Growing in Your Call

Divcast Series 3 Episode Growing in Your Call Transcript

 

Evelyn Archer-Taminger:

Welcome to Divcast, the podcast that gives you an inside look into the Duke Divinity School community. I'm Evelyn Archer-Taminger. I'm a current student here at Duke Div, and I'll be taking over this episode of Divcast.

Today I'll be talking to two of my fellow students, Kari Martin and Kyle MacDonald, about their experiences growing in their call through field education. Check it out.

I am so, so glad to talk to you, Kari. Remind me. You have a lot of experience working through the Office of Field Education. How many field education placements have you had?

 

Kari Martin:

Right now, I'm in the middle of my fourth internship.

 

EAT:

Woo-hoo!

 

KM:

But I've been at three separate placements. I did a pre-enrollment, I had another summer one, and then I did two academic years at the same place.

 

EAT:

Wow. That's really awesome. I can't wait to hear about how these experiences shaped you in your understanding of where God is leading you in your life.

But before we do all of that stuff, I'd love to hear, Kari, a little bit about your background. Where are you from? Did you grow up in the church? What do you consider to be your church home? Could you just give us a little bit of insight of your life before Duke Divinity School?

 

KM:

I'm a pastor's kid. My grandfather is also a pastor, so it runs in the family, I guess you would say. I grew up in that church my whole life, obviously. I went to college at Christopher Newport University. I studied philosophy and religion.

I'm trying to think. I mean, as is probably apparent, I don't have any denominational affiliation. Came to Duke with no understanding of what Methodism meant or what liturgy was or anything like that, which was daunting, but it's been really good to learn about it. Yeah.

 

EAT:

We're both just two Virginians making our way down to the hallowed halls of Duke Divinity School. Yeah, growing up as a pastor's kid, how did you feel a connection with God before starting on your own journey of vocation?

 

KM:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's a beautiful thing to be born into the church, where it's like the first thing you knew was that God existed. And then you figure out all the rest and it's complicated and it's hard.

But it's really beautiful to have that be your first thing. I think I got baptized in the James River that runs straight through Richmond, and it felt like I got baptized in my home. I don't know; it was beautiful.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KM:

I did Young Life in high school and in college, and I think that was the beginning of any kind of ownership, I guess, of spirituality in some way that wasn't defined by my parents or my family. I think that was the beginning of realizing that I had some sort of calling into the work of the church, however loosely we want to define that, into helping other people walk the journey, I guess, towards truth, towards God, towards full life. Oh, I sound like such a Young Life leader and not some ... Man!

 

EAT:

So a spiritual independence, you were just starting to get into a sense of what it meant to have your own spirituality and your own connection with God. So before you started class at Duke Divinity, did you get to explore that sense of spiritual independence with any pre-enrollment?

A quick note on pre-enrollment. The Office of Field Education offers recently accepted students a chance to serve in a summer internship before beginning at Duke in the fall. These placements give students a taste of working in ministry before they begin classes.

 

KM:

Yeah, so I did a pre-enrollment at West End UMC, which is in West End, North Carolina, which I didn't know existed before I showed up on the first day of the internship. It's so interesting. I applied, frankly, out of pure necessity where it was like "I need a job; I need some money for the summer. This seems like a good bet."

It's a tiny Methodist church run completely by women. So the pastoral care pastor was a woman, senior pastor was a woman. admin person was a woman. And I'd never worked under female pastors before. That was not the church I had grown up in, really, and that wasn't the church I went to in college.

So to have this experience of the church in a tiny rural town that nobody even knows about, where the Holy Spirit was there and God was there and God was moving and working in the lives of men and women who were older ... A lot of them were retired.

I think that was the first time I got to actually work out my own sense of leadership, of calling, of vocation. I preached my first sermon there. I did pastoral care for the first time. I led Bible studies, and I learned how to do liturgy. I memorized The Great Thanksgiving from the Methodists that worshiped there.

Yeah, I got to be an amateur, I think, and to grow and to mess up and to try new things. I mean, it set me on a very unique path at Duke Divinity that I don't know that I would've been on. I don't know that I would've had the same experience at Duke if I hadn't started there, after a moment in West End, North Carolina.

 

EAT:

Wow.

 

KM:

Yeah, I think for me it was very healing, I would say. In college I was going to a church that didn't affirm women in ministry, that didn't think that women should be preaching to men or having any authority position over men.

It was so hurtful to me because I was studying religion in college, and so I was so excited about all these ideas. And I love to teach, and I was told I couldn't do it by a church that I thought supported the full expression of the gospel in me.

So then to go from that, to go from a place of all of that hurt and confusion and disappointment to a church that not only has women as their pastor, would love having a woman as a pastor. where it wasn't like she was acting like a man or whatever and had got away with it, it was like ... She just was who she was and she was a wonderful pastor.

She preached beautifully and she preached from her own experience. She preached as God told her to preach. She did ministry that was bold. She loved the people well. And yeah, it was such an interesting summer where it had knit something back together that for the first time in maybe a year or so, I actually wanted to be in the church.

