Rev. Teddy Ray: The Next Right Step

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Overview

Today on the podcast, I got to talk to Rev. Teddy Ray, Asbury Seminary alum, co-owner of North Lime Coffee and Donuts and lead pastor of the Offerings Community of First United Methodist Church in Lexington, Ky. You may recall that Teddy Ray joined the podcast for Episode 7 to talk about finding calling within community and gave us ways to delight in our one ordinary life. We’ll link it in the show notes, so you can go back and listen if you would like.

Teddy Ray has pastored at Offerings for the past 20 years, but in early 2020 felt a restlessness like never before and sensed that the season of pastoring might be coming to an end. In today’s conversation, we talk about how he discovered his next right thing—studying to become a lawyer at Yale Law School.

Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

Rev. Teddy Ray, Lead Pastor, Offerings Community & Yale Law Student

Teddy Ray is lead pastor of the Offerings Community at First United Methodist Church in Lexington, KY, and co-owner of North Lime Coffee and Donuts. He has been a pastor for the past 20 years and is preparing to go into legal work. In August, he begins studies at Yale Law School.

 

Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need.

Heidi Wilcox:
Today on the podcast, I got to talk to Reverend Teddy Ray, Asbury Seminary alum, co-owner of North Lime Donuts, and lead pastor of the Offerings Community, a First United Methodist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. You may recall that Teddy Ray joined the podcast for episode seven to talk bout finding calling within community and gave us ways to delight in our one ordinary life. We’ll link it in the show notes so you can go back and listen, if you’d like. Teddy Ray has pastored Offerings for the past 20 years, but in early 2020 felt a restlessness like never before and sensed that the season of pastoring might be coming to an end. In today’s conversation, we talk about how he discovered his next right thing: Studying to become a lawyer at Yale Law School. Let’s listen.

Heidi Wilcox:
Teddy Ray, I am so excited to have you back on the podcast today. It’s so good to see you in person.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
It’s good to see anybody in person, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Really. It’s something that I think we won’t take for granted anymore, at least this generation that was living during this time will probably not do that again.

Teddy Ray:
No doubt. Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve wondered how quickly we end up right back to taking old things for granted and wanted to hold onto some of the recognizing the things that are special.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, right, I agree with you because it’s real easy to forget because in some ways life becomes the new cycle, and so what was important yesterday loses its importance today, so it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. But I’m excited to have you back on the show. You were here in, I think episode seven. You were one of our very first guests so it’s really an honor to have you back. How’s your family been during this whole year?

Teddy Ray:
All over the place. We have had some of the greatest things that we’re going to look back on… And we talk about this with the kids. We’re going to look back at this year as really special in some important ways. Right before it, fall before pandemic hit, I had hit a breaking point with our schedule. I was actually telling Emily, my wife, I was like, “I don’t even know what changes or how it changes, but something has to change,” because we were at one, maybe two nights a week of dinner around the table, all six of us, and I was just saying, “I’m not okay with this. It has to change.” And then we immediately went to seven nights a week and I was like, could we average these two out? I’d be really good with four or five.

Teddy Ray:
But the amount of time that we spend as family together we actually, last summer, where almost all of my work had gone virtual and just drastic change. We ended up taking this road trip. We drove to California and back, and we were like, “Look, we’re going to be confined to four walls just the six of us somewhere. Why don’t we make it the four walls of our car and drive all the way out? Almost everything we want to see is outdoors and safer.” And so we had this over three weeks road trip out to California and back that was just incredible. And so lots of good things like that.

Teddy Ray:
At the same time, I think it’s been the hardest year ever for our kids. The fact that just when they got pushed into school online and our middle schoolers, they don’t even have video on school, on Zoom, and so here they sit. Our eighth grader said one day, “My social life right now is staring at my friends’ names on screen all day. That’s my social outlet.” That’s been awful for them, and so glad that here right at the end of the year they did get to go back and see people in real life. And especially important for us, we’ll talk about it in a bit, but with our move and them knowing this is some last occasions to see friends, it’s been really nice for them to see them again.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, nice to have that in-person… Definitely nicer than staring at blank screens with just names on it.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. We discounted how hard it was on the kids at first. We still had agency. We could go out if we wanted to, and we didn’t all that often, but even going to the grocery. And Emily still went to work, and so we still got to go places and see people and that just pretty much shutdown entirely for them, and they had no agency in it. We’re thinking through how we care for them well now coming out of this.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because we don’t have kids so I hadn’t thought about how it was affecting kids differently. As a parent, how are you helping to care for your kids?

