4
Pastor and Father

In the spring of 1977, I brought my new wife home to my two-bedroom apartment in the Teen Challenge house in Rochester. We shared a bathroom with the office staff, and residents would regularly shout to me through our bedroom window. At Teen Challenge, I became a kind of circuit-riding, weekend gospel warrior. Cheryl and I often hit the road together, bundling our residents into a van to take them to a different church within a few hours’ drive, where I would either preach the sermon or simply take a few minutes in the service to raise some money to support our work. Occasionally I would ask one of the recovering addicts to testify or tell his story of finding freedom from drugs and crime through faith in Christ, and maybe sing a gospel song, which many of our more gregarious types just loved to do. I gained confidence as a preacher, even though I had not yet received credentials to be an official minister. Most denominations require ministerial candidates to possess a master of divinity degree, but all I had were a few nonaccredited Elim courses and undergraduate Bible correspondence courses. After a few months, I was already restless. I wanted badly to be ordained, but the path to my goal was uncertain.

As would often happen in my life, there was a providential intervention. Reverend Paul Johansson, Elim’s vice president and an officer on its credentialing committee, agreed to interview me. He had gotten to know Paul during his time at Elim. And it turned out Reverend Johansson was also an identical twin, whose brother, a pastor in New York City, was named Rob. Twins by the same name sure left me feeling comfortable with him. In a long phone interview with “Paul Jo,” as he was affectionately known, I discussed my coming to Jesus and how my faith had developed and what my intentions were for serving Christ as a minister. Paul had said similar things when he went through the same vetting. Reverend Johansson knew my brother and my mentor, Tommy Reid, and he said that gave him confidence in me. I talked about my work with Teen Challenge and the joy and commitment I felt in sharing the good news of the gospel.

He told me—as he had told Paul—he would normally not recommend someone so young and with so little training for a ministerial license, the first step toward ordination, but he would make the exception in my brother’s and my case because he saw promise. He warned me, though, that he would be paying close attention to what I did, saying that, in an old house, cracks in the basement are nothing to worry about, but that is not so in new construction. In his estimation I was a new house, and he would be looking for cracks in my foundation.

Preparation for the ministry is intellectually rigorous, demanding a mastery of Old and New Testament literature, hermeneutics (or the science of Bible interpretation), the history of ancient Israel and the Christian church, biblical languages—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—and comprehensive surveys of theology, Christian counseling, and even church educational administration. Over the three years I studied, my favorite course was Christian Discipleship, or how to live like Jesus. By the time Cheryl and I celebrated my twenty-first birthday, I was carrying a “license to preach,” giving me the title of “Reverend.” I had opened new Teen Challenge Centers in Syracuse and Buffalo and been promoted to executive director of the Upstate New York system, Empire State Teen Challenge.

It was an idyllic time for us, as broke and busy as we were. There were plenty of harrowing moments, like the time one of our residents came after me with a garden hoe. (Thankfully he missed me.) More than one confessed to having committed murder, and one told me he had repeatedly raped his own daughter. Notwithstanding such shocking revelations, and the risk that came with living beside these guys, I felt I was truly living the life of a minister, ministering to the least among us. It was a challenge at times to find the image of Christ in a strung-out, thieving, lying addict, but those were exactly the kind of people Jesus most wanted us to love and bring into our hearts. Even so, we had to take care of ourselves, and the close call with the garden hoe, followed by a menacing threat against Cheryl by a neighbor with a bowie knife, persuaded me we should leave our heroin addicts and move to our own place.

We eventually settled into a $125-a-month apartment on a leafy street in the suburb of East Rochester—and felt like we were in the lap of luxury. Then, in the fall of 1978, another prayer was answered when Cheryl’s pregnancy test showed positive. Since the moment I met Cheryl, she had imagined herself as a happy mom. She loved children and volunteered to work with them wherever we were—in church nurseries and Sunday schools, in backyard vacation Bible clubs, and with Down syndrome kids at summer camp. And my joy was increased, because in becoming parents we were not only doing something emotionally gratifying, but literally fulfilling God’s first commandment, to “be fruitful and multiply.” I had been taught from the first days of my Christian faith that a father’s role and responsibilities reflect the job description of our Heavenly Father more fully than even that of a preacher.