That was a thing I wanted to participate in because I realized it wasn't disappointing me. West End UMC didn't disappoint me. In fact, it exceeded every expectation that I ever had, and then that gave me hope for the church at large.

 

EAT:

I love that you use the term "healing," to describe that because your experience with seeing other women leading led you to have a new, different outlook on the church itself. That is so, so critical, and I can tell that that stuck with you, even several years later.

 

KM:

Absolutely.

 

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So you've had this, I don't know if I'd say transformational, but this really impactful experience.

 

KM:

Yeah.

 

EAT:

Yeah, you were doing all of this before seminary, y'all. That's real ministry. I love talking with so many interns because it's really not ... When you're in an internship in a ministry setting, you're not practicing for ministry, you are practicing ministry. You are doing the ministry while you're there.

 

KM:

Yeah.

 

EAT:

So you've had this experience, and now you're going to start at Duke Divinity School. First day of school or first day of orientation, you're there and you're about to start. How did you think God was working in your life at that point? What did you think that your call to ministry was way back, if feels like, on the first day at Duke Div?

 

KM:

Honestly, I think I had no idea. I was so confused, like really, really, really confused. Because, well, I wasn't quite sure how I ended up at Duke in the first place. I remember someone asking me on the first day of orientation, like, "How'd you get here? What's your call story?" all that. And I kind of just drew a blank.

I knew I wrote something for my essay, so certainly I had some reason to get here. But most simply, I just really liked studying theology, and this seemed like a good way to keep doing that. That was all I had.

Then I did this pre-enrollment and preached and prayed and did liturgy and all these things and realized that I really loved it a lot. And that was not part of the plan, so my call was so confused.

I couldn't have pulled anything that made sense out of it. I couldn't have distilled any meaning from it. It was just this jumbled mess of confusion, and anybody who knew me during the first semester of divinity school will tell you that that is in fact very true. I was just confused.

I love Duke and I love the Methodist Church a lot. But I found that I was surrounded by people who seemed to have these really clear-cut call stories, that they could pinpoint moments in which they knew that they wanted to be pastors. It was beautiful, and I loved listening to them. I thought it was the best.

And yet I knew so clearly that I didn't have anything like that. But it doesn't mean I wasn't called. I just didn't know what I was called to. I had no idea.

 

EAT:

So did you feel a lot of pressure to say something really coherent and put together whenever anyone was like, "Oh, what's your call"?

 

KM:

Yeah. Absolutely. What I really wanted is I wanted a denomination. I thought that would be the best, if I could just have a denomination that I could finally latch on to. And then at the very least I could be like, "Well, at least I'm a Methodist," or an Episcopalian or whatever.

So I think I made my way through every denomination available during my first semester. I was like, "Maybe this one will work," and "I like them all. I haven't yet found something that I really want to stick with." But ...

 

EAT:

Besides Jesus.

 

KM:

Yeah. Besides Jesus.

 

EAT:

And as a student who's nondenominational, would that be something that you consider yourself at this point or just without a denomination? Yeah.

 

KM:

Yeah, yeah.

 

EAT:

Yeah.

 

KM:

I just don't know yet, yeah.

 

EAT:

Your voice is so, so valuable to be heard in this community.

 

EAT:

Speaking on denominations, while Duke is a Methodist-funded school, students of all Christian denominations as well as religions outside of Christianity can and do attend. Methodists continue to make up the majority of the student population.

 

KM:

Yeah, I don't know that I remember what I said for my second one. So I'll do a brief recap of that. The first one was at a Methodist church. My second one was also in a Methodist church and then a Methodist camp at the same time. Yeah, it was a big summer.

I do remember interviewing for field ed before my first academic year. I sat down with Daniel and I told him, I was like, "Daniel, I've really loved my internship so far. I really, really would like to be somewhere that is not Methodist." Not because I have anything against the Methodist Church. It's just that's all I had gotten. I knew at that point that I probably was not going to be ordained in the Methodist Church, and so I just needed to see something else. I mean, just do something else.

And Daniel in his loving, great way, gave me something else. He put me at First Baptist Church in Henderson, which is part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I loved it. I mean, I'm back for a second year right now. It's been great and beautiful and it's still liturgical. But there's a lot of freedom in it and yeah, I'm just a huge fan.

It was so good that I felt very listened to by the Field Ed Office where they knew that for my discernment process, for my own wandering call, I need to see something else, and they had resources to make that happen. It's been good and important.

 

EAT:

For listeners who may not know, Kari is talking about Rev. Daniel Corpening. He's a senior staff person at the Office of Field Ed at Duke Divinity School.

Before each field ed placement, students apply and then meet with staff for an interview to gauge what student skills and learning opportunities might be best applied.

I'm so wondering. You were talking about back at your pre-enrollment placement how you were stretched and you saw church leadership like you hadn't seen before. How were you challenged in some of your later placements? And how did you grow in ministry?

 

KM:

Yeah. I mean, the placements are really hard. All of them have had moments where they've been really hard, and I've grown, man, so much.

In particular, my second placement there, it was at a First UMC, so it was a pretty big historic church in Asheboro. My supervisor sat me down and basically asked me what I didn't have experience in and set out to try and get me experience in those things.