Teddy Ray:
Things that maybe aren’t wildly different than other times, or shouldn’t be, so I just sent them all messages last week with the top 10 breakfast and brunch places in Lexington and I said, “Do your research, pick a spot and I’m going to take you to one of these,” now that they can go out and go have breakfast somewhere, to take them somewhere and have just one-on-one time and give them that space to share.

Teddy Ray:
And also now, we’ve been talking about them each planning their own party, a big swim party at our house, invite whoever you want to. Just ways for them to have big, social engagement after so long without.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. I think that’s super important. I think there hopefully will be a lot of parties as well. I’ve heard families talking about we want to make up for Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays; a whole year of not being able to be together in the same way.

Teddy Ray:
No doubt. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
You said for the summer you were working from home. How did pastoring change for you during that time? Obviously you went home, churches were closed for awhile, but how did pastoring people change? Or did it?

Teddy Ray:
Oh my gosh, it changed. Everything about it changed; nearly everything. And I would say it was miserable, personally, to be honest, and also that I didn’t do it very well. If I had a second pandemic to pastor though, I think I would do it a bit differently.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh please, no. Please do not. No.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, I wouldn’t look forward to that opportunity. But here’s the biggest thing I recognized in all of it: Sunday morning is so valuable, especially in a small church as a pastor because I have, I don’t know, 30 or 40 30 second conversations on a Sunday morning. And those are mostly superficial but I know what’s happening in people’s lives, I identify from those, the five or six people that I go, “Hey, we should get together and talk more about that,” or, “I need to followup with this person during the week about that.” It’s a natural touchpoint with so many people. It’s also a natural touchpoint in that I haven’t seen this person for three weeks; I need to call them. And instead, I went to I didn’t see anyone ever.

Teddy Ray:
I found no adequate replacement for all of those 30 second conversations. You can send a text message, you can have a phone call or a Zoom call or an email, but they’re less effective and less efficient. There’s no 30 second phone call, right?

Heidi Wilcox:
No.

Teddy Ray:
And where it’s just natural to walk up, talk to somebody for 30 seconds and then talk to someone else, there’s no natural way of doing that with a phone call. The text message is just far less effective. And this is where I say I also, if I could do it differently, I would do it again differently in that I just lost touch with a lot of people and really ended up hyper-focused on the people who needed attention where… And that’s how it always is, though, during normal times, get to talk to a lot of people and identify the ones who really need attention and focus out there. But during this, the people who didn’t need attention, they just disappear. And you send an occasional message or make a phone call… And I wish I would’ve done more than that. Yeah, I wish I would’ve done more than that. It’s difficult.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, but it was a learning time, everybody. We all just got thrown into this. There was no ramp-up to learning how to maintain communication when we couldn’t see people.

Teddy Ray:
And it really goes, it goes to everything. You can still have a meeting on Zoom, and actually it’s more efficient. Nobody has to get in the car, nobody has to drive anywhere, our meetings were much shorter. But I think part of the reason is that you lose so much of the human element. For instance, recognizing how much of the value of a meeting is the five minutes before the meeting when you’re in conversation with one person, and when you walk away from the meeting at the end and you talk to one person, or three of you sit around for awhile and talk. And even sometimes in the middle of it you end up still having a short sidebar. And all of that on Zoom, there is one conversation. There are no sidebar conversations. You can kind of do the awkward before meeting chitchat or after meeting chitchat, but it’s awkward and there’s a reason; it’s not natural to have conversations that way.

Teddy Ray:
This was, for me, pastoral ministry and just life in general, the strong relationships got stronger because… You probably had the same. You had friends that you Zoomed with and that you actually saw more over this past year than you ever would before, or you talked to more.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, my group got tight and got smaller and tighter, but much smaller.

Teddy Ray:
Yes. I think that’s most of us. You get this small, tighter group and then everybody else disappears because they’re the 80 people who I’m going to talk to and enjoy when I see them, but we’re not going to schedule a Zoom call on Friday night.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. And there’s only so much zooming you can do.

