Episode 24: Bill Weisenbach: Answering the Call to a Joyful Life
At age 50, Rev. Bill Weisenbach made a major life pivot when he left his post as Vice President of New York Seminary to become the sole pastor of a small church in an historic Hudson Valley town. Looking back after almost 30 years, Bill reflects on the shift from teaching and administration to serving on the front lines of his field as a parish minister, and how his mantra, “Hold your truth lightly”, serves him well in these times.
Topics include:
How a volunteer substitute gig gave him the courage to seek out a new path
The value of a professional peer group when working alone
Sticking to self-imposed schedules as key to success and growth
The importance of family and spousal buy-in to major life changes
Being happy with a major life change, even when it means a pay cut
Resources:
Transcript:
Bill Weisenbach (00:38):
I've come to conclude that the Bible is not a book of orthodoxy. It is a book of paradoxy. It has truth throughout it, but all those truths are situational. They're like Proverbs, you know, too many cooks spoil the broth. That's true, but you know, many hands make light work.
Betsy Bush (00:58):
Welcome to the latest version. I'm your host, Betsy Bush here on the latest version. We've talked to so many guests who have been making life changes and career pivots and who were still only a few years into their exciting new journey. My guest today, Bill Weisenbach offers a longer perspective. 30 years ago, he made his mid-life career pivot from teaching and administration to the frontlines of his field. As a pastor and minister in the Presbyterian church, bill has so much wisdom to offer those on the path to reinvention. Bill, welcome to the latest version.
Bill Weisenbach (01:42):
Thank you very much, Betsy. It's good to be here.
Betsy Bush (01:44):
And I want to say to my listener, just to hang in there, if you're not Presbyterian, don't worry. Bill offers a deeply humane perspective on life and the topic at hand that is meant for everyone. I'm so glad you're here today, but
Bill Weisenbach (01:59):
Thank You.
Betsy Bush (02:01):
Bill, back in the early nineties, you made what we call a career pivot or what in the nineties might've been called midlife crisis or something very radical. Tell us what you were doing and what you decided you needed to do to make a change.
Bill Weisenbach (02:20):
When I went to seminary in 1966, which gives you some idea of how old I am. I thought I wanted to work at a college in kind of a Dean of men kind of situation. And that given the conservative background from which I came, that was the way to do it. But I became for lack of a better term radicalized, I wound up at the seminary that George W. Weber, Bill Weber, one of the founders of the east Harlem Protestant parish was about to become the president. And, uh, I was very impressed with bill. I organized the students behind his. So when I graduated in '69, instead of going off and doing that, bill invited me to be his assistant while I did get another graduate degree. And the entire experience was revolutionary for me. This was in the middle of the time that issues of racism and misogyny were so on the forefront and New York seminary was deeply committed to working in all of these. Even the earliest days of the environmental movement occurred about this time. And because we had a building that was only half occupied with students, all the rest of the building was filled with similar organizations, charitable organizations, the environmental action coalition, got its start there, bread for the world, got it. Started there on and on and on. And all of these began to influence me. And when I finished my two years of serving as Bill's assistant, I was invited to join the faculty, which was great. And a few years after that, I wound up being the vice president of the school. And as we evolved and grew and became actually very sizeable institution, six or 700 students at every imaginable level, I became the academic vice president. So I was the coordinator and organizer of many of these efforts. And I loved all of that. It was a wonderful place to be. Bill finally retired and a new president came on and he too had been a colleague on the faculty with the same priorities, same commitments to doing things that would change the world for the better. By this time, the institution itself was 70% African-American students, the rest divided between Korean, Spanish and Caucasian. So it was an extraordinary learning opportunity for people like myself, who in early days had no experience to that world at all.
Betsy Bush (05:02):
Now, as an undergraduate, you went to, I think it was Nyack college
Bill Weisenbach (05:08):
College, the college of the Christian missionary Alliance, very, very conservative. Oh, the stories I could tell about being at Nyack college, I went there and men had to be in their room after 10 o'clock at night and three times a month, you could go out until 12:30. It took Nyack college about 20 years to catch up to what was going on in the world. At that time. I remember it, the Vietnam war, there was a point at which they said, if you support the war in Vietnam, drive around with your headlights on. And all the faculty were driving around with their headlights on all the time. And I thought, even then I knew that something was wrong. So my escape to New York Seminary was also my escape from fundamentalism and my introduction to a world where for me to be right, everyone else doesn't have to be wrong. Something to which I am devoutly committed to this.
