University of Virginia Library

Calling a Pastor

In the spring of 1968, the Miami Presbytery received approval from the denomination's Board of National Missions for the new congregation. They also got a promise of financial support on a declining basis for the proposed three-year life of the congregation. To express its central concern and raison d'etre, the Presbytery named the newly approved mission the Congregation for Reconciliation.

During the next months the New Church Development Subcommittee of the National Missions Committee interviewed several prospective organizing pastors. In late June, after considering several others, the committee invited the Rev. Richard Righter, a pastor in Philadelphia, for an interview. Reared in the San Francisco area, Righter had attended the University of California at Berkeley for his undergraduate degree and had continued for a Master's in Business Administration. After seminary he had interned in an inner-city church in San Francisco before accepting the call to a racially transitional inner-city church in Philadelphia. Righter was an appealing candidate. First, he had a strong track record for involvement in social action in previous pastorates and, second, he had an intense concern with the development of lay leadership skills. In discussing this point with the committee, Righter insisted that the pastor should play a low-key role relative to lay leadership.

The committee was impressed. They anticipated that the experiment would attract strong people with diverse ideas and felt an authoritarian pastor would build destruction into the system. As one committeeman told us,' they feared that a pastor who insisted on running the show would trigger an explosion when confronted by a membership of hard-nosed activists: "They would just blow each other out of the water almost immediately. Everybody would leave or else the pastor would have to change his style."

Righter had studied the design passed by the Presbytery and had anticipated some hard bargaining. Eagerness to attempt such an experiment never overrode his rational interest and reservations. The proposal, as approved, provided for a three- to four-year experiment. The design called for three years of

financial support, decreasing by one third each year, and had deliberately left the impression of a temporary rather than a permanent experiment. The committee had emphasized impermanence so that the congregation, if it failed to take root and become self-supporting, could be ended with little flak. If the congregation did survive, however, the committee was in a position to consider the possibility of continuation at that time. Righter argued the possibility of permanence. He assumed survival and wanted assurance that the congregation would not be arbitrarily immolated after four years. Receiving this commitment, Righter accepted the call and became pastor of the Congregation for Reconciliation.