Teddy Ray:
Oh my gosh. Well, and that’s the other thing, I think, for a lot of us. I realized that my work had been divided up into computer work and people work, and I loved that balance. Go do research, writing, administrative work on the computer, and then go sit across from a person. And when the people work also turned into staring at a screen and just everything you do is staring at a screen all day, I don’t think that’s healthy for any human being.

Heidi Wilcox:
No, no, I agree, so I’m grateful that things are starting to change. We can start and see more people more often. The last time we chatted, we talked a lot about calling in, I believe it was episode seven. I’ll double check that and link it in the show notes. But we talked about calling and your calling to be a pastor as something that you identified as right and good but also as your calling, too. But there was a time that you thought it was right and good and that you knew it was your calling. And I believe, if I’m right, the last time we talked you expected to be doing this for the rest of your life.

Teddy Ray:
Definitely.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
But that has shifted in the past, I think starting 2019. And now you made this big… It seems like a big transition to go study law at Yale. What started this transition process for you?

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. If you had told me late 2019 that I would be doing this, I would’ve said, “That’s nuts. I don’t understand where that’s even coming from.” Our assistant pastor says, “I always assumed we’d bury you in the playground. You were here until you died.” And I assumed the same.

Teddy Ray:
I hear a lot of people talk about don’t leave something until you know where you’re going; like more of a calling to than a leaving. And that was not at all my experience. I think when I talked to you in episode seven, if that’s what it was, about that calling moment, we were in Spain. It was back in 2014.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s right. And we were going to have a different conversation last year because you were going back to Spain.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
We were supposed to be going back to Spain, and I have no idea… I’m nearly certain that what we’re doing now isn’t what we would be doing now had we been in Spain, and so it’s just wild the way that events change everything. But we were in Spain and had talked to people about coming back to First Church and back to Offerings, and I had actually said no twice and really thought it just was not the path. And then I could not get right with that. Lost my appetite, wasn’t able to sleep. People around me, especially Emily and even my parents going, “Why did you say no? Are you sure?” And ended up going, “Maybe this was not my decision.”

Teddy Ray:
Anyways, all of that to say I use that on the front-end to say it’s maybe most similar to how I ended up back starting last January, February. It was actually pre-pandemic and I’m really grateful for that because I just told you that ministry during pandemic was miserable. And so I think if I hadn’t started feeling that way until pandemic, I would have had to wonder is it just because I’m miserable in ministry right now?

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, right.

Teddy Ray:
But it actually came in January, February when I was very happy. We were planning to go to Spain, we had already… And that had been a more agonizing process because I didn’t really want to leave.

Heidi Wilcox:
Interesting.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, we really agonized over it. And I particularly, one of the big cons was things are really good right now and I’m scared of leaving and missing out on how good this all is. But we had already made the decision, we’re going to go, but it was really more of a feeling of faithfulness than desire, strangely enough.

Teddy Ray:
But then January, February I ended up feeling as close to how I felt 2014 in Spain as I’ve ever felt; just this terrible restlessness, unable to sleep, as emotional as I’ve ever been in my life.

Heidi Wilcox:
And you’re not emotional.

Teddy Ray:
You’re correct. I don’t think my wife saw me cry for the first five years of our marriage, which wasn’t because I was withholding anything, just didn’t have the emotion overcome me. I was crying daily and couldn’t even give full expression to why, and just telling her, “Things are not all right.” It’s hard for me to explain. Maybe somebody who is more emotional could distinguish all this better, but life was good but I just had this deep sense that things were not all right.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, you couldn’t quite put your finger on it at that point.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, I did. We at least began having the conversations where I was saying, “I’m supposed to come back to First Church on the other side of Spain.” We’ve already worked that out. We had worked it out that time that we were coming back. I had a one year interim away and I started saying, “I’m not sure that I’m actually coming back to this.” And that did bring a decent bit of the emotion.

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, the grief of leaving a place that you’ve been for quite some time.

Teddy Ray:
Well, and in this case First Church is my home church so it’s the grief of leaving a place that actually, it’s my whole life. If I ever tried to write autobiographically about my life, I think First Church would be on 60% of the pages.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s for sure.

