The Grass is Always Greener

Pastors don’t exist in isolation, a fact that their families know all to well. Having grown up in a relatively large church allowed me a certain amount of anonymity when compared to what Mary, Rachel and Rebecca experienced following me from parish to parish. Todd Karges was especially well liked by—for lack of a better way to put it—a clique at Oakland First, as was his wife, Diane. In Nebraska’s Swedish capital (this title was challenged by a couple of other towns in the state), the Karges family apparently hobnobbed their way into the society-page set (I feel compelled to remind the reader that this is a town of 1,200) while managing to be somewhat oblivious to the feelings of those who didn’t share the limelight. As a result, there were those who were not happy to see the Kargeses move, and they were the same ones who weren’t going to be happy with whoever replaced them. I always thought of Burwell as a fractious community (13 churches for 1,200 people) that managed to live in harmony, but the Oakland appointment introduced me to outright jealousy and competitiveness that created an environment that could hardly be described as harmonious.