(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Your Congregation's Public Profile." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Constructing the Story.")

Your Congregation's Public Profile: A Pastor's Story

You do, however, need to single out at least one member—the pastor—in order to capture another side of the congregation's life. In your effort to make your congregational history something more than an expanded biography of clergy, do not leave out these important actors in your congregation's story. Instead, you as congregational historian need to place pastors in their proper place within the larger story you are telling.

Pastor Schmidt, for example, will head straight home from Sunday worship for dinner and a nap after a full morning, before she continues an exceptionally busy week. She, too, attends Faith's concert, but then she stays at church to meet with the congregation's youth group. Later that evening, she stops by the community hospital to pick up the pager carried by the staff chaplain who is taking the night off. For the next 12 hours, she is on call for any emergency that occurs at the hospital. On previous occasions being on call has almost always meant a return to the hospital to comfort a family she had not known before that is in the midst of tragedy, or to pray with someone at death's door.

Monday morning begins at breakfast with the neighboring clergy who gather weekly to study the Scripture lessons for the coming Sunday. This ecumenical group is unofficial, but it also serves as a place where clergy discuss parish problems and community issues. During the week, Pastor Schmidt will continue her sermon preparation, as well as take time for other study. She will also attend a meeting of the local ministerial conference of her synod and a board meeting of the local Council of Churches. One evening of the week she will be out calling on people who visited Faith on the previous Sunday. Another afternoon will be spent back at the hospital, where she serves on its bioethics committee. There will be stops at the local food pantry to drop off canned goods gathered during the previous week, at the high school to discuss New Age spirituality with a parents group, and at the nursing home to lead monthly worship services.

Although many of her evenings are spent in meetings and counseling sessions at Faith, one night of this week is reserved for a meeting with other female clergy who gather to reflect on their experience and support each other. Each week Pastor Schmidt also takes a day off, and she usually plans two or three evenings for family, friends, and personal activities. Twice a year she attends board meetings of the seminary from which she graduated, and occasionally she stops in at meetings of the city council when important community issues come up for debate. Although she has never marched in public protest since arriving at Faith, the files of several state and federal officials contain her letters advocating particular positions or causes.

Tracking Pastor Schmidt is one way of following another part of Faith's public story. In this case, her weekly comings and goings take us into many of the local community agencies—a hospital and food pantry, the high school, the city council, a nursing home. They also take us into numerous religious institutions: her seminary, the local clergy group, the Council of Churches, the ministerium of the ELCA. If we read her letters to the government officials and listen in on her conversations with the female clergy, we will find that her story takes us into numerous social and political movements, as well. Moreover, some of the local organizations she works with are parts of natural structures, so she is participating in processes that reach far beyond her own community.

By itself, Pastor Schmidt's story would result in a lopsided congregational portrait. The same would be true if we relied only on Martin Miller's story. The challenge facing the congregational historian is to relate these and other member stories to the other threads of Faith's history.