Open Secrets: A Spiritual Journey Through a Country Church
At the age of 28, Richard Lischer, a smart, ambitious Lutheran pastor with a freshly minted Ph.D. in theology, was sent to his first parish, in the small town of New Cana, Illinois, where he would serve for almost three years.Open Secretsis Lischer's memoir of that time, and it opens with a sharply detailed evocation of New Cana as he first saw it:It lacked the traditional accessories that make a town picturesque--no courthouse, town square, or ivy-covered cottages. The few white picket fences I saw were in disrepair and were obviously placed to keep the chickens in the yard ... Nothing was awakened in me when I saw the place for the first time. No Grovers Corners inOur Townor folksy Mayberry beckoned to me. My first look at the town reminded me that I was from a city and probably belonged in a city.As this passage indicates,Open Secretsdemystifies the often-idealized experience of small-town ministry. Lischer (now a professor at Duke University's divinity school) was often disappointed by his parish, and by his own resentment of his calling: the town never quite warmed to him, and he never quite cottoned to the town. But he did pay close attention to everything he experienced, and his anecdotes (what happens when, taking communion to a sick man, you forget to bring the Host to the hospital?) and observations (75 percent of his congregation had the same last name) are occasionally reminiscent of Garrison Keillor's stories of Lake Wobegone, or J.F. Powers's more astringent comedies of priestly life.--Michael Joseph Gross