Teddy Ray:
It is my life. And Offering’s this community that I’ve been with since the beginning and so much of… Offerings and pastoral ministry have been identity in a way that I’ve wondered. I don’t know, I should probably talk to somebody a bit more about where is this healthy and where is it unhealthy? I don’t entirely regret it or have a problem with saying, “No, this has been a big piece of who I am, my identity.” And so even then it felt like it was perhaps threatened and I couldn’t give expression to why.

Teddy Ray:
Pandemic hit and so we made the decision before the decision was going to be made for us that we’re not going to go to Spain now, and that brought plenty of its own grief because we just love the people there and we wanted to be with them. But it also brought, for me, some relief about, okay, I’m not leaving and any of that that I was feeling, it’s gone.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Did you kind of set the whole leaving thing aside at that point and then just-

Teddy Ray:
Oh, yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
… then were like, “I’m pastoring and that’s what I’m doing and this whole feeling was a fluke.” Is that-

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, okay.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. I don’t know what that was, but here we go. And then it really… I don’t know, maybe around July it came back and just hit pretty hard, this sense of I think maybe it could be time to move on. But I had no idea what I would do with my life.

Heidi Wilcox:
Lawyering wasn’t-

Teddy Ray:
No.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, it wasn’t a thought, really.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. No, so as we said earlier, this is the only thing I ever thought I would do, and so I actually began… Well, now this came a bit later: I think I started coming to terms with the possibility of not being in ministry beginning in July or August. And that actually took several months of continuing to come to terms with, and I was not sure about it until late January, even. But it was in November that I started going, “I got to figure out what in the world would I do?” And so had conversations with friends who were in finance, healthcare finance. But I’m involved with North Lime Coffee and Donuts and so I had some conversation about would I… I’ve always enjoyed that not being my job and going, “Maybe it could be job.” And I’m taking career assessments. Did you take any of these in college?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Teddy Ray:
I had read somewhere if you might be making a mid-career change, you should really take… or a mid-life career change, I should say, you should really take a career assessment because you probably haven’t taken one since you were 20 and you’re a different person now than you were.

Heidi Wilcox:
For sure, for sure.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. And so on my 40th birthday, we’re driving back from a trip that my wife had planned for it and I’m sitting in the passenger seat taking career surveys, and over and over and over legal work keeps popping up. And so here’s the thing: I think for a few years, maybe, it had found a place deep in my subconscious. To illustrate, this summer, last summer, I had started reading Supreme Court opinions, and the dissenting opinions, the majority opinions, all the way through as they were coming out. Just fascinated by all of it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.

Teddy Ray:
And still with no thought of going into the law, just, “Oh, this is fascinating.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Just because you were interested.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. The way that you would watch ESPN but not think that you’re going to go into the sports world because it is just greatly interesting. And I also, especially through North Lime, have just gotten exposed to a lot of people who are serving in the government, in city and state level government, and was fascinated by the work they were doing and recognizing the importance of what they do. I think we’ve all seen this over the last year, especially the government. They create the ecosystem that we all live within. They make crucial decisions for what kind of resources people have access to, what kind of resources children have access to, whether people get evicted or how they get evicted; just on and on and on and recognizing all of the ecosystem created by this. And so then it comes around then that I started saying, “I think that’s a world that I’d love to be able to participate in more directly.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah, we talked about that you are not an emotional person, so when you make decisions you make them based on facts and spreadsheets and things like that. But this one and the one that you talked about in 2014, coming back from Spain, was more of a emotional sense of knowing. Is that right?

Teddy Ray:
Yes. I don’t know. I don’t want to call it emotional, but-

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, so emotional sounds trivial but it’s like a sense of knowing on the inside. What I’m trying to ask is when did that sense of knowing become fact for you?

Teddy Ray:
Oh wow, what a question. You’re saying when did it go from, “Huh, that’s interesting,” to, “Yes.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, this is my next right and good thing.

Teddy Ray:
In December-

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Of 2020.

Teddy Ray:
… of 2020. Yeah, December of 2020 I had been rallying people to do a 10 day fast for the UMC General Conference that was supposed to take place last year. General Conference gets canceled. It’s in May, pandemic, and I was like, “I am not doing a 10 day fast right now,” so I canceled it. I’m coming to the end of the year and I was going, “I may be headed toward one of the very most consequential decisions in my life.” I said, “I’m going to engage in this fast,” and so just went ahead with the 10 day fest in December. And I would not say that I finished that and said, “Okay, this is it. We’re sure now.” But that was a major moment of going, “Okay, this is really serious and I’m going to come to it with a sort of spiritual seriousness and personal, sacrificial, whatever seriousness.

