On February 15, Rev. William McConnell died at the age 96. His service was on March 15 in North Hampton, NH, our pastor's hometown at her home church. Here is the what she offered at that memorial gather, and a picture from her walk along the seacoast in the early hours prior.
When people ask me why I became a pastor, the first thing I say is about this congregation, that it was a lively place full of people I knew from all aspects of my life—school, my neighborhood, my town, people I’d see when I was out with my mom or my dad. They were engaged, involved, kind, funny, weird, annoying, gracious, generous, well-meaning. The second thing I say is about my pastor, Mr. McConnell, Bill, that he was kind, smart, honest, good to his word, which, when you get right down to it, is all we have as Christians, as preachers: our word. All we have is our word. If our faith and testimony are to mean anything, that Jesus, though crucified, rose from the dead and thus revealed the will and way and perfected end of God, thus freed the world from the power of death, then our word is everything. If we’re not reliable and honest in the little, everyday things, then why would anyone trust us in the big, unbelievable things?
Bill arrived in North Hampton when I was five years old, and over the years he became a friend to my parents, hiking with dad, jogging like my mom, gathered with them and Peggy around a card table in my living room for bridge games. He was the Minister on the Mountain when I was, for two summers, a camper at Horton Center, he led my confirmation class as he did many others, I’m sure, and he probably only seemed angry when he busted me for sneaking away from coffee hour to come back upstairs, to sing songs from the hit movie-musical Grease into the pulpit mic. This, of course, made it so the service recorded for shut-ins would feature an exciting new postlude: “Summer Lovin’.”
Yeah, I didn’t get all the double entendres.
There was something so complete about this church for me. This, I know now and might have suspected then, had to do with Mr. McConnell’s pastoral leadership, that he had a fullness of presence, that he could meet you where you were and join you in your interests and concerns. I had this parochial view of the world, truly not knowing that there are churches like this one all over New England, one right over there in Exeter, another right over there in Greenland, arguably too many as we all struggle to sustain. I remember, probably as a middle schooler, being shocked to learn this, and a little disturbed. Why would anyone become involved there, at those sad satellite gatherings, when the center of things was here, on North Hill in North Hampton? Mr. McConnell was here so why would anyone go there?
The center of things: this gravitational pull. When I’d come home after college and after a first and failed attempt at graduate school, when the question of what I should do with myself became the pressing question of everyday, all I knew was what I couldn’t do. Nothing under florescent lights or in a building with temperature control. Nothing where I had a boss I had to answer to, as I could be described as having a problem with authority—although I never had a problem with Mr. McConnell’s authority. I took any job that came my way, one among them being a greenskeeper at the golf course where I was incompetent but at least knew it, where daily I was given the hole-cutter and the assignment to walk and change all 18 holes on all 18 greens, thus empowered to do as little damage as can be done. (“Keep her away from the big machines.”)
It was there that I realized, “This isn’t my life.” And on the way home from work, the church being the center point between the golf course and my house, I stopped in to Bill’s office, for he was Bill to me by this point, sat down on that funny brown sofa I’d all but made mine, and said, “I think I’m called to divinity school.”
He opened his desk drawer, pulled out some pamphlets (Andover Newton, Harvard Divinity School), and said, “I know.”
A year later, as a student at the Div. School, I was ready to accept that there are other congregations of Jesus’ catholic church (small c catholic), and that they’re lively with faithful, funny, devoted people and skilled, enlightened, educated pastors, but this one was still mine, Bill was still mine. I served two years as a seminarian here and then did an ad hoc internship. Only upon Bill’s retirement was I open to the possibility that somewhere else might be okay too.
My tendency to overstay my welcome, however, continued when it came to Bill. He would now be my pastor as mentor, throughout my process of becoming ordained, and then called to a congregation, and then settled into that congregation, always meeting up on the phone, every other week for years, and then monthly as I got more comfortable in my role and had fewer pressing matters that I might screw up. Our last call, my calendar tells me, was in 2020. By that point, he and Peggy had moved into Sentry Hill, and then Peggy had to move to a different point of care in their system, thus making it so Bill was nearly never near his apartment phone.
After that, and once Covid had cleared, I’d visit them in York, and more recently just Bill. July was the last time I saw him. We talked about Peggy and his children. He showed me pictures of them from different points in their life together as a family, and every few moments he’d look up at me and say, full of wonder, “Liz Rogers.”
It takes a certain strength of character to participate in a relationship that spans time and also allows for change and growth. Very often relationships wherein power shifts: very often these relationships break down. Mentors can become defensive when those whose growth they’ve fostered become too much their equal. Role models can become rivals. It happens all the time. It didn’t happen here—and when I think of the ways this precious relationship I shared with Mr. McConnell, with Bill, could have slid off course, the fact that it didn’t makes me treasure him all the more.
The pastoral role is vulnerable to veering into other territories, vulnerable to this in a particular way. Pastors aren’t like anything else in our lives—though people have tried over the years with me to liken it to something more familiar. “He’s like a father to you,” people would say, and I’d say, or at least think, “No, he’s my pastor.” He’s like a therapist, they’d offer helpfully, a teacher, a mentor. No, he’s pastor. And I realize now he always will be. He was singular in my life and there will be no replacing him. He accepted how sweet and full of promise I am, and also how obdurate and asinine and impossible I am—and he showed me how that can be done for others, for we all full of promise and also asinine.
I am so grateful for Bill, and for all the people who made Bill as available to me as he was—Peggy, and Andy, Holly, Peter, and Tim. Pastors who can travel the long road of time with their congregants can usually do so only because their own relationships are sources of strength, good humor, centering concern, and through it all joy. There’s a superstructure at work in the life of a successful pastor. It’s a divine superstructure, of course, that great cloud of witnesses to have come before, and the Holy Spirit sent to continue to speak God’s word into our hearts and to empower us in our work for the sake of the gospel, and God our Father and his Beloved Son who are our beginning, our end, and our advocate and comforter along the way. It’s also a mundane superstructure, a reliable partner, busy children and then grandchildren, hobbies like hiking and jogging and playing bridge, just doing the sorts of things that humans do.
That’s what Bill did, the sorts of things that humans do, but with a strength of grace that filled it all with holy light.
The English term “parson” is actually just an accented way of saying “person,” meaning that the parson at the church is really just supposed to be a person, but one better than most.
Just prior to being ordained, I wondered at this, wondered really what ordination even means. Bill said, “It doesn’t mean now at last you’re worthy of ordination. It means you’ll spend your life hoping and working and praying to be worthy of ordination.”
People ask me why I became a pastor, and I think of the people who were persons in my upbringing, and most of all this particular person, Bill. Very common and utterly singular, just like us all.
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