So I facilitated with two, maybe three funerals. I helped with a baby dedication. I preached two traditional and then two contemporary services, so I preached the same sermon four times, twice during the summer. So it was exhausting and long and hard, but it was a very real experience of what it looked like to be a minister at a church like that.

I'd had to do high church and then immediately transition to a very casual, contemporary where you have a mic and you-can-walk-around-if-you-want kind of service. All of that was so far out of my comfort zone, but it gave me a comfort with those kinds of situations that I don't know how else I would've gotten experience like that.

So I think that was probably where I grew the most in terms of my identity as a pastor, where she gave me a lot of authority to be the pastor in the room and not just the intern in the room. So that was good. I think at that church too, I learned how to just sit with people in the middle of really hard things.

That church walked through a lot of really hard, like sudden deaths and things like that during the summer I was there. So learning how to just be there because I couldn't fix anything. In fact, I didn't know their pain because I didn't know these people, not the way that they did. All I could do was be there, and it was really uncomfortable.

Everything in me wanted to get out and leave them to mourn their pain because I knew my place there was temporary. And yet what I was asked to do was just to be there. So I think that learning how to do that, I'm still not very good at it, but gaining at least a little bit of experience doing that I think was one of the bigger lessons I've taken from field ed.

 

EAT:

It sounds like you got a lot of experience in practicing meaningful pastoral care in the wake of sudden tragedy. So you got to do that with the church you were at. Did you also practice that while at the Methodist camp that you mentioned? What was your role in that placement?

 

KM:

Yeah, my job there was literally to do pastoral care. That was just about it. My supervisor was like, "You can just be the chaplain for the staff for a summer." Yeah, and that was interesting too because it was a different setting where there wasn't big dramatic suffering or mourning or grief.

It was just a very steady exhaustion where everybody was tired all the time. So pastoral care there was like "Hey, I'll sit at the table with your campers so that you can go to the bathroom and wash your face," or something like that. Yeah.

Or like serving food. I washed a lot of dishes at that camp and I served a lot of meals because that was how I could get face time. That's how I could see the other staff members, is I could just be there washing dishes. What good were my questions if they had all this work to do and I wasn't helping them do it?

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

 

KM:

So that also, I mean, it was hard. That too was hard because I think that runs very much into boundaries and how to form boundaries. Because I was living at the camp and everybody had a need all the time.

So at what point can I set a boundary and be like, "I'm going to go to bed. I'm really sorry that you still have work, but I need to go to bed because I have to be at church the next morning," or whatever it was? So I-

 

EAT:

Did you find that really challenging to set those boundaries?

 

KM:

Yeah. Yeah, that was really hard. Because I think everything in us wants to be the best possible intern we could possibly be and the best possible pastor. I felt like I was giving up a little bit on them.

So I had to have a lot of, I think, internal work of figuring out that it's okay to say no to a thing and it's okay to rest. And it's okay to recognize that you need time to process things that happen, and you need space and you need margin in your life to do that. That can be really hard as an intern.

 

EAT:

Absolutely. That point, I think, it's so critical to the practice of ministry for interns, for full-time pastors, for anybody who is working and tending to the needs of others. It's burnout.

And it sounds like that summer when you were serving a church and a camp, it sounds like that was a prime time to be extremely, extremely exhausted, very exhausting experience. Did you find any ways to practice self-care or take Sabbath time in order to recharge yourself?

 

KM:

Well, after the internship finished, I slept for like a week, so that felt like self-care. I also, and I just recommend this to anybody who's doing an internship in person, I had a restaurant in Asheboro that I really liked, and it was like a cool coffee house kind of vibe.

Often I would just go by myself. I wouldn't invite anyone. I wouldn't tell anyone where I was going. I would bring a book or a journal or something like that, and I would sit as long as I really needed to. It was a place that felt, I guess homey or mine or something like that-

 

EAT:

It was home.

 

KM:

... in the middle of a really crazy internship, so ...

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It was like an oasis, kind of.

 

KM:

Yes. Yeah.

 

EAT:

Yeah. It's so important to value self-care in ministry.

 

KM:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

EAT:

Did you learn any self-care practices that you're now applying in your current internship at the Baptist church?

 

KM:

That's a good question. I'm a huge fan of boundaries and I think they're really important. Because the different thing about an academic year internship is that you're doing a full load of classes at the same time, so you're on a different calendar rhythm that everyone at the church is not on.

For example, right now I'm in the middle of finals week and paper grading, and it's frantic. I still have to go to my internship, so I show up for whatever meeting it is that I show up for and they're going on as normal.

So figuring out how to both convey when I need space or time off or whatever it is. But then also just create a pretty firm boundary between the two that when I go to my internship things, and then I come home and I can do school things. And that the stress of those two things don't need to always bleed into one another. That's our thing.

 

EAT:

Yeah, yeah. I think setting boundaries is an important lesson for any seminarian to learn, anyone going into a vocation that is as taxing as ministry. Honestly, anyone going into a vocation, period. I'm so glad to hear it's hard to learn to set boundaries.