Teddy Ray:
And then, really, the last step was just praying through and saying that the moment that feels like moment of no return is when I go to my boss, Todd, at First Church, and say, “Hey, I think I need to leave,” which is that can I be certain enough to say, “I don’t think this is my long-term future”?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. And so it was really setting, that meeting with him. That was the clarifying, final, okay, we can say this now. And I said that with him I think the same week, if I remember correctly, that I took the GRE. You can now take GRE instead of LSAT, which I had already been prepping for. That’s a whole other thing. Anyways, that just to say had not… I didn’t know yet if I was getting in anywhere or if it was going to happen-

Heidi Wilcox:
So it was-

Teddy Ray:
… but I knew well enough it was time to go ahead and name moving on.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, it was a step of faith because you knew that next step was happening, you just weren’t sure where exactly, which school.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. Well, or if it’s any school. I considered it more a step of fidelity. I think there are some things you can keep doing just to cover over until you figure out what’s next. I don’t think pastoral ministry should be one of those. I feel like you need to be in and know that you’re in all the way to be doing it. And once that doesn’t seem like it, you need to be moving out as quickly as it makes sense to.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One of the things we talked about before is the role that community plays in our lives as it relates to calling. What was your community telling you during this time?

Teddy Ray:
This was a decision that involved a few small group of people that… I felt like it needed to. I have a good friend in Florida who’s, for nearly 20 years now, has been my, “Hey, I want to talk to somebody about church things and I need to be able to do that with the safety of someone who’s well outside it.” And he knows me well, and so a lot with him and with my wife and some with my parents and my brother. And it was for community giving input. I told my boss. And Todd, my boss, is also… We’ve been in this together for nearly 20 years as a dear friend and mentor. And so I had told him last fall, “I don’t know that I’m going to keep going this direction,” but didn’t otherwise have any other conversations at the church.

Teddy Ray:
It was that group and a really interesting, with my wife especially. I remember the day I came downstairs and say, “Hey, if I got into one of these schools would we even consider going?” And it was the I’m not going to bother to go through application and everything if you say no or there’s a 10% chance. And she said, “If you get into one of those schools, we go. That’s it.” I said-

Heidi Wilcox:
She’s the best.

Teddy Ray:
“I’m not ready for that. Don’t tell me that. I just want to know there’s a chance.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, I wanted you to say, “Well, I’ll think about it.”

Teddy Ray:
Right. And then even later I came back to her and I said, “You told me that you’ll go but I don’t think I ever really pressed you on is this something you want? Or is this just something you’re willing to support me in?” And she said, “If you came to me tomorrow and said, “I got this all wrong. I want to stay in pastoral ministry and stay in Kentucky,”” she said, “I’m in, I’m in.” Then she said, “If you come tomorrow and tell me you get accepted, you got accepted at one of these places and you think we should go, I’m in.” She said-

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s amazing.

Teddy Ray:
“Just I am in and I will talk with you through the things I see in you and the possibilities I see in you,” but she said, “This isn’t me just being supportive. It’s me saying I’m going to be excited about the directions we go if we think it’s God’s leading. That’s it.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. What a gift. What a gift that is.

Teddy Ray:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
I really liked… You talked about this a little bit on your vlog: I like the part when you were taking your career assessments on the phone. And I don’t think it was that conversation, but maybe a little bit later when you were like, “If I wasn’t 40, I would go back to school.” And I really liked how you said that, that Emily notified you that it wasn’t too late.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. And actually, yeah, that’s where I said something about law not coming until November. I had probably by June, July I had started saying, “If I were 10 years younger, I think I’d go to law school.” But it was never serious because it was like, hey, I missed that. That was for-

Heidi Wilcox:
So what is it? Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. What could it be since I’m 40 and I have many fewer options than I would’ve had at 30? What do I do? And that was the, hey, you’re never going to be 10 years younger but maybe you could still do this.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, maybe it doesn’t matter.

