Like any job, being a faith leader requires schedules, deadlines, and little tricks that only come from experience. In the previous episode, Paster Bethany Cseh talked about the bigger questions that inform her work as a pastor, from inclusivity to theology.
In part two of this conversation, she tells Keith Flamer from College of the Redwoods and Michael Spagna from Cal Poly Humboldt about the day-to-day details in her work as a pastor.
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TRANSCRIPT:
ANNCR: Previously on Talk Humboldt...
CSEH: I grew up very conservative, where women were never allowed to be pastors.
ANNCR: Bethany Cseh is a pastor in Arcata, and like any job, there are schedules, deadlines, and little tricks that you learn from experience. In our last episode, she talked about the bigger questions that inform her work as a pastor. From inclusivity to theology. But today, in part two of the conversation, she tells Keith Flamer from College of the Redwoods and Michael Spagna from Cal Poly Humboldt about the day-to-day details in her work as a pastor from a small storefront church in downtown Arcata.
ANNCR: This is Talk Humboldt.
SPAGNA: What would someone from the community experience coming into Catalyst Church? What would that look like? Describe the experience.
CSEH: So, it's really messy. Nothing's really fully put together. And people can arrive in the mess. There's a lot of kids that are running around, and we try to create a space that feels really welcoming for every person who comes in, wherever they are. So every Sunday morning we send around a basket full of fidget toys because there's a lot of neurodiverse people.
To sit and listen to a sermon is real hard. So we try to create spaces where anybody feels like they can be welcome. Some people have their iPads and headphones on, and they're just trying to be present in the way that they can be present. We are a church that is very conversational, so my sermons are usually no more than 20 minutes in length.
But because we have so much back and forth conversation with questions and discussion throughout the whole thing, it takes about 40 minutes, 45 minutes to get through. So we open it up to other voices, other opinions. And what I found is I could preach a banger sermon and people will not even like they won't remember any.
SPAGNA: B-A-N-G-E-R?. Yes. Oh, okay. They're not referring to a part of Maine. … [Laughter]
CSEH: Like I could preach a good sermon….
FLAMER: That's good. That's good.
CSEH: And like, people walk away and they're like, ‘Oh, that was good. That was great. That really impacted me’ or whatever. And they will also be thinking about what I'm going to order at Los Bagels after service. And whatever content that they got will be gone by lunchtime. And so I've found that if people can speak what they're thinking, if they can verbalize it, they will take it home with them.
We always sing three songs to begin with, and a song at the end, and we close with a blessing. We always acknowledge the land that we land every Sunday, and we try to keep this place as open and accepting and affirming as we possibly can, because all are welcome in the family of God.
FLAMER: Has this format always been in your mind? Because I had a friend of mine who would invite me to go to the synagogue. And it was a very similar format in terms of speaking for ten, 15 minutes and having a conversation. Is that similar in your mind?
CSEH: Well I think so. It took me a long time to get there because that's not how I was. It was modeled for me. It was not how it was trained in typical Christian spaces. The typical Christian church they position themselves. Once Constantine made it into the official religion in Roman times they made it into a very hierarchical thing, because that's how you get people to commit, you create spaces of like it is a privilege to be in my presence, kind of a thing with teachers or pastors or priests or whatever, it was bishops back then, but I think we've come so far from that original concept, what you experienced in the synagogue.
CSEH: I believe that that's what we're meant to go back to instead of this, pulpit church on the stage, separation of the people from the ministers. It's a really sad thing that it's existed for this long.
FLAMER: What is your day like as a pastor? Because. Because I can see you on Sundays. But what happens on Monday through Saturday?
CSEH: Yeah. Well, Monday, I usually read a book I would not usually read because I interview people on a podcast called This Is Not Church. So I interview a lot of authors. Tuesday, you know, we pastor the Arcata United Methodist Church. And so there's always like a fellowship thing that I help lead on Tuesdays and kind of write the bulletin and get that all figured out, pick the songs for Sunday at the Methodist Church and then, really… walking with people. A lot of walks with people. A lot of emails and phone calls, and I'll get like, random asks to go to the hospital for certain things or to bring communion to people who can't make it out of their homes. I have three kids, and so that takes up a certain amount of energy. They're all teenagers and.
SPAGNA: That’ll fill up a week.
FLAMER: Oh my goodness, that will fill up months.
CSEH: No doubt. Yeah. So that takes up a certain amount of energy. And I've been married for 24 years and we always do date night every Friday. It's like Friday night is very sacred. And then that's also when we go into our Sabbath. And so we have a weekly Sabbath, which is a period of rest.
CSEH: And that comes from the Jewish tradition. It's not so much of a day off as much as it's a perspective of releasing and resting and not producing. We are known by what we produce, and if we are successful and it's hard to even sleep at night if we feel like we did not accomplish whatever it is that we were set out to accomplish.
FLAMER: I deeply understand that
CSEH: Yeah, exactly. I believe that I have enough, that I am enough, that God is enough and there is.
FLAMER: That is so anti-American…
SPAGNA: It is.
FLAMER: And it really is. It's a whole different mindset about what it means to be American. To be a human.
CSEH: Oh, and the other thing I love to do is I love to go to the gym. That's my time. And it is such a grounding thing for me to lift heavy and to push myself in those spaces.
SPAGNA: We were reflecting before we started the broadcast today about seeing our incoming students, and just my own observation is that it seems that the students coming in now seem to be fatigued with all the hostility in the world, and I greeted a couple hundred transfer students. I said, ‘I need you to be kind to each other with all this hostility and show each other compassion’, and people in the audience, the students, there was a lot of head-nodding. Are you seeing the same thing in terms of your people that come in and participate? Because that's a hopeful message. I think maybe we're in a place where people are trying to not be fatigued, and there are a lot of people right now. They're emboldened to be hostile, to be mean as opposed to caring about one another. And it seems like that's consistent with your philosophy, what you're doing in the church. Have you seen the same thing?
CSEH: Yeah, I feel like we need more compassion and empathy than ever before. However, I have seen people in their quest for more compassion and empathy. They're quick to judge those that have less compassion.
SPAGNA: Interesting.
FLAMER: Yeah.
CSEH: And they can kind of come at them. Yeah. And we live in a culture - I say that a lot, but we do - that is quick to blame. And it's always somebody else's fault. But the thing that Jesus preached over and over again that was so subversive is to love your enemy. And so oftentimes we see those who are our enemy or we make enemies out of people instead of actually seeing them as people.
CSEH: Open your eyes and see each other's humanity is one of the most important things that we can do as people. It's no longer about enemies. It's more about friends.
FLAMER: I love this.
SPAGNA: Time. Yeah. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.
FLAMER: A great day…
ANNCR: You've been listening to Pastor Bethany Cseh from Arcata on Talk Humboldt. To hear more episodes of Talk Humboldt, subscribe to the podcast or visit khsu.org.