And you were right, talking earlier. I've definitely felt in my own practice of ministry, like, "Oh, am I giving up? Am I not doing enough?" In fact, you're doing it not only for the good of yourself but for the good of your work.

So speaking of working now, you said that this is your second internship placement period at the same church. What has it meant ... you to be able to spend more time developing a relationship with this congregation?

 

KM:

Oh, it's been the best. It's been so fun. I just, yeah, it's been amazing. Well, and I think too, the obvious part about my last internship was that it was pretty dramatically cut off with the pandemic happening in March.

So I didn't get an ending; I didn't get to say goodbye to anyone. I didn't get ... None of the normal ways that you close out an internship happened. So to be able to just say, "Hey, wait. I'm only gone for a summer. I'm going to be back," that was the best.

But also I think part of why I wanted to stay at First Baptist is that this year has been a really hard year for the church. It's been a really hard for human beings in general. But the church has all of a sudden had to figure what to do about a global pandemic, about race relations and systemic injustice. And they've had to figure out how to talk about an election.

So they've had to figure out how to talk about those things and what are they going to say about those things. A lot of those conversations can't happen without some sort of relationship already being there. So the gift of being at First Baptist, having already done an entire year with them, is that I get to participate in those conversations and that they trust me.

So I can say things that I would never have been able to say a year ago. I can preach things that I would never have been able to preach. But they trust me at least a little bit more than they did a year ago.

They trust me because I showed up in their Sunday School class every Sunday for four months straight. So they're like, "Oh, we know you. We've heard what you have to say on a normal Sunday, so maybe we'll believe you a little bit on what you say from a pulpit on a Sunday morning about, I don't know, about the turmoil of the election."

Even, like I got to participate in this driveway book club on race, on reconciliation. To even just participate in it was ... Yeah, it just, it was a really beautiful thing to watch. So yeah, it's been delightful.

 

EAT:

Yeah, I'm so glad to hear about these really candid beautiful relationships that you're getting to develop over even more time. I think that that's such an important thing to bring up, that human connection is the backbone of ministry. So what's your general understanding of all these experience of where God is calling you in your life?

 

KM:

That is a good question. It's a question that hits me in the gut, but that's a good thing, I think. I still don't know a lot. I still don't have a denomination, really, though I do love the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

What I do know, and I think this has come pretty directly out of my field ed experiences, is that I love helping other people discover truth in their live, in the world and in God, ultimately. So I would love to teach. That's part of why I like to preach as well.

But I think primarily I see teaching in some capacity as part of my calling, and I'll do that wherever someone gives me a job. So if that's in the church, then that's in the church. If it's somewhere else, then it's somewhere else.

But I think I've found just this ... I've like fallen in love with the process of discovering something true in a new way. So whether that's through poetry or art or theology or philosophy or literature, anything else in one another, in nature, helping people have the eyes to see that, incorporating different resources and showing different things, that feels like a call right now. And who knows how that will change in the future?

 

EAT:

I have a sneaking suspicion that no matter what it looks like, God is going to make something incredible. God is making something incredible. Already He did.

 

KM:

Absolutely. Yes.

 

EAT:

Kari, it's been such an honor and a pleasure to talk with you today about your story and just your incredible journey. I just have one last question to ask you. We have a lot of listeners right now who might be considering applying to Duke Divinity School or who have recently applied but have not begun their time here yet. So I was wondering, if you could go back and give yourself some advice back in the fall of 2018, what would you say to yourself now?

 

KM:

Oh, goodness. What would I say? I think I would say that it is okay if it's confusing. Maybe this is just me, but I've talked to a lot of other seminarians in the last three and a half years, and they seem to agree seminary feels like wandering through the wilderness.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KM:

It feels disconcerting and uncomfortable and like your soul is being interrogated all the time. It's really scary, and it's a weird kind of existential scariness. But I think I wish someone had told me that's just how it's going to be and that I don't need to feel weird or like something's wrong when I'm confused.

 

EAT:

Yeah.

 

KM:

But that God shows up there. God is in the midst of that. We know that God shows up in the wilderness. We know that God shows up in the exile.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KM:

And God shows up in confusion as well. So I guess when the call doesn't feel clear, that's okay.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KM:

God's still in the midst of it.

 

EAT:

God's at work. Thank you so much, Kari.

Kyle MacDonald is a third year Master of Divinity student. He is United Methodist and we're so glad to be joined with him today. Kyle, remind me exactly how many internships you've done during your time at Duke Divinity School.

 

Kyle MacDonald:

Well, depending on how you count them and if you continue all of them, I think I've done a total of five field education placements, although I've stayed at the same one since last summer.

 

EAT:

So would you mind letting us know a little bit of your background? Where are you from, first of all? And your church background, just generally how you were raised in the church. Also just how you decided to come to seminary.

 

KMD:

Sure. I was born and raised in the United Methodist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. My mom is an ordained deacon who worked at the church there, and she herself is the daughter of an ordained elder from Indiana.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KMD:

So I was born into the Methodist tradition, but I really have no intention of following them in any official capacity.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KMD:

But I grew up with my brothers at our church. If there was any youth or kids activity, we were there. We were the MacDonald boys, and you just kind of expected to see us.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

KMD:

I really didn't ever mind. I loved it. The church was really our second or third home in so many ways.