Betsy Bush (06:09):
That's amazing. So at some point though, you felt that your work as a teacher and administrator at New York, theological seminary, wasn't where you wanted to keep going?
Bill Weisenbach (06:22):
Well, the, the gift to me was that the central Presbyterian church minister had left. That's the 53rd and park avenue church had left and they were hiring guest preachers, and I was one. And that was fine. I did that, but a few months later, they called me and said, well, we found a new minister, but he can't come for a year. Would you be willing just to be the pulpit supply for
Betsy Bush (06:51):
Which means a pulpit supply means you literally just step into the pulpit and you preach the sermon that Sunday,
Bill Weisenbach (06:58):
It really is it, but it involved going in on Wednesday afternoon just to make sure the bulletin was prepared correctly. And to sit down with the director of music and do things together. But for nearly a year, I would go to a Central on Wednesday afternoons and then on Sunday morning and be there preacher. And I found out that I loved it. I just loved it. And the new person came and I was invited back to charge the congregation for that person's installation and developed a few friendships there that I still have to this day. But I went back to my life in New York seminary, which has always been rich and wonderful. But then the board of trustees hired a president who no longer saw me as a partner. And I knew I needed to change and I couldn't get out of my system, how much I enjoyed the parish ministry. And one of my seminary colleagues actually was living at that point in Garrison. And he said, there's a little Presbyterian church up there that's got a vacant pulpit if you're really thinking about doing something different. And so I investigated it among several other offers in churches, some in Manhattan, and, um, decided to take the plunge, took a $45,000 pay cut.
Betsy Bush (08:26):
Well, you know, a lot of the discussions I have with people on this podcast involve experimenting with new fields through say volunteering or taking a side hustle and expanding it into it's like, oh, I was doing this just for fun or just as a side gig. And all of a sudden, it's the only thing I want to do, or I'm volunteering, uh, say a hospital or someplace else just to test the waters. Do I want to try for a career in the medical profession? And it sounds like this is what happened to you with your pulpit supply gig for a year.
Bill Weisenbach (09:05):
I think it did actually. That's exactly what happened. I wanted to run my own show. I wanted it to be the head of an organization where I was ultimately responsible. I had been quite a good professional number 2, to, 3 different four different presidents at the seminary. And, uh, I really wanted this new challenge and it was all made possible of course, because I had had, and have, uh, an extraordinary partner in my wife who, uh, said, okay, I'll commute an hour to work instead of walking to work as she did when we lived in Manhattan.
Betsy Bush (09:44):
Yeah. Well, you know, your example is actually, it's kind of the reverse of a lot of the guests I've had here on the podcast where the person making the pivot or the career change, the career exploration is the female, half of the partnership because the male half is out making a living. And I find your situation so interesting because you do have this very egalitarian marriage of, from what I can tell, um, your wife, Cynthia Stuen is an accomplished professional in her own, right? But to support your need, to do some exploration and to find something more fulfilling is really an interesting gender switch role at a time when I think it was really unusual, maybe it's not unusual now or as unusual, but
Bill Weisenbach (10:38):
When we got married in 1978, she wouldn't take my name and I wouldn't take hers. So we did in fact keep our names, but to push that envelope, when we decided to have children, we created a cosmic lottery of sorts. I'm one of four sons. She was one of three daughters. I most wanted a daughter. She most wanted a son. And so we agreed that if we had a daughter would take my last name, if we had a son that would take hers, and if we had a second child, it would reverse no matter what the gender. And then we would renegotiate the lottery. If we had a third, well, we only had two. And so our daughter was a Wesisenbach and our son, uh, it was still,
Betsy Bush (11:23):
I've never come across that combination before, but to me it makes total sense. And there's a deeply egalitarian, almost a feminist view in your partnership. I would say that's really inspiring, especially considering that I would say you're a generation or half generation ahead of me. So you were really on the Vanguard, but listening to, and I haven't heard these stories before, about your early years at New York, theological seminary and inspiring life view that I wish a lot more people had and maybe more people will take up just completely egalitarian like that. I've really liked that. So your family was very supportive of this switch. I mean, you did have school-aged children at the time, which meant changing schools and a new community, new friends, et cetera. Was that a difficult switch?
