Pastor Sherren

Losing people you care about is never an easy part of life, and suffering the loss of a role model, whether it be parent, grandparent, pastor, teacher, etc., can be downright brutal.

When writing this, my heart was raw from the fresh grief of losing a beloved role model who was my teacher, pastor, counselor, play director and friend, Pastor Randy Sherren. The memorial service was an honorable tribute as many friends, family members and former students came together to grieve as well as celebrate the man.

Julie Kaus, another student of his at Minneapolis Lutheran, sat next to me and one moment we’d find ourselves laughing and then crying. 

I feel certain he loved that we sang almost all eleven  verses of the hymn, “For All the Saints” (and not just stanzas 1,3 and 7.)

I first met Pastor Sherren when he came to Minneapolis Lutheran High School the second semester of my freshman year. He taught our religion class, but by my sophomore year I realized he wore several hats.

The textbook for the class was called “A Popular Survey of the Old Testament”, which was about as much fun as it sounded for a 9^th grader.

My friend Callie and I would race through our exams just so we could flip them over to see who could draw the most happy faces on the backside of the paper before time was up. I will never forget getting my test back from Pastor Sherren, and as he handed it to me with one eyebrow raised in the air, he politely pointed at the grade I received and said, “perhaps if you spent as much time on THIS side of the paper…” He walked away and I felt my face turn bright red.

It put a stop to the happy face contests.

When my grade improved ever so slightly, he drew a happy face next to the grade, and when I saw it, I looked up to see him smiling at me and not sure he knew it or not, but at that moment he gained a forever fan.

“I’d rather read about heroes than be a hero.”

As friends and I shared stories at the reception, the overwhelming topic was Pastor knowing how and when to give us a boost when we needed one. His son in law who also attended the high school with me stated, “whether we deserved it or not.”

Pastor Sherren did this for me on numerous occasions, but the one that ended up changing my trajectory in life happened when I 100% truly did not deserve it.

One day after school, I had missed my carpool ride home, so went to the school office to call my dad and let him know and see when he could get me. He said he’d come after work, which was two hours away, so I asked the nice lady in the office to see a list of all the after-school activities.

Heaven forbid I should find a desk and do my homework.

There were a bunch of sports practices (which did not sound fun to watch) and then auditions for the Spring play, which I thought MIGHT be fun to watch, but I didn’t want to make my friends nervous.

For about a week, I had watched several of them carry around a little gray book, and read lines to each other during pauses in classes, or during breaks. It always made me smile. I didn’t pay much attention to the drama schedule, as music had always been more my thing. And I didn’t know what play it was. But I found the room they were doing the auditions in and snuck in the back.

Pastor Sherren was in the room and seemed to be directing the whole operation. He’d put two people up to read. Then another two. He’d swap the pages out and try again. It was great fun watching everyone, and the room was filled with nervous laughter and encouragement. The time flew by.

Then suddenly he says, “Stacey, I will have you read the part of Emily.  Tom read the part of George. Take it from where George is walking Emily home.”

My eyes got huge. I tried explaining, “No, I just missed my ride. I am just watching. I don’t have a book, I… I… I”

Someone handed me their copy of the little gray book. All I kept thinking was, “why didn’t I go watch boys’ basketball practice?”

I dragged my feet up to the front with an attitude of, “okay, I will help you all get through your audition. Okay.”

The best thing I can say about this experience, was that because it was SO impromptu, I wasn’t nervous. At all. I wasn’t auditioning.

Tom was two years older than me, and an incredibly handsome blue-eyed blonde. We were put side by side and have to read this little dialogue where he politely asks me if I would like to go get an ice-cream soda.

I looked him straight in the eyes and said “absolutely.”

Pastor Sherren laughed out loud.

And I was cast as Emily Webb in “Our Town.”

I didn’t deserve it.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute? The saints and poets, maybe—they do some. 

Anyone who got to work with him in the school plays knows not only how much fun they were, but a skillful director he was. He pushed us all to be better in every aspect of theater.

Pastor Sherren was the first to warn me not only to have MY lines memorized, but to know everyone else’s as well.

What’s that you say?

We were cautioned that memorizing full conversations  was “a handy tool when someone forgets their line (and they will) so there won’t be five people out on the stage blankly staring at each other. And there will be.”

And there was.

He taught me to challenge myself and push myself more than I thought I could.

Then there was his humor

One of funniest memories I have of Pastor Sherren was our time together during my work study.

I had the privilege of working in the school office for three and a half years, and for roughly a year and a half of that Pastor Sherren graded papers in the office at the same time.

 Two lessons I learned quickly: A) The pastor is a prankster and B) The pastor will not take the fall for any pranks if there is an unwitting student around.

Typing up the daily announcements was my assignment, and it contained everything from bus schedules to what’s for lunch.

The office secretary was a little on the cranky side most days, so when she was away, Pastor Sherren goaded me into slipping in some fake news. And after we had gotten away with this a few times, this project had taken on a whole life of its own. We had busses running in non-existing suburbs, make-believe lunches of filet mignon and rice pilaf, fake teachers teaching fake interim classes.

It was all fun and games until the secretary got wind of it.

She’d lecture me on not wasting paper, and Pastor Sherren would look down and quietly grade his papers, acting like he didn’t want to eavesdrop.

In retrospect, this was a brilliant idea. Not only did it keep the identity of the REAL criminal  at large, but it kept said crime going for some time!

Nostalgia and regret come with age. So do grace and compassion.

After hearing of Pastor Sherren’s passing, I went through a big box containing all my school mementos. I smiled at some of the play pictures we had done backstage, glanced over old report cards, and looked through my high school yearbooks. I reread Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” and it hit deeper than it did 45 years ago.

Backstories about the play interested me, and one article in particular caught my attention. The author made the comment that “most of us who have played Emily on stage were too young to plunge into the depth of the role.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Within three acts of “Our Town,” Emily is a schoolgirl—I myself was a chubby, brace-faced kid with French braids and a sailor suit—then a bride- complete with a full wedding to the guy I had the biggest crush on- then a young mother who dies in childbirth.

This is weighty material for a 15-year-old. The character of Emily realizes its depth when she wants to leave the graveyard to look at her family for an hour (she chooses to go back in time to her 12^th birthday) and can’t handle how nonchalant they are all being. If the actor does well in this scene, the audience should be feeling it with them. She’s the only one in the room who knows she won’t be around much longer, and she goes right back to the graveyard.

This day, this hour, this unimportant moment, this grant of life from God, is everything.

I’m forever grateful for having had Pastor Sherren in my life. He helped me discover gifts I didn’t know I had. He gave me courage and made me feel smart, valuable, and funny.

He told me there’s no such thing as being too old for happy faces. On two different occasions he opened up his church so that my music group could come in and lead services. He let me help out with his daughters during swim time when we were all up at Camp Omega.

None of these things were about me, it was who he was. A man of integrity who let his yes be yes and his no be no.

And special thanks to St. Michael’s Lutheran in Bloomington for the many hours of sermons online. It’s great to go back,  hear the stories and study all over again.

 

 Schultz, V. (2024, January 3). The great message of “our town”: Nostalgia and regret come with age. so do grace and compassion. America Magazine.  https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/01/03/our-town-aging-246760

 Sherren, R. (2016, May 22). The servant songs from Isaiah. St. Michael’s Lutheran Church.  https://stmichaels.sermon.net/sermons/bibleclass/20682883

 Wilder, T. (1938). Our town: A play in Three acts. Harper Perennial.