So another important and really crucial part of my story is meeting my now wife Becca at Christ Church in Louisville. She is also the daughter of a preacher, a Presbyterian minister. So long story short, we started dating in high school and got married after college then came to serve our home church in the youth choir that we'd met. Which, as I say, it sounds incredibly cliché, but it was great.

That's really where we learned a lot of the basics of our faith. I realize even today how much scripture I learned from singing in choir. It was something that I really loved to do just personally. I loved music ministry. That's what my undergrad was in was music.

Then about two years after getting married, I became a music assistant at another nearby local church pretty close to my childhood home. I mean, I was a music assistant, like interim choir director there, directed hand bells. So that was kind of an affirmation of my own skillset but also calling to the church, to music ministry, to a bunch of those things.

At the same time that I was feeling that affirmation, Becca was also discovering or rediscovering the call on her own to ordained ministry. So in 2015, around then, we started looking at seminaries and in 2016, we moved down to Durham from Louisville so that she could come to Duke. I moved with her, obviously, but really moved for her. I had no intention of coming to Duke at all.

 

EAT:

Really?

 

KMD:

Not at all, which is really funny to me because clearly the Lord had other plans. But I left my ... I was working at UPS and this other local church, and we left that behind and our home church that I'd grown up in behind to move here. But we were really thrilled. We loved the Durham experience, the Duke experience, and it was something that we were excited for even as we were nervous about where does this go.

So as Becca was realizing, "Okay, the United Methodist Church is the way to go," for her seeking ordination as an elder, I was following my own path of "Okay, what do I do now? Do I follow this teaching path that I could go down or a music ministry?" I kind of sat for two years with those questions trying to figure out not necessarily what does God want me to do, but who does God want me to be?

This is kind of funny because I didn't really think about this before now, at least out loud. What really helped me kind of rediscover my own calling was Becca's field education at a church in Sanford, and that was the first church that we really get involved in over the summer of 2017. It was the place that reminded me that I really loved the church.

It's something that I always knew but didn't always understand necessarily why or what that meant. As a high schooler, I just loved my church. Then going to this church in Sanford, I realized like: "Oh, no. This is broader for me." So that was when I started to really realize: "Oh, okay. I've been trying to do so many other things, and there's a door in front of me at Duke Divinity that I hadn't even thought about going through."

So through that process, through the church that we eventually became a part of, All Saints United Methodist in Briar Creek, they helped me to start in this as well. It's like, "Oh, no. This is definitely the path that I could and I think should go down."

So fast forward to 2018. I've been admitted at Duke, and I wasn't sure about how to start. I wanted a clear start at the beginning of the year, just go in, hit the ground running. And then realize, like: "Oh, this is this pre-enrollment field education program. I think I feel called to ministry. This could be a really good option to say, 'Hey, I've lived and breathed the church for the 25-something years I've been alive. Why not do this?'"

So I ended up applying for that and that place at Camp Chestnut Ridge in Efland, which was just such a fun summer. Because I was Chaplain Kyle the whole summer. You just get to be with college counselors who are ministering and ministering to the younger kids there, so you're ministering to the counselors.

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

 

KMD:

I really loved that experience. It was just fun because you're at camp all summer and doing so many things. But that was my first experience and how I got there.

 

EAT:

Wow. Oh, my gosh. So you were Chaplain Kyle before even starting seminary.

 

KMD:

I was.

 

EAT:

What did it mean to you? You had come in and did you join All Saints before starting seminary? That was the church that kind of helped reignite your passion for church.

 

KMD:

Yeah, so we did. I think technically I'm still a member. That's where I've done my candidacy through. So that's where I started the process, the long journey towards ordination through that church that has been so incredibly supportive.

We heard about the then pastor there who has since become a really dear friend of ours, and we joined the choir almost ... I think we went there the Sunday before Lent started in 2018. Then by the end of Lent we were singing in the choir, which is just hysterical.

 

EAT:

Incredible.

 

KMD:

If you notice, it's really [crosstalk 00:42:29].

 

EAT:

Yeah, yeah. Right. Choir seems to be a trend, I've noticed.

 

 

KMD:

Yeah, it is. It's the best word.

So from there, I continued to ... I mean, we continued to go and ended up joining. Becca graduated in 2019, so she has since has her own church. And about that time I was also being placed in a church during the summer of 2019, so we've kind of since been unable to go back in any sustained capacity. But it holds a dear spot in our hearts.

 

EAT:

This church was a huge support network, it sounds like, for both of you.

 

KMD:

It was.

 

EAT:

So what did it mean to you? You've seen this wonderful support you've had from All Saints. Then you are placed in a chaplaincy role before starting seminary. How did you approach that chaplaincy role? What was your mindset going into it and what were some of your most memorable parts of that particular pre-enrollment?

 

KMD:

Yeah. I was really glad for it because I was really worried, honestly. I mean, it's hard not to go into that new situation where you say like, "I've never really been a pastor or an intern like this before." So I really loved that summer because I was able to go to camp throughout the week and still go to to church and to my own church for that summer. So it was a really wonderful transition period and it was so close to my home, too, that I could commute and stay at home.

