Norris Burkes

The caller to my church office had a question. “First,” he said, “I’m curious as to what kind of church you are running up there?”

This was the kind of question I get since returning to the pastor role.

Many callers are like the young mother of three who told me, “I have three churches I’m considering attending. But first, I’m asking the pastors to answer some questions.”

She squashed that ordinal number “first,” as if drawing a line in the theological sand.

“First, does your church teach tithing?”

Whenever I meet fellow veterans, we often engage in some good-natured ribbing. I set up the first joke by announcing that I’m an Air Force vet. This inevitably invokes the response, “Oh, you mean you’re a Chair Force vet.”

I understand the nickname because Air Force members occupied a lot of chairs doing technical work in places such as Cyber Command and Space Command.

I met those seat-techies in 1994, on my first active-duty assignment at Onizuka Air Force Station in Sunnyvale.

After a recent Sunday sermon, a vehicle parked in front of my church rolled up hill and slammed into my bumper.

Yup. The pickup truck put itself in gear and gave my Camry a big boo-boo.

At this point, I ask that you suspend your disbelief.

Let’s move to the spiritual point you expect from a pastor.

After hearing the all-too-familiar crunching sound while backing up, I went to examine my car’s damaged trunk.

Preaching to a sparse crowd, pastors often begin by quoting Matthew 18:20. They remove the verse from its context to passively express disappointment in the low turnout.

They say, “This reminds me of what Jesus said. ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’”

During my years as a hospital chaplain, I paraphrased this verse to convey my frustration at yet another staff meeting.

Some of my most rewarding years in chaplain work were spent as chaplain for women and children at Sutter Medical Center from 2002 to 2008.

My rounds often took me onto the high-risk maternity unit. Rooms were filled with scared, pregnant women whose doctors confined them to bed in hopes of avoiding a miscarriage.

One afternoon, our unit secretary, Jeannette, told me about a patient expecting twins. Her 23-week pregnancy was threatened by severe complications.

“Her husband is a youth minister, so she has a lot of church friends in her room now,” Jeannette told me.