Tomorrow night at 10:00 PM, Reverend John Ash will step to the pulpit at the First Presbyterian Church in Mays Landing, New Jersey, the small town where I was raised, and begin the Christmas Eve service. That will happen all over the country, of course, including here in the Lehigh Valley, but there is something special about Reverend Ash's service. It will be the 62nd year he has presided over the Christmas Eve ritual. 62 years in a row, at the same church, over a time period when organized religion, not to mention society, has undergone massive upheavel.
62 years at any job is semi miraculous, of course, but even more so in the ministry, where any number of controversies, disputes, heck, disagreements about subject matter from the weekly sermons, could cause a major schism within the church community and result in a man or woman of the cloth leaving the church.
Reverend Ash certainly had his ups and downs, but when he preaches his last sermon on February 1, about five weeks from now, he will have concluded an uninterrupted seven-decade run that has perhaps no equal. "What your Reverend Ash has done is quite unique in the ministry," says Gary Marsh, a friend, a member of my golfing circle, and a retired Moravian minister. "It had to have been a two-way street for someone to have stayed that long. Reverend Ash had a huge sense of comfort in being there, and his congregants must have felt quite a comfort in his consistency."
One study concluded that the average length of time for a pastor to remain at a Protestant denomination is four years. Other studies have concluded the time period is even shorter. One thing's for sure: no study has ever concluded that a pastor stays anywhere near ten years, far less 62.
"I didn't think about longevity, of course, when I came here as a young pastor," Reverend Ash said when we talked last week at the church in Mays Landing, "You're just trying to get by, earn the congregation's respect, adapt to the town. Those things are difficult enough." As we talked, the memories came flooding back. First Presbyterian, opened in 1841, is located in the dead center of Mays Landing, at the intersection of Routes 40 and 50, and across the street from the Fair Lawn Market Grocery Stores my father owned, and where I worked for a good part of my young life.
I joined the church when I was 13. Reverend Ash hauled out a thick red book called The Register, in which is listed every ministerial transaction for the last century. There, in the 1962, was John David McCallum, who joined along with his best friend Robert John Gasko. Eight short years later, Reverend Ash presided over the funeral of Bobby Gasko, who was killed in Vietnam. So, Ash's longevity has produced, predictably, a web of connectivity in the town of Mays Landing. I haven't lived there for almost 60 years, yet my family is typical. Reverend Ash buried both of my grandmothers, my mother, and my father. He married my sister, buried my sister, and buried her husband, my brother-in-law. He baptized my nephew and buried my nephew, who died too young. He baptized both of my nieces, married both of them, and baptized their children. And I am just one small part of the venn diagram that connects Reverend Ash with the whole of Mays Landing.
His beloved wife, Roxy, who he met early in his tenure at Mays Landing, is gone now, as are so many of his partitioners. I've been at probably 15 funerals over which Reverend Ash has presided, and increasingly, it has gotten difficult for him because he sees not only the deceased and the family, he sees the past — births and baptism, marriages and secret miseries. "Keeping your composure when you're officiating is obviously part of the job," says Reverend Ash, "but yes, sometimes it is difficult when you've been around as long as I have."
At a time when people rarely stay at any job longer than five years, when careers are changed as often as socks, Reverend Ash stuck around, steering his church's ship through Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, economic hardship, political extremes. "The secret to success is constancy of purpose," the British politician Benjamin Disraeli once said, and that certainly applies to Reverend John Ash. I'll have a thought about him on Christmas Eve, tomorrow night, and merry Christmas to all of you.
