PASTOR TIM'S JENNINGS NARRATIVE

Even though I am sitting to write about Paige, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, I need to begin with the basis of ministry for me.

I actually modeled my ministry more on the El Salvadoran Jesuit, Rutilio Grande, than on any one else. He'd been in Quito, Ecuador, about 5 years before I was, I was there in the late 1970s. He had rejoined the Catholic Church while there, reconciling himself with the principles of the Medellin Conference of Catholic Bishops of 1968.

He'd returned to El Salvador in 1973, deeply engaged in the life of the poor. The witness others bore of him was compelling. Me, hearing about people who'd rubbed shoulders with him led to what I call my second conversion. His homilies and speeches were pure Gospel, but they were also contextualized to the rapidly deteriorating Central American situation which culminated in their "dirty war". More important, I saw how he energized and radicalized believers. I wanted to be like that.

Indeed, Father Grande had been murdered on March 12, 1977, by El Salvadoran security forces. No less than Archbishop Oscar Romero had presided at Grande's funeral mass, and it is said that Romero's own radicalization began that day, ending in his own assassination in 1980.

Me, I left Quito for the Washington, D.C., area of the States in 1978. My girlfriend, now wife Alice, wrote that I should return because of the deteriorating situation which she'd, then, been reading about. It was increasingly dangerous for left-leaning 'gringos' to be in Latin America.

I arrived back in the States in September, fully radicalized by my experience down south. Indeed, I rarely felt more energized or filled with the Spirit than there, more than in even the most faithful of Christian communities in the United States. I always felt that I could not take that 'extra' step in the States, those steps that were demanded in Latin America. But I tried.

I should keep this short, because I want to concentrate on the Jennings! I interviewed for about a dozen pastor positions in the northeast, from D.C. to Maine. I'd had interest expressed in me from eight liberal-Baptist and four independent congregations who themselves, according to their literature, had a similar commitment to social justice issues in their communities.

And on the personal front, Alice and I got engaged. Her parents were not thrilled at her being a 'pastor's wife', as she did not fit the mold. It's what I loved about her. They also were Southern Baptists, quite skeptical about my liberation calling. We had first decided to wait until I got a pastoral situation (a job!), but perhaps quite foolishly caved in and tied the knot before the series of interviews even began.

As it was, I was offered a 'call' to four of them. These were the most visible in their own social gospel activities, many in each of those interviewing committees shared a passion for liberation theology. Some folk had been to Latin America on mission projects. But one of those congregations I was warned away from by friends - it had had a nasty scandal with a pastor who had strayed sexually with parishioners. Quite frankly, neither my own skills in ministry nor my calling would have made me a good pastor in the fallout to that kind of situation.

I declined the call at the other three because of various reasons - one was simply too far from Alice's family. As for the rest, at interview I had not been convinced that the congregation as a whole was 'in tune' with a theology of liberation that their hiring committees had claimed.

Which meant that by the Spring of 1979, I had suddenly run out of situations to interview at, especially Baptist congregations. And I was married! I was no Southern Baptist. But the denomination I was most ideologically aligned with, Progressive National Baptist Convention, was predominantly African American. Maybe it was me - I'd never even considered applying at a Progressive Baptist church.

IT WAS DALE WOODS' DOING

Then in April 1979, my old friend from seminary, Dale Woods, called about the Reed Street Church, an unaffiliated, but theologically progressive church in Alexandria, Virginia. Indeed, he, himself, had just been called as their full time, lead pastor - in January 1979. Reed Street's board's intent had been to fill three positions at the same time: a full time lead pastor position for which Dale had been hired, a half-time assistant pastor which had gone unfilled, as well as a youth pastor position which had been filled by a young man of faith named Zach.

Dale had presented it to me as a way to get himself out of a jam. Ha! First, he said he'd always envisioned that one day he and I would be in a team ministry together, but more importantly he could not handle the time-load needed to work full-time as a Senior Pastor. Since his hiring at Reed Street, he'd been invited to teach part-time at Wesleyan Theological Seminary in D.C., so after his hire he'd asked the Reed Street board to switch him to the part-time, assistant position.

The board had refused. After a few days of quite intense argument (his word), they told him that they'd consider his offer only if he could himself find a suitable candidate for the full-time position. Quickly - someone he, himself, could work with. Reed Street had had a history of pastoral team conflict, and their hiring committee was not going to risk a repeat.

Which is why he contacted me. At that late date he pleaded, "Please tell me you have not accepted a pastor's position anywhere else!"

