Tour of Homes, PK Style
- Rosemary Royston
- Feb 25
- 6 min read
Two months shy of my 18th birthday, I enrolled in a small, Methodist affiliated college in the north Georgia mountains. Prior to moving into a dorm room, I had lived in six different parsonages – parsonage being the term used for the house that the United Methodist Church provides to the pastor and their family to live in while serving the church. I was a shy child and have remained an introvert my entire life. Moving was hard, and we had no real control – it was up to the bishop to determine where we lived and when we moved. This may be, in part, why I have issues with authority. Even so, sitting in Psychology 101, I found myself surprised. We had been given a checklist of stressors. At the top of the list, and worth the most points was (unsurprisingly) the death of a loved one. Right next to that and with the same number of points: moving.
We all know how frustrating it is to move. You physically touch everything you own, put it in a box, label it, lift it, move it, drive it in a big truck (or pay a lot for someone else to), and unpack it. This linear process omits the step where you look at an object and wonder if you need it and put it in another pile to think about later. That pile grows and grows until you throw up your hands and think about burning it all down. While I consider myself a pro at moving, I would be happy to never have to go through the process again.
Since I’m well into midlife, I’ve entered the phase of wondering what some of those parsonages look like today, along with the town or city that we inhabited for two to four years. It is no surprise to me that for many years I’ve carried a grudge against the church. I did not like to see my parents’ agency stripped away. I did not like being the new girl in the rural towns to which we moved. I did not like that there were no resources provided by the church to us, such as counseling or support, for these stressful moves.
I recently did a fair amount of research on the UMC practices to see if there had been any significant changes in regard to parsonages and the cycle of moving pastors. It seems that over the last 50 years, there has been little universal change. In fact, I learned that the process varies from one conference (or geographical cluster of churches) to another. Not only is there the upheaval of moving, but there are also other issues, such as not owning a home. Often, pastors and their families will live in various houses for years without ever building any credit or equity, because they do not own one (and the compensation is moderate, at best). As we know, not having credit is quite challenging in a capitalist society. Another issue arises around children and their lives. I knew of families that had a rising senior in high school who were told they had to move in the upcoming summer months. They were left with unpleasant options: beg to stay another year, find a place to rent ($$$) and have one parent stay put while the pastor moves away, or uproot the teen in their last year of high school. None of these are appealing choices. Wouldn’t it be better to stay put?
When corresponding with the North Georgia Conference, an administrator shared how a conference in Indiana provides an option in a scenario like this. It is called a limited itinerancy status where a pastor may request that they not be moved more than 50 miles from their current location. But in order to achieve this status, the pastor must sign an agreement acknowledging that they may receive a part-time appointment or no appointment at all. I find this scenario to be coercive, at best, with significant financial ramifications.
Another issue that we dealt with were the parsonages themselves. In one small community, my parents were not allowed to do a pre-visit of the house, which is rare. It turns out that the previous pastor did not like to go to the dump and instead threw the trash into the back yard. Years after we moved from that clapboard house, it burned to the ground. Luckily no one was inside. Surprisingly, we were lucky to live in two new parsonages, even though one was not quite finished. It seems the builder fled to Mexico, and my multitalented father was tasked with the finishing touches.
Wherever you live, you want to style it accordingly. Don’t like the color of a wall? Paint it. Need better windows to keep out the cold? Get new ones. Want to add a porch? Go for it. But this is not the case for a parsonage. All changes had to be approved by the Parsonage Committee, and there was no guarantee the requests would be approved. In our last parsonage, we had an orange vinyl couch. This uncomfortable and ugly couch was in the “family room” that only had one other rocking chair (and a four-person family). When we asked for a new couch, we were denied. In another town, when my mother convinced a Parsonage Committee to allow her to paint the living room, it took six months to get approval. As the paint was drying, we got the call that we were moving that summer.
These may seem like petty grievances, but I can assure you they were not. The system made me feel less than. I felt that my primary caregivers were stripped of making both basic and significant life decisions. Instead, others were making them for us with none of our input or wishes in mind. This, in large part, was what turned me away from organized religion.
I had expressed a desire to do a “tour of parsonages” to revisit the towns and houses we lived in to my parents, and during a recent visit we were planning our Saturday and where we would go thrifting (a favorite pastime of ours). My mom, recalling my desire, suggested we ride to Elberton, GA. It was a great idea. I’d be able to see the downtown, we could thrift, and we could do our driving tour.
When we lived in Elberton, we served a “charge,” meaning Dad did not just preach at one church, he preached at three. We rotated in attendance at Coldwater, Cokesbury (in Hartwell), and New Bethel. My brother and I tagged along to the three churches. Of the three, my brother and I spent the most time at Cokesbury, as it was impossible to bond equally at three different churches. Cokesbury was and remains my favorite of all churches we served.
One challenge on this tour was that none of us recalled the actual address of the parsonage. You rarely write down your own address in an address book, and this was over forty years ago. But we still had some good friends in the area and knew where the parsonage was in relation to their farm. This allowed us to find the house, and while I knew it would be different, I almost did not believe it was the same place.
The driveway, which I thought was on a steep incline, and where my brother and I learned to ride our bikes, was really just at a slight incline. And the house was not nearly as large as I recalled. The memories of nearby places came rushing back – the pond that was hidden behind a wooded area, the country store we would ride to and buy candy bars, the neighbors we played with. Mom, Dad, and I simultaneously remembered people, events, and laughed and teared up as we shared memories.
We stopped at each church, and I took pictures of the exteriors. We noted additions, and were happy to see the churches were all still in use. At the last stop, Cokesbury UMC, we noticed a car was parked in the lot near the fellowship hall. Mom and Dad knocked on the locked doors. The doors opened and I heard a loud, "Well hello, Reverend Dusty!” To say we felt both remembered and loved in that moment is an understatement. Here, over 40 years later, were two women who were teens when my dad was pastor. Not only did they remember us, but they were also genuinely happy to see us. We chatted briefly and admired the changes to the church before heading home.
The trip, topped with the warmth of former congregants, helped tip my perspective into a more positive direction. While my experiences as a preacher’s kid may not have been ideal, it was rewarding to know that we had contributed to this church family, and that we were remembered fondly. Later that weekend, I had a text from a childhood friend of that town, and we will be connecting again this spring.
Elberton is the first of six towns I plan to visit this year. I look forward to reconnecting with old friends or simply seeing places where parts of my life were spent. While my home is in Blairsville with my family, I have six other towns that I’m connected to and each has shaped me in some way.
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