But ultimately, I knew I had certain strengths. I am pretty good at talking to people in one-on-one interactions, and I try to make people laugh. But I'd done youth ministry, so this was pretty similar in a lot of ways. The most terrifying part for me was ...

There were four of us interns there, so you rotate in who does what throughout the summer. So one week you might be in charge of leading lunches and talking about where the food comes from. They have a farm that's attached to it.

 

EAT:

Oh, wow.

 

 

 

KMD:

And saying like, "Okay, these are local blueberries from a local farmer. The bacon comes from the hogs we've raised." That sort of thing. Sometimes you might be with the preschoolers leading Godly Play in the morning.

Sometimes, though, and this was the part that was the most stressful for me funnily enough, was leading the morning worship and the morning messages. You'd have this outdoor chapel where it'd be somewhere between like 150 and 300 kids.

 

EAT:

Wow.

 

KMD:

From kindergarten through maybe high school.

 

EAT:

Okay.

 

KMD:

And you're trying to figure out: "How do I speak to these kids for 10 minutes in a way that reaches out to all of them and makes them all understand God?"

 

EAT:

Wasn't the lack of a pastor.

 

KMD:

So you had to do not just one but each day that week. And along with that, you had to come up with a skit that helped your message along. I don't know if I was great at that. I can't imagine looking back on the messages I gave and say like, "What was I doing?" But it was fun at the same time.

 

EAT:

Wow. That is quite a challenge. I'm thinking that's a challenge that I think a lot of people who regularly preach, pastors, ministers and such at local parishes, they're always concerned as well. Like, "Okay, how do I preach effectively to people from all these not only different age groups, but different backgrounds and demographics and such?"

 

KMD:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

EAT:

I remember being in a preaching precept with you. Yeah, I think it was about this time last year, wasn't it. We were in a small group together, and I remember hearing you preach. And I thought: "This is something that I feel I connected really well with." And I could sense that a lot of other people in the room were connecting very deeply and emotionally with your word and what you were saying.

 

EAT:

Do you think that you having this experience of working with all these different ranges of kids, like literally the widest range that you can work with ...

 

KMD:

Yeah.

 

EAT:

How did you apply that later on in ministry?

 

KMD:

Well, I remember, I think it must've been my supervisor, I was saying something like that to him. Like, "How do you talk to this huge age range of kids?" And he asked me like, "Well, how do you do that with a normal congregation? That's the same thing that happens. Just because you're preaching to maybe more adults doesn't mean that a 35 year old guy has the same experience as an 80 year old woman. It's not too different, honestly." So it stuck with me, and it was something that I got my feet wet and it really felt less diving into the deep end, more of a baptism by fire.

 

KMD:

But the summer after that, it really helped me because that first sermon I did at my next field ed, I was equally terrified, remembering those experiences of standing in front of those hundreds of kids who were not focused and then getting through it. I was like, "Oh, that was much easier. Preaching a sermon has some of the same things, but it was also very different."

So that, I think, must've happened the summer before our Intro to Preaching with Chuck Campbell that we took together, so that lit a spark in me that last summer, preaching just three times. Saying like, "Oh, this is kind of fun. Like terrifying but also thrilling." I couldn't escape that feeling.

 

EAT:

So you've had this incredible pre-enrollment experience. And this is something I've noticed talking to many students, is that first internship is just so not only memorable, but transformative, informational.

I want to take you back to the first day of your first year at Duke Divinity School. Say we're walking into orientation. Where is your head at? And what did you understand your calling to be or didn't you understand your calling to be when you first started at Duke Divinity School?

 

KMD:

That's a good question. I mean, I remember I'd just come off this summer being outdoors, and I felt like I had dirty feet wearing Chacos all summer. So I'd been kind of active in the world, in a sense. Even before that, just still holding on to this call to music ministry, and that was what I was wrapping my identity around.

It's like, "Okay, I'm thinking I don't really know what I'm doing here," but I was telling people that I was feeling a call towards ordained ministry as a deacon. That was a way that respected my mother and the career path that she has been led to. But also would allow me to specialize in music or youth ministry or an extension ministry, like a camp or something. I was like, "Okay, I've done this. This is what I'm good at. I love music and all of that. That's what it's going to be."

So as we got into orientation and that first semester, even just the church history classes I just found utterly fascinating. Because it's not so much the history of the church as like a survey of early Christian theology and doctrine that I just, even growing up in the church, I had no idea about Christology and incarnation and eucharistic theologies.

I couldn't get away from it as much as the reading is a lot. I really loved studying for the final in a weird way because it was just so exciting to me. It's something that kind of started to make me think that like, "Oh, maybe there's something broader for me here than what I've pigeonholed myself into as far as deacon goes."

 

EAT:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Wow. How did it feel to broaden your horizons like that? Did that inform how you approached the Field Education Office in discerning where your next placement would be?

 

KMD:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I remember talking to Daniel Corpening and during my field education interviews.

 

EAT:

You had him?