Bill Weisenbach (12:24):
Well, we didn't think it would be, uh, which is why I also could afford the pay cut living in Manhattan. We were sending our children to the United nations international school. And if we moved to Cold Spring, we assumed the public education would fill the bill. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. We were disappointed in the public schools and wound up sending our kids to private school anyway, but nobody blamed anyone for that. It's just the way it worked out. There always seemed to be enough money to pay the bills. Cynthia, by then was vice-president of the Lighthouse in the city and making significantly more money than I, uh, and so we managed to, uh, manage to do it, but she added two and a half to three hours a day to her life as a gift to me, which was a very generous thing to do. And I wound up being in Cold Spring for nine years, and then we moved to Katonah. So I cut her commute down by seven minutes.
Betsy Bush (13:30):
That was very generous. If you build, you know, we should explain to our listener, uh, we're talking about the Hudson valley cold spring. You take the Metro north train of the, of the Hudson line and you go along the river, which is a beautiful commute to Cold Spring, which is about, uh, an hour and 20 minutes. If I Recall on the train that stops at every Stop on the train that stops at every stop.
Bill Weisenbach (13:56):
Uh, but directly across from west point, people might know where that is.
Betsy Bush (14:06):
Yeah. Right. But still lovely, lovely, um, beautiful Westchester. Did you do anything special to prepare for the transition to full-time ministry as opposed to what you were doing before teaching and administration?
Bill Weisenbach (14:23):
Did I do anything special? Well, I knew one of the gifts of being on a faculty was the interaction with colleagues and the ability to talk about important issues and ideas whenever you wanted. So the very first thing I did was become part of what we call the lectionary group of clergy group. So we would meet on Wednesdays and we would take a look at the lectionary texts for the coming Sunday. Sometimes we talked about those. Usually we talked about our lives and our troubles and the parishioners who were just a Royal pain in the, and it was a chance to complain and be in an environment where you really could be honest with people and not have to go back to your professional face when you got home. And, uh, I found that extremely important in my life, not to move into what could have been a very solitary life, other than going during the week to visit people in their homes or in the hospital.
Betsy Bush (15:25):
I think one issue with people who become entrepreneurs, who may be leaving an office environment to start the business they've always dreamed of starting is the solitariness. And I can certainly speak to that as a podcaster. I don't really have a, you know, a peer group and I don't have office mates anymore where you kind of have that office family feeling. That can be a very difficult transition for a lot of people, especially I would say after, you know, if you're after 40 or 50 and you're in a, kind of a, a groove where you're not finding a lot of ways to mix with people or make new friends or things like that.
Bill Weisenbach (16:10):
Um, the other part of that too, is the discipline that an office or a faculty position offers you. There's a certain expectation you're going to be in at a certain hour. In my case, as an administrator, I was in it eight o'clock in the morning, and I left about 5:30 unless I was teaching that night. And that provided the space and the time and the discipline to do my job, you get into, uh, being self-employed or being in parish ministry. Nobody's looking at the clock. You could sleep in in the morning. You could play golf every afternoon of the week, but you really would not get your job done. So you do have to build into your life mechanisms to discipline. I do anyway in need of mine. For example, I, if I didn't have a draft of the whole, of the Sunday morning service, including my sermon done by Wednesday, I was something of a wreck. So it always made Monday morning, many clergy take Mondays off. I never did. I would start working on the next Sunday. I also, I think I discovered that in a church situation, and this might relate to other kinds of occupations as well. If you do church, well, you can get away with a lot of stuff, but if you don't do church well--
Betsy Bush (17:35):
Well, if Sunday morning, you know, doesn't seem all buttoned up and organized. Yeah.
Bill Weisenbach (17:42):
Right. And if there isn't a thoughtful sermon that, you know, that gives people something to think about during the week, you're probably not going to hang on to that job. Or at least you're not going to grow. You're going to be you're, you're going to remain quite small. And in my nine years at cold spring, we went from 45 people to 200, which was a,
Betsy Bush (18:05):
Um, a Testament
Bill Weisenbach (18:07):
To, uh, to at least doing church. Well, I think, but also, I mean, we, we also did all kinds of programs to get the community involved. We have jazz Vesper service. We had a movie night, one of the professors at New York seminary taught ethics would do a movie night on Saturday night, once a month, we'd have a potluck and have a movie and talk about it with them.