Whatever difficulties my own parents might have had, I was sure Cheryl and I would avoid them. We understood what it meant to be a “Christian family,” and we knew where to look to unlock the secrets to a happy home. After all, our entire world was organized to support Christian family life. We joined about fifty others at a small country church where some of the women sported “chapel bonnets,” in obedience to Saint Paul’s command for women to pray with their heads covered. They offered each other everything from recipes and tips on shopping bargains to informal Christian marriage counseling. The men worked hard to be the providers their wives and families deserved and the Lord expected. As the time grew nearer for the birth of our first child, they gave us a baby shower, and along with the onesies and washcloths and bibs were a few books on Christian family life.

One of the most important volumes was by celebrity Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye and his wife, Beverly. Eventually he would write the massively successful Left Behind series of novels focusing on the End Times, but before he wrote these blockbusters, he and his wife were the authors of a series of highly influential books on Christian marriage and family life.

The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love was a sensation in the evangelical community and useful for two relative innocents. I had had my escapades with teenage sex before I came to faith in Christ, but they were hardly sophisticated or mutually satisfying. Now that I was a responsible, married Christian man, I was, like most evangelicals, consigned to the role of disapproving observer of the sexual revolution. The LaHayes’ book gave us permission to be active participants, but not the promiscuous or licentious version that nonbelievers practiced. In fifteen chapters, ranging from “The Sanctity of Sex” to “Practical Answers to Common Questions,” they explored the beauties and the specifics of sexual acts in a Christian marriage. The LaHayes left us able to feel God’s grace while having a healthy, robust intimate life in which intercourse was not just for procreation but also for a full expression of the miracle of God’s creation in the love between a man and a woman. (Not to mention the best insurance policy of all to prevent wandering eyes.)

Another must-read for parents was Dare to Discipline, the all-time most popular evangelical source on child-rearing by pediatric psychologist and radio personality Dr. James Dobson, a superstar in our evangelical world. He was the Benjamin Spock of our culture, and you were not only a good parent for following his instruction, you were an educated and informed parent. We learned from reading Dobson how much children needed discipline and how necessary it was if they were to respect their parents. Dobson was clear that parents had a responsibility to discipline kids, and that meant a spanking now and then was not just appropriate but necessary. Reading and carefully following Dobson meant you were an earnest Christian parent who saw your duty as a calling from God. I just needed to look back on my own upbringing, those wild days in our early teens when our parents seemed to have disappeared, to realize how helpful it would have been for us if our parents had “dared to discipline.”

Cheryl’s and my experiences with dysfunctional homes had left us determined not to blow it as parents and to do better with our kids than our parents had done with us. We not only read the books, we took every church-sponsored parenting workshop, seminar, and retreat available—and there were many. We lived by the ethic that the best parenting advice of all could be found in the Bible, which spoke clearly to how we could be the best mother and father. Scripture laid out a perfect parenting method: firm discipline matched with tough but abundant love, regular and careful instruction in the faith, and precise behavioral boundaries. We were sure that in all this we would be almost guaranteed nearly perfect Christian children.

In a way, we saw our task as reclaiming human civilization. By “training up a child in the way he should go,” as one Bible verse put it, we would preserve as much as we could of a God-fearing society in the present while we set up a godly generation to take the reins of culture in the future. Our kids would be the leaders of tomorrow—in the church, civil society, education, business, the arts and entertainment, and, of course, politics—and they would bring their stalwart Christian convictions and way of life with them into those spheres of influence. Not only was parenting a source of great happiness for Cheryl and me, it was also an essential component of God’s strategic mission.

Given all this support, I threw myself into preparations for fatherhood and, at twenty-one, felt more than mature enough to be a dad: I had prayed about it, read about it, heard plenty of sermons on it, preached a sermon or two on it, talked with peers about it, counseled parents on it, and studied what the Bible said about fatherhood. On a more practical level, I went to Lamaze childbirth classes with Cheryl, learned breathing techniques and how to apply effleurage, and coached her in focusing, panting, and blowing.