 

 

KMD:

Yeah, he is one of the best at Duke. And saying like, "I have always held on real tight to this deacon identity because it felt really comfortable. And I also realized through classes and eventually through field education that like, 'Oh, I think God is calling me to something a little different. Not better but maybe broader than I understood it previously.'"

So I asked Daniel, is like, "I'm kind of hoping to be a more traditional church placement where I can explore this calling to maybe be more of a, quote/unquote, 'traditional pastor' as an elder." I really did love talking about communion and understanding that in a way that I have never been taught as a kid.

It was something like, "Okay, if I go down this road that I thought I was going to walk down, I'm not necessarily going to be able to do the same preaching and teaching of the sacraments." That was something that it felt like there was a void there, and that looking into that void meant maybe switching my call up.

So that summer kind of led to a lot of those questions not necessarily being answered, but being deepened and saying like, "Oh, I think there is something here. I'm not just making up these feelings."

 

EAT:

Wow. Isn't it terrifying to feel like you have a strong ... And so I'm going to be a deacon, and then God's like, "Mmm, maybe not."

 

KMD:

Yeah, terrifying's a good word. Because I am one who really loves to jump in to all decisions and really just go gung ho about it, and I had to make the conscious effort to say like, "Okay, I need to take a while to pray about this, to figure out what God is saying to me and where God is leading me."

Because I do remember saying to friends and family like, "Yeah, I have no interest in being a senior pastor or just like a traditional pastor." And I didn't. I said that very honestly. Then I just had to ... It's like, "Oh." I was so frustrated because I remember one of our good friends from back home who would always say, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

I remember just, it's like, "Okay, God. I've told you my plans and clearly you did not like them. It didn't go with what you were hoping for me." So it was terror of "I don't want to do this. There's too much pressure here. I didn't want to be a teacher because I'm not that organized. I don't know if being a pastor's any better there."

But then also like when I really fully started embracing and running to that calling, it felt so right. It was like, "Oh. No, this is right." And as much as it was frustrating and terrifying and all those things, I knew internally it was just the right move.

 

EAT:

Sometimes I like to tell myself: "Sometimes God walks with you, sometimes God carries you, and sometimes God drags you kicking and screaming."

 

KMD:

Yeah, what's that [inaudible 00:54:59] saying: "It was then that I dragged you." Yeah.

 

EAT:

Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. So now that you're contemplated this move toward ordained eldership, what did you end up doing with some of your other placements while you were at Duke Divinity?

 

KMD:

Sure. I talked a little bit about my placement in 2019 that summer, and it was something that I was a student associate, which was really nice because it didn't feel like I was an intern. It wasn't just this temporary like, "Oh, he's learning." They expected me to be an assistant pastor. So it was nice to have that expectation because it was something I could rise to, so I did get my feet wet preaching to a more traditional congregation.

But I also got to do the liturgy so when the pastor preached, I did pretty much everything else in the service. And when I preached, the pastor did everything else. And just seeing the difference in our liturgical styles, it gave me a lot of confidence, honestly, and saying like, "Oh, I can do this. I feel really good."

There's a lot of things I learned from him, but there was also a lot of things, honestly, where I realized like, "Oh, I can trust my own instincts and don't necessarily just have to follow what I've seen other people doing." It wasn't just him, you know.

I think one of the best blessings from field education is that you can learn from the good and great experiences and the ones that are kind of middling where it's like, "I don't really know if I was feeling that service today." But you can still look back and say, "Oh, but this was really interesting and I think I'll take this with me." So that summer kind of really did give me a lot of confidence as I was going into my second year.

And from there, I was in Henderson over the last academic year with Kari, who you're talking to today as well. So it was nice to be again like a student associate there where I was treated as a pastor and not just a kid. I was able to really flex those developing preaching muscles and do some hospital visits and really some trauma care a few times.

But I just never expected [inaudible 00:57:31] be right. I mean, that is some on-the-job training right there. But just even meeting people one-on-one and eating dinner with people in the congregation, oh, it was a great experience.

 

EAT:

I can tell, Kyle, that you really value having high expectations set for you and having the independence to be able to really not just, again, be the one who's "learning," quote/unquote but really be an associate pastor. What does it mean to you to have a supervisor who trusts you to do that?

 

KMD:

Oh. I mean, honestly, that supervisor relationship is really, I think, at the core of field education. It's something to really know that you can, one, just trust and learn from your supervisor, whoever it is.

But also that they respect you as, I mean, an adult, first of all, but also as someone who is like a colleague in ministry. That was something I really loved about Bobby, my supervisor over the last academic year, was that he said from the first meeting, honestly, that like, "You are my colleague and co-worker in the ministry."

It's nice because I'm staying in the North Carolina conference of the United Methodist Church, so I was meeting future colleagues. So he said, "I hope this is the start of a lifelong connection and friendship." And I think it will be.

 

EAT:

Yeah. It's incredible. That really is. Wow.

 

KMD:

Yeah, and he's just terrific, period. And I've had a lot of supervisors like that where I'll stay in contact with them for a long time. I just know that. But I think that mutual respect, too, is really important.

