Et tu, Marcus?

To his credit, Dick Carter felt that it was important that I do some preaching, a role coveted by most senior pastors because it places you squarely in the center stage spotlight. I’ll never know whether this was a purely charitable act on Dick’s part, or if it was prompted by parishioners who were tiring of his somewhat disjointed homilies, but at any rate I ended up delivering a sermon about once a month. Once again my close attention to Dad’s style and content served me well, and it wasn’t long before some of Dick’s detractors were urging him to let me preach more often. Although this was flattering, it was also politically dangerous, and I had been in the United Methodist church long enough to know that this was a recipe for disaster for me as the associate pastor. It also wasn’t helping that those program areas that Dick had assigned to me were beginning to produce results. It was known throughout the district and the conference that Dick suffered from a kind of ineptitude for most things ministerial, particularly administration. It didn’t help that such was highlighted by the three associates that Dick had had in about as many years, and it was my luck of the draw to be number three. In other words, I was perceived as a threat by the man who managed most of the time to be his own worst enemy.