How to properly wrestle a church opossum

and other lessons learned in rural ministry

This week marks one year since I left my first pastoral call. In the summer of 2018, as a licentiate of Warrior Presbytery, I started to preach at Marion Presbyterian Church in Marion, AL. She is an historic church having been founded in 1832. The current building was constructed in 1871 or 1872. She looks like a castle surrounded by magnolias and camellias. After serving for two years as pulpit supply, the Lord saw fit to call me as their pastor. I was ordained and installed on November 15, 2020. I pray that every pastor has an opportunity to serve a small, rural church. 

There are many things a rural ministry teaches you that a seminary could not (this is not meant to bash seminaries. There are loads they cannot teach but must be experienced). I thought I would share some of those lessons for your general edification. The last one could very well save your church. 

1. You don’t need a security team because everyone has a gun. I am from the North and we have a complicated relationship with guns. I never grew up with them and I’ve never owned one. I am not for or against them. They are just foreign to me. I forget when exactly but there was some issue going on and churches were afraid of potential shooters. I was talking with the elders about it and one told me not to fear and proceeded to show he was carrying. He also sat in an incredibly secure position in the church where he could see anyone coming into the sanctuary. At a church picnic some months later, it was revealed that I had never shot a handgun before. Our host, one of our Ruling Elders, was shocked by this revelation, and I think distressed. As we cleaned up, he approached me with some urgency and said, “Follow me!” I thought there was an emergency, and I was correct the emergency was me, “I cannot believe my pastor has never shot a handgun before!” We proceeded to walk away from the remnants of the picnic. He put a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield in my hand and said, “Have at it.” I commenced with vigor to “have at it.” To mark the solemnity of the occasion, he picked up a few empty cases and handed them to me, “so you can remember,” is what my elder said. They rest in a special box on my dresser ready to prove that this Yankee has now shot a handgun. 

2. The faithfulness of the saints. I always figured there was a retirement age for service in the church. I don’t mean you stop attending or being faithful, but at a certain age surely you’ve earned the right to step down and rest. Dr. B proved me wrong in that area of thinking. When I arrived, she was 92 years old and our church organist. Some Sundays, because the furnace was out or some other issue caused us to leave the sanctuary, we would have church in the fellowship hall, which had an old piano and some pews along the walls that we could move into the center. One Sunday when we were in that hall, Dr. B arrived with a cast on her left hand. She had taken a tumble and broke her wrist. Sticking out of the cast were her pinky and ring fingers. I asked her, “Dr. B, are you going to be able to play today?” With a huge smile, she walked to the piano and proceeded to play beautifully. She played the entire service with five fingers on her right hand and two on her left. Dr. B had been at Marion Presbyterian since the 70s as the music director and then organist. She no longer lived in Marion. Her daughter would faithfully drive her up from Montgomery every Sunday which is about an hour away. One Sunday when everything went wrong, it was just me and Dr. B. She played hymns, I read Scripture, and we prayed. It was a sweet Lord’s Day. 

3. I learned to value people over numbers. We were not a big church and we would not become big. The town of Marion, like many small Alabama towns, has been in decline over the past several decades. During my time there our average attendance ebbed and flowed but never got higher than 25. When I started looking for a full-time call, our size was often hard for churches to understand. I interviewed with one church and a woman, who I think meant well, said “Wow, how can that even count as a church? Why not close?” I explained it this way, “We could close and some would probably go to the Baptist church across the street. However, the majority would drive the thirty minutes to the next Presbyterian church. They are Presbyterian by conviction and confession. There is a matriarch in our church and town who has sat in the same pew all her life, as has her family since the church was built in 1871. One woman has attended since she was 9 or 10. She shares how when her family moved into Marion, the minister at Marion Pres was the only one who stopped by to welcome them and invite them to church. We do not close because the faithful keep coming to meet with God every Lord’s Day. The church is not less because the membership is small. I would take the collected faith and service of those fifteen saints versus the thousands gathered at the nearest watered-down mega-church. 

4. Finally, not the most important but certainly the most practical lesson I learned, how to properly wrestle a church opossum. One beautiful Fall Sunday, I was descending the stairs from the fellowship hall to the sanctuary. It was early and no one would be at church for another hour or so. Since I was alone, I jumped down the last two steps, belting out the wrong words to one of the hymns we were going to sing later that morning. As I landed on the sanctuary floor, there was a large bang and a swishing, scampering noise from the nearest air vent. Good reader, I seek to be honest with you and so must inform you I screamed. A loud, high-pitched scream. A passerby would not have been wrong to assume a woman had a terrible fright. I cautiously approached the vent and began to chuckle as I saw a plastic bag stuck in there. I proceeded with my day thinking the Diaconate would take care of it. The next Sunday, I was again walking down the stairs and saw the vent. I remembered we had no Diaconate and per BCO 9-2, “the duties of the office shall devolve upon the ruling elders.” While not a Ruling Elder, certainly nothing was preventing me from devolving and serving the church by removing the plastic bag. As I approached, I noticed that there was something else waving in the air vent. I reached down to open it when I saw the most horrifying thing - a church opossum. Its beady, sinister eyes were staring at me, daring me to open the vent. Since I was a Yankee and didn’t carry a gun, I could not handle this situation properly by myself, so I texted the Session. The Session, always remembering my origin, assumed I was mistaken and confidently informed me I was seeing things. They needed hard evidence, so I sent a video. This persuaded them, and I was informed to hang on until they got there. Once the two Ruling Elders (RE going forward) were present, we immediately went into an executive session around the vent. One RE made the sensible motion, “I say shoot it.” I agreed the animal was confined and blood would be minimal. The second RE had reservations about shooting a gun in church. A motion was then made to table the opossum’s fate until after morning worship. It was a wonderful service and I am pretty sure the opossum was moved by my sermon from Ephesians, Dr. B’s playing, and the hearty congregational singing. Still, he did not vacate after the service, so we un-tabled the issue of the church opossum. The gun-shy RE had come up with an inspired plan during my sermon. He said, “I need a cooler, a choir robe, and a hymnal.” Having acquired the necessary items, he shared his plan. One person would move the vent slowly aside while on the other side, someone was ready with an open cooler. He would go to battle with the possum armed with an old hymnal and a choir robe left over from the Cold War, hearty material the kind that was known to make grown men faint when worn in hot Alabama summers. One RE abstained from the plan since he felt strongly about shooting the opossum. Our team was assembled: the RE opossum wrestler, his wife, who was recruited as their vows had an iron-clad opossum stipulation “If I wrestle an opossum, you wrestle an opossum,” and me. We put the plan into action. It was sheer terror. Once the opossum realized his gig was up, he fought with tenacity. Praise God for Cold War-era robes as he tried to bite the valiant RE multiple times but failed. We were able to get him into the cooler, which I was holding. He did not go quietly into the cooler, but a few smacks on the head with the lid, and a punch in the face ensured he found his way snuggly into the cooler. We congratulated that we outsmarted the church opossum. We disposed of the hymnal and robe, vowing never to tell Dr. B what we used them for. The opossum wrestling RE disposed of the opossum back into the wild some distance from the church. I learned a lot that day. I learned that Elders can ascend to the heights of Deacons. I learned a church can come together to rid themselves of opossums. I also learned that opossums are very intelligent and know when they’ve got a good setup. This lesson was learned the next week when the opossum came back. He stayed with us after that. He attended my last Sunday service and is currently, I assume, on the rolls.