Long story short: by July 1st, 1979, I was the full time, lead pastor to Reed Street Church, Dale was my assistant, and Zach was the youth pastor. I'd literally lucked into the best pastoral situation I ever was to have. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways. Jackie was the office manager at Reed Street and had been there for 100s of years! She knew everyone. While not a gossip, I more than once got a hint from her as to who should be visited, or what was what with the board. Her dad had been a pastor, and her loyalty to that world was solid. She had my back. Her dad had been a Progressive Baptist Convention pastor. Once she and I got to know each other she called me, "Progressive-light", a gentle chide that even though me and Dale were taking Reed Street 'to the left', as they say, it was not like her dad's church she grew up in. Those had been the heady civil-rights days.

Ok, ok, I was 'Pastor-light' on that other point, too. Jackie had that kind of sense of humour.

One last thing. In 1980, just before Ronald Reagan had been elected, Dale and I organized a series of protests at air force bases, as far away as Baltimore and Pennsylvania - particularly ones where we suspected nuclear weapons were housed. I became active in a larger, loosely organized anti-nuke, peace movement of churches. I became secretary of the regional committee. My involvement took me away from much of the work at Reed Street, but Dale was great at covering.

I write this because it also forced a tiny but vocal minority in the Reed Street Church to face that they could not now be part of the pastoral direction we were taking. Jackie was key, advising us well as how to proceed with people not used to seeing their pastor in the newspapers being arrested, chained to the front gate of an air force facility. Or who to visit when they left the church, and what to say to help make the split clean.

Some church members also objected to the diversion of some of our church budget to the downtown food program for the homeless and under-housed. Our growing food pantry.

Zach's youth programs, also, took off. So much so that the new board considered hiring an assistant for him. That never materialized. But the numbers of young adults and teenagers flocking to his programs was amazing. We basically let Zach do his thing.

So it is I get to March 1982. By then, Reed Street's ministerial team was really in gear. The pastoral-team fights and conflict of the past were well behind this church. The first Sunday of March was the 7th, and I felt really, really good about the series of sermons I was preaching. But more important to this narrative (that I promised not to divert too much from) I first noticed the Jennings. What I'd thought at the time were yet another new, garden variety, hopelessly suburban family sitting in the pews - Philip, Elizabeth and their teenage daughter Paige.

My oh my.

MARCH 7, 1982

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself in relating it. I'll just repeat: 'my oh my'. It's not like we didn't get our fair share of new young families. At first, once I got to know them, I quickly regarded them with tremendous concern - especially for what I thought was going on in their family, especially with what I'd observed about Paige, who was 14 at the time.

Paige was an exceptionally smart kid. Reminded me of the incredibly smart women I ran into in seminary. Women who excelled knowing full well that churches were not going to hire them as pastors. Self-assured. Insightful. Kind. Persistent. Articulate. Well-meaning, but not in the bad way many are.

But there was something internally tortured about the Jennings girl. She was paralyzed with self-doubt reminiscent of abused kids, although I was also convinced that that was not it. Even with that, Reed Street had lots of young families, each with their own individual constellation of issues and concerns. So let me tell you, in long-winded fashion, why the Jennings stood out. That's what the rest of this narrative is about.

I'd not known it that first Sunday of March 1982, but one of Reed Street's other teenagers, Kelli, had brought Paige into the church through Zach's ever expanding youth group. Kelli, similar to Paige, was a gem of a young woman, but whose parents fought - as Kelli would say, they couldn't live in the same State. So Kelli got shuttled around between distant homes. Badly. Ever trying to please each parent. Getting caught in the middle. Even though on the face of it Paige's parents were normal, middle-class Americans (living the dream in nearby Falls Church), Kelli and Paige bonded over their mutual internal turmoils. Kelli's was out there for all to see, Paige's was some deep mystery.

The Jennings had stayed after church on the 7th and we'd said hello. Paige was throwing herself into the youth group, especially the social-gospelly type stuff. For someone relatively new to the church, as well as to the faith, she was accepted quite readily by others as a leader. It made me proud of Zach's group, that they'd readjusted without the internal drama that teenagers can often default to.

And then that night. March 7th, 1982. (Alice says it was later that month, but I'm going with my diary.) It was that night that my fixation (perhaps an addiction) with the Jennings started. I was getting some material together alone late at the office when I looked up. The church should have been empty, and most certainly there was no noise which advertised him, just that familiar late-night echo of an otherwise empty building.

There he was, Philip Jennings standing in my office door. In a menacing stance, eyes fixed on me.