At Home in Zion
Steven K. Gjerde on the Gift of Living in a Parsonage
It is early evening, and my family has just said the table prayer. I am starting to relax after a day of visiting the homebound, and my son eagerly tells me about his latest adventures at preschool. Suddenly, the doorbell rings.
“Oh, Pastor! I’m glad you’re home,” says the harried parishioner on our porch step. “I forgot to pick up my Sunday-school materials last Sunday, and the church is locked, so I was wondering if—oh, I’m sorry. Were you eating?”
Yes, we were eating, but soon enough I will trot across the gravel road and unlock the church as asked. When I return home, my wife will frown at me, my son will have drifted to a different conversation, and my dinner will be that much colder, but so it goes when a pastor lives, to the chagrin of his family, the pity of his friends, and the pleasure of God, in a parsonage.
Clerical Exodus
Any parsonage-dweller knows the situation that I just described, as well as far more hair-raising ones.
My wife still shakes her head at the memory of water so rusty that it shocked the water inspector into an open-mouthed stare. I shudder at other memories, like the drunken man (a rumored child-molester) who came to our front door to speak with me, only to find my wife and children home alone. Living in a church-owned residence, especially if it is next door to the church, puts a pastor’s household in the crosshairs of public attention.
Understandably, many clergy and their families have chafed under that attention and grown to resent it. Nosy parishioners, demanding or stubborn property committees, and a fishbowl existence have frequently conspired to inflict harm on the parsonage family’s faith, happiness, and physical health. Such conditions are rightly called intolerable.
Perhaps that is why more and more Protestant pastors, and even some Roman Catholic priests, are choosing to purchase private homes. In my own denomination, fewer than one-third of all pastors live in a parsonage, turning a formerly common practice into the exception. Anecdotal evidence corroborates the statistic: Of the ten sister congregations in my area, only three still have a parsonage. The others have either dispensed with theirs or never owned one at all, and instead they offer various housing allowances and stipends.
In some places, pastors will use these allowances to purchase homes that are several miles, even an hour or so, away from their people. The example of a local Catholic parish illustrates the point: Casting his eyes beyond the busy downtown where he found himself, the priest converted his comely manse into meeting space before moving to the edge of a golf course. Many of his Protestant counterparts would applaud the decision.
The reasons cited for this clerical exodus usually include finances, family considerations, and an ambiguous category called “healthy boundaries.” One colleague, upon hearing that I lived in church property, did not even ask whether I liked it or not. She simply said, “Well, start saving now so you can get out of there.” She spoke as though I lived by the fleshpots of Egypt, and only required a monetary Moses to deliver me into the promised land.
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