FTE "On Call" Blog

Melissa Wiginton

Vice President for Ministry Programs and Planning

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January 07, 2009

Hard questions and a theological education

A few days before Christmas, amidst the growing anticipation of new life we Christians celebrate as Advent, I heard a commentary on NPR about in-vitro fertilization (IVF). (http://kut.org/items/show/15152). More than a half-million frozen embryos are currently being stored in American facilities and thousands more are being added each year. Some will be thawed out, implanted into a mother and grow into real, live babies; others will be kept for future use, either as siblings to the now-born babies or … well, that’s the problem, the “or for what.”

What would a young pastor say to a couple about what to do with the frozen embryos? How would a young pastor counsel them about the consuming desire to reproduce a child of one’s own DNA, about money and community and identity and God’s love? How would a young pastor deal with infertility in his or her own life? These are profoundly spiritual and theological questions. We need thoughtful, well-educated leaders to walk with would-be parents, grandparents, physicians, nurses, lawyers, and teachers along these new paths, discerning with us what is required of us as followers of Jesus Christ.

William Salaten, the commentator I heard on NPR, cited a finding reported in the journal Fertility and Sterility (http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(08)04204-0/abstract) that a significant number of the parents of frozen embryos would rather have them destroyed than carried, nurtured, birthed and raised by someone else. Further, forty percent of parents with frozen embryos have no plan for their disposition at the time of conception (other than implantation). Salaten takes what I found to be a bold stand amidst the implicit ethic of the age: if you can afford it and you want it, get it. He says stop making embryos that you don’t know what to do with them. He says that to do so is not responsible.

Are we preparing young pastors to navigate complex issues and to make bold stands? That’s precisely why our world needs young leaders who bring to these kinds of issues the thoughtfulness and training gained from a graduate theological education.

Maybe that is not what they are called to do, but in the midst of profound questions of life and death—in an age when human life can be frozen and revivified—I want pastors who can offer more than a ministry of presence. I want pastors who can draw not only from the biblical text (where we have the story of a girl impregnated without benefit of sexual relations) but also from the deep wells of Christian tradition and theology. We need young pastors who can read and think and ask the right, hard questions and pray and listen and love. They face a daunting challenge for which they need exceptional brains and courage: They need to know a lot about a lot of things. They need lots of conversation partners outside of theology and really good ones inside theological discourse. They need to be able to ask hard questions and live with hard answers—or no clear answers at all.

Otherwise, commentators on NPR may be the only ones doing the work of reflection on such critical issues as frozen embryos in limbo. While those folks may advance the common good—for which we are grateful—we also need a word from the Lord. And that’s what excellent ministers bring.