The following is a talk I delivered on November 6, 2022 in celebration of the Harwich church’s 275th Anniversary
I am honored, though a bit surprised, to be standing here this morning. Perhaps I should explain. It all started the day my father insulted me. I was maybe 10 years old at the time.
How did he achieve this? He told me I had the perfect personality to be a pastor. It was the last thing I wanted to do. Which is to say I was your typical suburban kid (Greenwich, CT) with fairly typical aspirations, none of which even remotely included ministry.
Worse still, I knew my father was a bit of an authority on the subject. Though not himself a pastor, he was the product of five generations of them on his father’s side. Several of his uncles and great-uncles were pastors also, not to mention his mother’s father being a pastor as well!
Ministry was, in a sense, the family business. Ultimately, it fell to me to get the family back on track. It was a dirty job but, as I often say, somebody had to do it!