But none of that could have prepared me for the day that Cheryl went into labor. I was preaching in a church forty-five minutes from our hospital, and I was coming to my last point when I saw Cheryl in the front row, her eyes wide-open, pointing to her big belly. I’ve never finished a sermon so quickly! We raced to the hospital, where we spent the next fifteen hours. A little after six a.m. Anna Lynn arrived at 9.3 pounds. This was as close as I would ever come to being present at the creation, and I felt the radiance of pure love: God’s love, mine for Cheryl, and our love for this marvelous new person. Three weeks into Anna’s new life, Cheryl and I took her to a nearby David Wilkerson Crusade, where the man who inspired my ministry venture dedicated my daughter to the Lord. Evangelicals do not baptize infants, because baptism is seen as an informed act of the conscious will. We do, however, literally, lift a new child up to the Lord, as the biblical Hannah did with her son Samuel and as was done with Jesus in the Temple. Wilkerson did that with Anna, praying God’s richest blessing on her and us.

For Cheryl, to be Anna’s mother and my wife was a full-time job, one she took to with contentment and commitment. Her college dreams had long been eclipsed by our busy life and marriage, and she found that serving our family was fulfilling. I was an eager and involved dad, but given all my work and the necessity of keeping up with my studies in order to be credentialed as a minister, I struggled to be present like many of my male contemporaries. On top of very demanding ministry work that required my crisscrossing the state, tending to our three Teen Challenge Centers, and preaching many weekends at different churches, I was also engrossed in my schoolwork. Somehow we kept it all in balance. As usual, it seemed as if my life and Paul’s ran on parallel tracks. He, too, had become a new father, with a baby girl of his own, Leah Naomi, who would grow up to be like a sister to her cousin Anna.

By the time Paul’s and my ordination exams were scheduled, we had migrated from the Elim Fellowship to the Assemblies of God, a much larger but similarly Pentecostal body that owned and operated Teen Challenge. Paul had also become our Buffalo director. It had not really been a choice. The denominational office had contacted both of us to announce that if we expected to keep our jobs, we needed to carry their ministerial credentials—not Elim’s. The process we had been through with Elim was compatible enough with the new denomination that they simply replaced our Elim license cards with theirs. That gave both of us access to the much more prestigious Assemblies of God pulpits for guest preaching, and the substantial network of clergy, institutions, and benefits—such as continuing education, clergy-specific publications, and even a sophisticated retirement program—offered to its thirty thousand registered clergy. Paul and I kept up relationships with colleagues at Elim and in virtually every major Christian denomination, but the Assemblies of God now took precedence over all of them.

During my studies, I saw much more clearly my options. Ministers are trained to follow one of three possible trajectories: a pastor, caring for a flock; an evangelist, proclaiming the gospel under tents, in theaters, arenas, even on sidewalks; or a missionary, setting up beachheads for evangelization in far-off places around the globe. You can’t be “evangelical” without being “mission oriented,” whether that mission was in the neighborhood church or the African bush. “Mission” is an essential component of the evangelical ethos and I soon realized this was where I would channel my energies. I just wasn’t sure at that point what it would look like, since there was a huge barrier between me and ordination, the final step in achieving full ministerial status. That barrier was also known as final exams.

Those immune to test anxiety will never fully comprehend the sheer terror I experience when faced with exams. I could imagine no greater blow or humiliation than to be tested and fail. Cheryl would try to remind me that this was not something that happened very frequently, but her reassurance was irrelevant.

The Assemblies of God ordination examination was broken into two intimidating sections: a long, comprehensive written portion, followed by an oral exam conducted by a tribunal of church elders interrogating me on every aspect of the Bible and church teaching. I would be taking the written part in the office of my presbyter, a local pastor who served as a kind of “bishop” for a geographic region. The clouds of despair and anxiety parted just a bit to let in some light when I learned I could bring my Bible and any notes it might contain. If evangelicals are known for anything, it is for our active engagement with our Bibles. We are enthusiastic notetakers and commentators, marking up our Bibles with marginalia, highlighting whole paragraphs in different colors, and even taping extra paper to pages so we can write more. It wasn’t uncommon for me to hear people pulling pens out of their pockets and purses and riffling pages as I announced my sermon text. For most evangelicals, a thoroughly annotated Bible is the sure sign of a serious Christian.

