Talk Stigma

Oh my goodness. Hello everybody. Can we just talk about how being a pastor is all about rolling with the punches. My name is Pastor Seth Perry. I live well with bipolar disorder and I'm a recovering addict and I'm also, yeah, I'm a pastor in Scandia, Minnesota. I'm a pastor of Elam Lutheran Church. And every day is full of surprises. So let's just go through my day. So I live in St. Paul. I pastor about 35 minutes away from where I live. 30, got to work. And when I get to work, I run through my sermon a bunch.

Hi, Jules. Hello. Why don't you tell me some unexpected stuff that's happened in your life recently? Because I'm about to get into some unexpected stuff that happened in my day as a pastor, because here it's one o'clock. I'm still wearing my pastor stuff. I must have been up to something. Yeah. Good afternoon, Jules. Let me know what is something unexpected that's happened to you in the last week or month and I'll respond to what you have. So today, here's my regular Sunday schedule I get into the office right here and then the next thing I do is I pull up my sermon and I run through it a bunch I ran through it three times and I'm you know making notes scratching things out making final changes and yeah I feel find that rehearsing really is a lot of fun.

It helps me know what I'm going to be saying a lot better and rehearsing it on the morning of is a practice that I really cherish. It is a routine and it's great. So that was expected. And then I get into doing the first service, then I do the second service and things are moving along smoothly. Then I have a little activity where I did some educational stuff with people from the church after the service. Things are still going smooth as usual. And then I had a burial. So my church right across the street, I had a service to do a burial and that's when something unexpected happened.

So what I want to do is now, let's see here. Jules, I applied for a job after 24 years of working in law enforcement. 20 years for this agency. And you got it and you accepted it. Wow. Jules, when did that happen? Let me know when that happened. Congratulations. Awesome. That is so awesome. That's great. So I'd love to know when that happened. Okay, so moving right along. Here's what happened next for me. Really interesting. So like I said, I had a burial. The burial was at noon and this week it happened this week, Jules.

That's awesome. You know, congratulations to you. Maybe put a post up in in cadre and let everybody know in the cadre sphere, too, because that's awesome. A complete career change. That is awesome. Yeah. And sometimes that's what's needed. Yeah, great. So I had a burial today. I go across the street to the cemetery that's right across the street from where I work at the church that I work at. And so right before I'm getting this on, you know, getting ready to go out there and meet the family. And one of our cemetery volunteers comes in and says, 15 minutes before the service is supposed to start the family's here but the urn is not here the very urn that I was to bury was not here was not that that's like when you do a burial I think you need a few things you might need a pastor you might need The urn and you might need a hole.

I think that's that's those are like the three, a hole in the ground, like a grave, everything gap. No urn. So I got out the phone that I'm doing this on right now. And Jules, let me know what you think of this story. Tell me your reaction, too. So here's what I did. I called the funeral director. And the funeral director is like, oh, yeah, the funeral home is closed. And I was like, okay, okay, starting to get a little bit of an adrenaline rush. And then I said, okay, so what are we going to do?

And she said, well, I guess I'm not even close right now. I'm like an hour and a half away. I was like, okay. And then I said, how about anyone else that works for the funeral home? She goes, okay, I'm going to call someone. And she said, okay, it's going to be 45 minutes. It ended up being about 55 minutes for the urn to come from the funeral home to the cemetery. And what had happened was the family that scheduled the burial with me they forgot to contact the funeral home and said deliver the urn to the church.

And I'd done a burial with this family before and they brought the urn last time. They just forgot. And of course, this is my life is all about forgiveness and grace and all sorts of things like this happen. So we hung around a grave with about, you know, 20 people just hanging out, talking. I learned a lot about the people that were there and you just have to roll with the punches. And so the urn finally arrives. I did the service. Everyone was happy. It was emotional and that person was laid to rest.

And so what do I learn? What I've learned really is this is what pastoring is all about. It is always about an unexpected turn of events, but things always ending up full of grace, full of forgiveness. You know, people were a little bit upset in the beginning when they first heard the news that the urn was not at graveside. People were a little bit confused But guess what? It all worked out in the end and I think that's maybe a little bit of a lesson in life in general, that things are going to all work out in the end, especially when it comes to relationships with people and plans and expectations.

So that was my day. I want to thank you for joining me here at Talk Stigma with Pastor Seth Perry.