I was talking about that with my co-intern at my current field education placement at Walnut Grove in Hillsborough, where our supervisor right now really treats us as equals. Which is something that you can just tell because she will ask for our feedback and value it and respond to our feedback. We're not tokenized as young people or something, but actually wanting to know what we think and asking for advice and improvements or things like that.

It's different when you have supervisors who are like that or who are good at communication or give you experiences that you need to grow in your calling and your ministerial, pastoral ability. It's really good to have a good supervisor.

 

EAT:

Yeah, for real. And I know that I've encountered this in my own experience as well, but it's great to be understood, that as a pastoral intern technically, yes, we're there to prepare for ministry. But we're also doing ministry.

 

KMD:

I agree.

 

EAT:

We're sort of like those pastoral care and counselors that you had doing hospital calls and participating in liturgy, that was real ministry.

 

KMD:

Oh, absolutely.

 

 

EAT:

It's not like the intern's doing it, "Oh, it's not real ministry." No, we're ... And I can tell that you've kind of had a baptism by fire experience in a lot of your experiences preparing for ministry. It sounds like those have formed you really deeply.

And now here we are, both of us. We have one semester left here at Duke Divinity School. How are you understanding your call to serve at this point?

 

KMD:

I mean, it's a good question. In a lot of ways I'm trying to spend this year in preparation for hopefully an appointment somewhere in June. So that means finding out what my strengths are as a pastor and also realizing what I need to grow and whether that's administration or pastoral care or whatever you want to say.

I think it's really important for me to figure out what I do well so that I have that solid footing to know what I can stand on. But also know where I need to grow and where I need to strengthen because that'll help me feel and find support in the future.

As well as we are currently in the middle, hopefully, I guess, of a pandemic. It's hard right now and when we're recording this to see the end of it and to know when that is. So not preparing for a church that doesn't exist anymore, but figuring out where do we go from here, how does my education in the classroom and in the field help me along that path?

 

EAT:

Yeah.

 

KMD:

And how do we go forward as a church and as individuals in going into pastoral ministry?

 

EAT:

Do you-

 

KMD:

I'm hoping to be a licensed local pastor. At the next annual conference, yeah, currently scheduling meetings with cabinets and bishops, so it's a little terrifying again. But it's still exciting to know that ultimately, sometimes you have to just take that step out in faith not knowing where it's going to lead.

 

EAT:

Absolutely. It's a little terrifying. I think that's a good mantra for a lot of experiences as we're all embarking on this beautiful journey called ministry.

Speaking of which, a lot of listeners right now who are hearing this podcast, they might be themselves in a position that you were in not too long ago, considering a call to ministry and considering applying to seminary and even to divinity school itself. Looking back at yourself when you were starting out, when you were at that pre-enrollment placement, do you have any advice that you would give yourself way back then or that you'd be giving to listeners right now?

 

KMD:

That's a good question. I think when I'm asked about what did I carry into seminary, I saw a lot of people, friends and just, honestly, pastors whose books I would read, that talked about experiences in seminary and how that was the worst time for them. It seems like so many of their beliefs were so shaken that they didn't know what to do with that.

That was really troubling for me because I didn't want that to happen to me. So what I tried to do was hold my faith loosely, knowing that I believed in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that Jesus came for me and for the world. But also holding that closely but loose enough that the new things I would be exposed to and the theology I would learn and the discussions I would have would be able to shape that and affect me without changing this kernel of truth that I believed in.

I think that holds true for my own call as well, just realizing that when I realized that God might be calling me to something different than I understood, not holding on to that so tightly that it would suffocate my own call. So just be willing to listen to the voice of God saying, "I have made you for something. It just might not be what you expect or what you want."

Honestly, that was harder than holding on to the kernels of faith because it was something that I had wrapped my identity into. Like, "Okay, I'm good at this," and hearing God say like, "Well, that's great but that's not what I want you to do exactly." So I would just say, yeah, just be open to God. God works in mysterious ways, which is wonderful and terrifying at the same time, but it's something that I think I remind myself often.

 

EAT:

That is the truth, Kyle, and I think that's something that all of us need to be reminded of so often. We're not the ones in the control, we're not the ones in the driver's seat.

 

KMD:

Right.

 

EAT:

Oh, well, Kyle, thank you so much for joining me today. It was an absolute honor and privilege to listen to, just see through a window of your story and just hear how your experiences in field education and in ministry in general have helped you understand and have revealed to you a little bit more about what God's plan might be for your life.

Thanks for listening to Divcast. Be sure to subscribe to our feed, available anywhere you find podcasts. You can send us questions or comments by emailing divcast@div.duke.edu.

Our executive producer is Morgan Hendrix. Sound design by Brandon Holmes. Editing help provided by Kinsley Whitworth. Research and media support for this episode was by Brooklynne Reardon, M.Div. 2022. Special thanks to regular host, Todd Maberry, for letting me take over this one.

We always like to end with a ‘Div Did You Know?,’ a unique factoid which you may or may not have known about Duke Divinity School. Did you know that Duke Divinity is one of the few seminaries with a fully funded field education program? Students who do field ed are guaranteed to receive between $7,800 and $10,000 of compensation. This opportunity allows more students to financially support themselves while at Duke.

Please join us again for the Divcast.