Flying is a good way to travel. You can cover a lot of miles in a short amount of time. Traveling by air is the only way I know of that would make it possible for me to be in St. Louis yesterday, having breakfast with colleagues, attending a workshop with people from Canada and New Hampshire and Kentucky and Illinois and other places, and still get from there to the northwest corner of the northwest state in time to worship this morning with my home congregation. Had I traveled by car and participated fully in the APCE event, I would still be at least two, and perhaps three days away from arriving at home. Had I traveled by train, I would not been able to leave St. Louis until tomorrow.

Still, modern air transportation involves a lot of sitting and waiting. You have to arrive at the airport early because of uncertainty about how long the lines at airport security may be. It can take hours of waiting in line to get through the necessary safety checks. Then you need to arrive at the gate early so that you will be in the right place at the right time to board your plane in an orderly fashion. The plane must be fully boarded in advance of the announced departure time in order to keep on schedule. Then the journey requires you to sit and wait. There isn’t much to do on an airplane, at least not much that involves action. An airline passenger needs to spend as much time as possible in a seat with a seatbelt buckled tight and low. Sometimes you can look out the window. Often what you see is clouds and more clouds. After that, there was a longer than usual layover in the Seattle Airport. It would have technically been quicker to drive from Seattle than wait for the next flight, but that would have involved a lot of inconvenience. Taking the airplane from Seattle to Bellingham makes things a lot less stressful than driving through a huge city and up a busy Interstate Highway in the dark late at night. So I waited some more.

One advantage of this type of travel is that it gives a person time to think and reflect. After a very busy week, a little time to reflect is welcome. So much has happened in my life that there are all kinds of experiences that I had but did not have time to fully incorporate their meaning. I’ll be processing those experiences for quite a while now, but there were plenty of things to think about as I sat and waited.

In the marketplace at the convention there was a panel that was erected for congregations seeking Faith Formation professionals, directors of children’s ministries, youth ministers, and other educators to serve those congregations. The purpose of the gathering was not to be a job fair, but when you gather over 500 educators in person there will be those who are seeking a new position in the group. There weren’t many positions posted that board, though. I think there were two or three that were full-time jobs and those had other responsibilities that required additional experience and qualifications that a typical educator might not possess. Most were looking for someone to work less than 20 hours a week. I don’t know educators who are able to move to another place for a less-than-full-time job.

Meanwhile, i met with friends and colleagues who told me stories of hard places in their careers. One colleague is just a few years younger than me. He is 62 years old, has served the church faithfully in several different settings. When I first met him he was on the educational staff in the national setting of our church. In those days our national staff included a whole group of educators. There were curricula developers and trainers and certification specialists. There were ministers who were responsible for children and others for youth and others for adult education. Now, I know of only one person on the national staff with responsibility for educational ministries and she has other responsibilities in the church as well. Every year of my career there have been fewer jobs for educators in all settings of the church than the previous year. This colleague has, for the past seven years, been faithfully serving a large congregation with multiple staff persons. In addition to planning and leading educational ministries, he has served them by officiating at weddings and funerals, making visits in homes and hospitals, leading retreats and camps, and the whole range of activities that pastors and teachers assume. He is beloved. He has been told over and over by the senior minister of the church and the members of the staff that they are grateful for his ministries. A week ago, however, the senior minister of the church came into his office and said, “Don’t take this personally, but I want to give you a heads up that it may be time for you to start looking for a new position. This isn’t about you. It is just that the church doesn’t have the funds to support the size of the staff we have and the number of staff will be reduced.” How can you not take it personally when your job is being eliminated? At 62, the job options are not many. Most congregations seeking full-time leadership want someone who will stay for a decade or more. My colleague said to me, “Just three more years! That’s all I wanted. I know we’ll figure things out, but I need to know how to pay the mortgage right now.

Another colleague who is a brilliant teacher, author of a textbook with another book nearing completion, who was teaching in a graduate school in his thirties is now approaching his 50s. He told me that his educational debt, upon which he has now been paying for more than 20 years, is now double what it was when he graduated. Interest that is compounded daily is piling up quicker than he can pay the debt down. In any other form outside of educational debt, it would be labeled predatory lending and would be illegal. And now, he has been between professional jobs for a couple of months with no new offers in sight.

As I traveled, I thought of a half dozen other stories that I have heard this week. These are dark days for too many very good servants of the church. We can’t see what the future holds. A lot of good people cannot see a way to continue to serve the church. A lot of congregations are saying good bye to beloved educators.

I am a person of faith and hope. I know that God is still working, even in hard times. But today, travel weary and needing even more time for reflection, I am struggling to see the hope. It is a time to persist, to keep working, and to trust that God is good all the time. The hope will come, but not in today’s journal entry.