The Pastor You Got, Not the Pastor You Wanted
By Tasha
Genck Morton
A Life of Never Failing Up
failed _____________.” This was the free association prompt that greeted me at the psychological assessment I was required to take to become a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I had already taken the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, the Shipley Institute of Living Scale, the Strong Interest Inventory, and the Myers-Briggs Types Indicator and was preparing to discuss the results of all of these with the interviewing psychologist. But while I had sped through the others, this particular prompt stumped me. Eventually I filled in the blank with “an organic chemistry test.” Then I went through the interview, which involved a lot of talking about both my life and the results of the other inventories. At the end, the psychologist asked if I had any questions. I asked about those fill-in-the-blank prompts, specifically the one about failure. They had not come up in our conversation, and I was
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curious what purpose they served. He kindly explained that they could serve as glimpses into deeper issues. For instance, if I had filled in the blank with “my marriage,” we would have had a lot to talk about. Turns out failing an organic chemistry test your sophomore year of college doesn’t set off a whole lot of alarm bells at the psychological interview of a prospective pastor. This memory is a well-preserved snapshot of the 22-year-old me whose biggest failure at the time had been getting a 50 on a science test. But fast forward 18 years, through a Master’s in Divinity program, ordination into the Church, a marriage of long enough duration that I’m starting to lose track (the year etched into my wedding band informs me it’s coming up on 13 years), a 6-yearold son, and nearly 14 years serving as a pastor—and there are many more things I could write in that blank. Recently I found myself speaking with someone who was thinking of going into ordained ministry. As we were talking about the ins and outs of the profession, they mentioned to me that they wanted to
THE MOCKINGBIRD