Betsy Bush (18:34):
Yep. There are all sorts of different ways to engage people outside of the Sunday service, but you don't want anyone showing up and going home and thinking, well, that was a waste of time. Right, right. That's the last thing, if you look back now over that transition time, would you do anything differently? Would you have tried to approach a career in ministry earlier? Or do you think it was just the way circumstances came together?
Bill Weisenbach (19:06):
Well, it certainly feels to me that the way I did it and the timing involved was a plan beyond my comprehension. That was for me, that really worked out very well. I mean, what would I have done differently? I probably would've paid more attention in seminary to the things that I was expected to be able to do it when I got into a parish than I actually did, but I am a pretty quick study. And I think I picked them up on the way. I wish I had a read more, uh, philosophy when I was in college. Uh, the older I get, the more I appreciate philosophy and the seeming ambiguity of all things, I've come to conclude that the Bible is not a book of orthodoxy. It is a book of paradoxy, it has truth throughout it, but all those truths are situational. They're like Proverbs, you know, too many cooks, spoil the broth. That's true. But you know, many hands make light work. The Bible is like that. The Bible is like that. It has a truth for one situation, which isn't going to be a truth in another. And that's why it's, I think it's so important to hold your truth lightly, you know, and to go where the evidence leads you and to be open to new experiences and to be, to say yes, unless there's a good reason to say no, instead of no. And let you know, unless there's a good reason to say yes.
Betsy Bush (20:45):
Does it concern you that there are so many people who look for answers in the Bible to the problems of 21st century life? When you think of how long ago much of that scripture was written in social systems, that would be totally unacceptable today. But for some reason, if it's in the Bible, it's okay.
Bill Weisenbach (21:10):
It boggles my mind that people can take a book that was written over a period of 1600 years with 40 different authors in 40 different cultural contexts. And think that every word is inspired, it just doesn't calculate for me. And I don't think that's the way the Bible is to be used. The people who think that, I mean, the Bible has been used to promote slavery, to keep women in place still to this day. People use the Bible to keep LGBTQ people as outcasts. When what the Bible points to in all of its fullness is generosity and love and fairness and sharing and all of those wonderful qualities that we all hope for. So, yeah, I mean, I'm terribly bothered by what fundamentalists do to the Bible and that fundamentalist Muslims do to the Koran and fundamentalist Jews do the first Testament. I mean, it makes no sense to me and it's not fair.
Betsy Bush (22:19):
I was going to ask you, and we can just touch on this briefly when you were at New York seminary, they had then, and they still have this program of bringing education to men incarcerated at sing sing. And I'm wondering if you cast your mind back, I know it was a long time for you then now what did education and bringing that program to them? Did you see anything, any examples of the power of education to, for reinvention or people who were able to transform through this program that gave them access to, uh, something outside of the culture they were living in?
Bill Weisenbach (23:06):
Oh, I think education is one of the most powerful tools to bring about the transformation of society. All these men at Sing Sing. This was back in the day when a lot of colleges were enabling college degrees, uh, in prisons. And so, and GED programs were very popular. There were just literally hundreds of incarcerated men with long-term sentences, usually murder or armed robbery or things where they got 30 years, they came to prison bitter, but there was nothing to do. And somebody said, well, at least get your GED. And then all of a sudden they got into a college program and finished that. And during the course of that incarceration, so many of them had a significant religious experience that they really wanted to change their lives in part brought about I'm certain like becoming educated. And so the chaplain at Sing Sing got in touch with us and said, I've got all these men. Is there something you could do? He was thinking back then I suspect a certificate program or something like that. But Bill Weber was still president of the seminary. And, uh, we sat down and talked about it and decided we could do a degree program here. There's no reason not to. So in the early eighties started the first and what continues to be only graduate program in a prison that offers a Master of Professional Studies in ministry to up to 20 men each year. Uh, the state cooperates in prison systems cooperates in all this by transferring men from all across the state who have in all other ways, qualified, uh, for this program. And, uh, they are all able then to go back into the prison after their year and, uh, be non stipendiary Chaplains' Assistants and help other inmates to kind of get their life together. Eventually, almost all of them have gotten out. The recidivism rate is so low that it's hard to measure. And the leaders of nearly every New York city rehabilitation program that I'm aware of is run by a graduate of this program. Wow. Yeah.
