Preparation for the Ministry. Braswell sent Mueller an e-mail on May 16, 2000, turning down Mueller’s request to appear before the committee at its July 2000 meeting. “Our ‘plate’ is full enough with those interviews and other business that if we scheduled people for other types of interviews, it would place an undue burden on our committee’s work as a whole,” Braswell said. He did, however, invite Mueller to write the committee a letter.
Between that rocky start in the lay pastor program and the Falkland session’s request that the presbytery commission Mueller to become its lay pastor, the correspondence slackened. But it erupted again after Carol N. Register, clerk of session, in a July 23, 2002, letter, asked that the presbytery commission him as its lay pastor. The Committee on Ministry responded principally with a description of the process.
Terms of call spawned a frenzy
Later, the session sent the presbytery its proposed $53,000 package for Mueller, which set off a frenzy. At first, it was all about money – the audacity of the Falkland session to suggest that it should pay a lay pastor more than some seminary-trained ordained ministers were being paid.
The Rev. Ed Conner, clerk of the presbytery’s Commissioned Lay Pastor Committee, wrote the Falkland session a letter on March 3 in which he used bold type and capitalizations to express the committee’s indignation.
Terming the $53,000 “significantly higher than the current calls of many of the ordained ministers of this presbytery,” Conner said such an offer “would seem outrageous to some members of the COM [Committee on Ministry].” He said the Committee on Ministry would likely conclude that if Falkland Presbyterian Church had that kind of money it should “drop any plans involving CLP’s and proceed with the formation of a PNC [Pastor Nominating Committee] and resumption of a search process for an ordained minister.”
Furthermore, Conner said, in language that sounded like that of a union representative, “We strongly suspect that if the work of the CLP’s is perceived as rivaling, challenging or replacing that of ordained ministers, there would be a swelling of opposition among the ranks of ordained ministers to the entire program and concept.”
Ironically, Conner ended his letter this way: “Please be assured of our prayers and concerns in behalf of your Session, your entire congregation and the good work of Mark Mueller.”
No one disputes Falkland’s comeback
In all the correspondence with Mueller and Falkland, no one from the presbytery disputed the fact that the congregation had made a dramatic comeback – spiritually, numerically and financially.
But through the grapevine, Mueller learned of other presbytery concerns, including scuttlebutt that he was trying to drive a wedge between the congregation and the presbytery and that he wanted Falkland to pull out of the denomination. He responded with a written pledge presented to the session titled “Non-Options,” including nine things he would not do. The list included promises not to lead the congregation out of the PCUSA and taking no action that would split the congregation.
On Aug. 26, 2003, John N. Causey, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Smithfield, N.C., and moderator of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, visited Falkland church.
The next day, he wrote a letter to Mueller complaining about some disagreements they had. “I am sorry that you felt like I was your adversary rather than your colleague in ministry from our Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry,” he said.
He reminded Mueller of his obligation to uphold the “peace, unity and purity” of the church. But Causey also gave Mueller a pat on the back. “I pray that the growth and the good spirit experienced there in the past two years will be an inspiration to other churches in the New Hope Presbytery.”
In the August letter, Causey expressed some hope that Mueller and Falkland might get over the hurdles. “And if you still desire to be a Commissioned Lay Pastor, I pray