The main portion of the written exam would surround the core beliefs of our church—what are called “the Sixteen Fundamental Truths.” Each of the precepts would be based on specific Bible verses. I created a system with codes that matched the primary verse to the numbered “Truth.” I was confident I could memorize at least those initial references. I then scribbled cramped citations for related texts near the numbered one so I could follow a thread, and jammed still other notes in the adjoining margins. I passed the written exam with a 97 percent.

But the worst was still to come: the oral exam, in which no assistance from crib notes was permitted. I repeated to myself that I was not alone, God would be with me, and I prayed desperately. I was told Cheryl would be required to sit with me and I felt a sense of relief. Prospective ministerial spouses are very important players in the ordination process. After all, a wife was expected to be her husband’s biggest supporter, booster, prayer partner, sounding board, shoulder to cry on, protector, defender, and all-around assistant. Cheryl was up to the task, but she had no idea when we drove to the state offices of the Assemblies of God, just north of Syracuse, how much scrutiny she would be under. The examiners were determined to discover if she had the comportment and commitment to be a properly supportive clergy spouse and a model for others.

Colleagues and friends who had been through the exams would roll their eyes at the mention of “the Oral” and say with resignation, “I’ll pray for you, brother.” In my world, this was the equivalent of an oral defense of a PhD dissertation—where you either succeeded and could pursue your chosen profession, or failed and had to start over or abandon your dreams. Now it was my turn—or rather our turn, because Cheryl would be treated as an extension of me. It was an odd way to approach the task, as this was not the way we truly lived, or the way we related to each other. We were mostly equal partners. We needed one another and supported each other, and sometimes we would share affectionate exasperation with many of the most rigid aspects of our church’s dogma about women’s subordination to men. But I was feeling drawn into the dominant male church culture as well, and in events like this, no matter what our quotidian lives might have looked like, Cheryl was technically my subordinate. She never regarded herself as that to me, but she understood I was to be the head of our household. And, as a young mother, she knew her principal responsibility was child-rearing. No matter what we thought of it, that’s what the Bible commanded.

We entered the district presbytery building; I was drenched with sweat and felt nauseated. The executive, general, and sectional presbyters—about thirty older, experienced pastors from across the state—were going to ask me some one hundred questions, each in turn, over the course of two hours. The group included a few caustic New Yorkers, ratcheting up the likelihood of humiliation in my mind. I was too young, I thought. How presumptuous of me to have assumed I was ready to take on this monumental responsibility. We sat silently outside the conference room door. After about twenty minutes of anxiously waiting, we were invited into the formal chamber, arranged much like a court hearing room, with long tables configured in a U, a phalanx of mostly graying ministers in crisply pressed shirts, their thick, dark ties accenting pin-striped three-piece suits. Cheryl and I were shown to two chairs at a small table nestled at the top of the U. The district superintendent, Almon Bartholomew (“Brother B.”), the quintessential proper Protestant minister, began speaking slowly with precise, almost exaggerated diction: “Brother and Sister Schenck, thank you for joining us here today. This is your ordination interview. Let us pray.”

I don’t remember his prayer, because I was too busy begging God for mercy. Cheryl gave my damp hand a squeeze, and the questioning began, moving up and down the tables until almost every minister had his chance at me. I felt pummeled by what I thought were relentlessly hostile questions. When one of the inquisitors noted my “youthful age,” I took it as a signal that there was no chance for me to succeed. The inquiry turned to Cheryl, and she was asked how she saw my calling. She replied that she trusted in God and would support me and the ministry God had given to me as my wife and Anna’s mother. I was very proud of her, knowing how difficult it must have been for her to speak facing a roomful of middle-aged, graying leaders who held my future in their hands. The questioners returned to me until Brother B. dismissed us, saying that they planned to pray over my fate.

Painfully long minutes passed and finally we were invited back in. I was resigned to failure, but when I saw the smile on Brother B.’s face, it was obvious I had passed. Before announcing their decision, he had one final admonition, warning me that bearing the permanent title of “Reverend” meant I would be judged differently from others, in everything that I did, from the movies I attended to the clothes that I wore. He asked if I would be ready for such scrutiny. When I replied I would, he offered his congratulations and opened his Bible to read to me 1 Timothy 4:1–10:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.

The words seemed so personally directed to me that I had goose bumps as he read them.