Teddy Ray:
Right.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah, I like that excitement and encouragement and being like, yeah, you can do this.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
One of the themes I talk about often with people in my job is calling, partly because it fascinates me, but also I think it’s a lifelong journey, too, to figure it out, and it obviously changes. But Dr. Danny Roman-Gloro in our Florida denim campus said something to me in a previous conversation, and what he said I found very interesting because he gave me his personal mission statement and he said, “But for me it doesn’t matter where I’m doing this, if that makes sense.” I guess I’m wondering, it’s just so long as I’m… His personal mission statement was to equip men and women for the kingdom. He said, “I think it’s important to have an overarching calling that doesn’t matter where you are.” I’m wondering what you think about that because what you’re doing is going to change, so would you say that your calling has changed too?

Teddy Ray:
See, so all the way through I think one of the more important things to say is that just I don’t know that calling must or should be expected to be static.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah.

Teddy Ray:
That just because you named or perceived or were certain of calling when you were 19, that doesn’t mean that when you’re 50 that is still be the exact thing. And even to say it in a few ways, I think geography does matter a lot, and I think there are some people… Eugene Peterson talks about a certain calling to place and particular community, and I think for some people, yeah, this is it. I think it may be most helpful to just constantly carry not anything that would keep us anxious or frenetically searching for what am I supposed to do now? But constantly carry the question of what now, God? And now God might be keep on going and it might also be something entirely different.

Teddy Ray:
I’ll say this one last thing: I talked to someone about pastoral ministry who named that moment when he was 15 and he was at one of those youth conferences and they have people come up front, and it’s this moment of naming that you’re called into ministry. And everyone celebrate it and there’s all sorts of emotion going on. And it’s hard to distinguish what is of God and what is because of that awesome song that we just sang and the heartfelt encouragement to come to the front now and to know that all of your friends are going to celebrate you. He names all of this and is saying, “So here I am now, though, another few decades into life and wondering how much of the past few decades have come out of just that moment?” And even feeling like there’s no going back. I named that this is who I am and what my calling is, and I can’t do anything different. And just this I can’t change now. And even talking to him, there was a… In this case, it was a questioning I don’t know that I’m supposed to be doing this, and for that matter, I don’t know that I should’ve been doing it for awhile now.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow.

Teddy Ray:
But I named it at this one point and now I feel like I’ve got to go through with it. And all of that then to say… I told him, “I wonder if it would be worth you exploring leaving and still some fear. What if God really did call me to do this? Even if I’m not enjoying it.” I think it’s probably rare for you to just be unhappy, but also if you just can’t get a sense of relief, of release, don’t make that based on 15-year-old you. Make it based on you today. If you today cannot get a sense of release, then I think we need to start thinking about this as calling for you today, even if you don’t want it to be. But don’t base it on some commitment you made a long time ago to your youth conference.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, right. I don’t want Dr. Roman-Gloro to feel like I misrepresented him either-

Teddy Ray:
Oh, yeah. No, no, no.

Heidi Wilcox:
… because I think he was saying something similar in that it changes, but my overall goal to equip people for the kingdom doesn’t change.

Teddy Ray:
Right.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. And I think that’s what you’re saying, too. What I do for my job might change, but the reason why I do it doesn’t change.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, there’s something. We are all created both uniquely and created in the image of God. And when that uniqueness and the image of God both come to the full, well, first of all, it doesn’t look like the same thing day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year. It can change. But there is a certain way that you’re designed that is maybe God’s best gift in our world and best use of you. But that doesn’t mean… I don’t know. I don’t know that it has to mean naming something and assuming that it will always stay the same.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah. I would imagine, though, that there were some fears and anxieties and just different thoughts that you had to overcome to do this. Could you share? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there was no anxiety for you. But would you talk to us a little bit about the fears that you faced to make this transition and how you overcame the anxiety to actually submit your application, actually do this?

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. Greatest fear was constantly looking around and saying, “Everything is really good except pandemic, and it’ll go away.” But all the rest is really good and do we really walk away from really good because… Actually, so Rick Pitino-

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Teddy Ray:
… you may know of him.

Heidi Wilcox:
I do. Yes, I do know of him. I have mixed feelings.

Teddy Ray:
Okay. Rick Pitino, when he left UK basketball, they asked… He actually talked about it as Camelot. He said, “This is that just perfect place,” and so naturally they say, “Why are you leaving?” And he said, “I feel like it’s time for a new challenge.” And he has since been quoted numerous times saying that was the biggest mistake of his life was leaving Camelot.