Betsy Bush (25:29):
Such incredible stories. Again, it's very, I'm kind of at a loss for words, because I find that. So moving that sort of situation, I'm wondering if you ever think about what your life would have been like if you hadn't made the switch to ministry, if you had continued in the role that you had been in?
Bill Weisenbach (25:50):
Well, if I had never become unhappy at New York seminary, I think I probably would have become far more active in a local church than I did before I made the move. I was a, what they call a parish associate at first Presbyterian in New York city when I was at the seminary. And so I would go down there on Sunday morning and I led the adult Bible class. And then I would be on the platform with the pastor and do the pastoral prayer, something like that when I was able to do it, which was most Sundays, I think I would have become much more involved perhaps in a small church where I filled the pulpit to scratch that itch that central had started in me and I still have that itch. I, I retired from my second I'm fully retired in the Presbyterian system and became a parish associate at the Hitchcock Presbyterian church in Scarsdale, where I do the same thing. I lead an adult Bible class and I am on the platform occasionally preach there and preach at other places when I'm asked to do so. And I cannot imagine my life without that. Now I've been joyful in everything that I've done. And when I wasn't, I moved on in the old Testament, there's the story of Hosea, whose wife was a harlot. And she would go out every morning and sit at the gate and ply her trade. And each evening Hosea would go out and take her hand and bring her back home. It was a metaphor for how Israel behaved in relationship to God. God was saying to Israel, you're being, you're being a harlot in our relationship. Get it straightened out. And Hosea the prophet creates this living metaphor to get Israel to change its ways. I had an insight many years ago, 40 over 40 years ago that I was not called to be Hosea in this world. I was really not called to be unhappy in a relationship, in a job, in anything I was called. Saint Paul says we are called to a joyful life. And that's the way I've tried to live my life. If you can't fix it, move on, you know, do something else, try something else. You can actually live very well with a $45,000 pay. Cut. Everything works out. If you feel that's the right thing to do. And I still follow that.
Betsy Bush (28:46):
That's wonderful. You know, I always end my interviews with asking for three pieces of advice. And I'm wondering if you have some three distilled pieces, this has been a wonderful conversation, but I'm wondering if you have three off the top of your head that you can recommend.
Bill Weisenbach (29:02):
I may have already said some of them, one of them certainly is hold your truth lightly. Michael Green, the British theologian. He used to say, “Never be so arrogant as to presume that God's truth is limited by your ability to understand it.” And I had that on my wall when I was a pastor. It is I think, one needs to hold your truth lightly to be humble about it, to be open to new information, new perspectives at the moment I'm going through the whole gender thing. I mean, I always used to say sisters and brothers, and there are people in our congregations out in the world who don't feel like a man or a woman necessarily, and don't want to be called a brother or sister. This is hard for me at my age to do this, but I'm trying to be open to it.
Betsy Bush (30:00):
I think a lot of us are learning to evolve and understand other's points of view. And especially in cases like that, that's great. Hold your truth lightly.
Bill Weisenbach (30:11):
And the other is who like what you have be who you are and do the best you can. And so this has even given me the courage to accept the fact that I have a large nose, like what you have,
Betsy Bush (30:28):
Okay, Bill I like that you have even your large nose.
Bill Weisenbach (30:34):
You know, so yeah. I try and live that in my life.
Betsy Bush (30:39):
Yeah. That's very wise and with so much discontent and dissatisfaction that I think only seems to be ginned up more and more by our constant, you know, use of social media where we're comparing ourselves to others and an ideal that may not even exist because the ideal was Photoshopped to begin with, like who you are. Say those again, accept what you have, be happy with what you do,
Bill Weisenbach (31:08):
Like what you have, be who you are, and do what you can.
Betsy Bush (31:13):
I love it. Love it. Bill Weisenbach. Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for joining me in my first in-person studio interview conversation on the latest version.
Bill Weisenbach (31:28):
It has been my pleasure. Thank you, Betsy.