Heidi Wilcox:
And probably as a Kentucky fan I would agree, but I do kind of wish he would’ve stayed.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. And so that quote haunted me for a decent while, just the, hey, what if we’re leaving Camelot? Everything is really good, and what if we screw it all up now? And especially knowing this is going to be hard on the kids, it’s going to be hard on our families, it’s going to be hard on us because we love things here. That’s the great fear. And I think that you still do it just with the trust that… This is something we’ve recognized in our nearly second trip to Spain. We talked about how everything fell into place so well that first time, which should’ve created all sorts of trust going into second . God has provided, things worked out, and instead of everything we looked at we were like, “There’s no way it could work out that well again.” And so instead of increased trust, there was decreased trust, and surely it can’t be that good again so we shouldn’t do anything crazy again.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, we need to maybe slow our roll a little bit.

Teddy Ray:
Exactly.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, we’ve used up all of God’s provision at this point, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
And we would’ve never said that, but it’s the way that we were approaching it and so I think with anything like this, to say if we have some sense that this is the next right move, hard though it might be, we’ve got to go into it trusting the provision’s still going to be there. God’s still going to provide and it’s going to be good.

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I think one thing I’m learning is you can’t mess it up. Because that’s one of my biggest fears too, and you can’t mess it up, so I really appreciate hearing you say that too, and yeah. And Yale; that is a super big deal so congratulations.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, thank you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah. That’s incredible because you’re not just going to law school, you’re going to Yale. That’s a big deal. What was it like to get accepted-

Teddy Ray:
Oh my gosh.

Heidi Wilcox:
… to Yale?

Teddy Ray:
Yale had become the dream.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Teddy Ray:
Just to give you a small picture of how this all worked for me, it was the week of Thanksgiving. My birthday’s mid-November. I told you that’s when I’m doing the career assessments. Week of Thanksgiving is when I learn… And I’ve thought that I stumbled upon this information but that can’t be right; I must’ve sought it out. I learned that all of the top law schools now accept the GRE, which I was already studying for because I was thinking about doing som PhD work on the side. And I was like, “Oh, I could apply to one of these.”

Teddy Ray:
And so I know nothing about any of the law schools at this point, and at this point I also, I’m reading Reddit forums, which I would not recommend to people, that are basically telling me, “If you have not already applied this cycle, you are too late. There’s no chance.” And here I am, I haven’t even… This is the first time thinking about it, and so I’m way too late. And I start researching these schools, and as I’m reading, everything I read about Yale, I was like, these are my people. I even said to Emily, I said, “These are my people. I have to find some way to convince them that I’m their kind of people,” right?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
But I didn’t think there was any actual chance, and so it built up as this dream in my mind that couldn’t possibly be reality. I had an interview with another really good school, and that morning I was researching Yale’s admissions process and I was like, oh, there’s something wrong with me. I’m not even prepping for this interview. I’m researching Yale. And so all that to say when that phone call came, she says, “Hi, I’m calling from Yale Law School. How are you doing today?” I said, “Oh my. I am trusting that you don’t make phone calls to give bad news.” And she said, “If I had to call all of our applicants to tell them that they had not gotten into Yale, I’d have the worst job in the world. I’m not calling with bad news. You’re accepted.” And so I held it together then, but a lot of the details of that conversation are pretty fuzzy in my mind now.

Teddy Ray:
She said in that conversation, “I have a colleague who says that the law shouldn’t just be a job, it should be a calling.” She said, “I got this sense from your application that this was about calling.” To hear that around church world and seminary world-

Heidi Wilcox:
Is normal, right?

Teddy Ray:
… is normal, and I get it, and I think it’s still something to talk about and celebrate. To hear it from the dean of a secular law school was just shocking.

Heidi Wilcox:
And a huge affirmation.

Teddy Ray:
Oh my goodness.

Heidi Wilcox:
Maybe as much as being accepted, too; those worse.

Teddy Ray:
Oh yeah, those words in particular. I got this sense… And I know you didn’t say it. And I almost… because I held back at some points. I was like, I want to tell them a bit more but I also feel like I should not get into over spiritualized language in this application or it’s going to tank it. And for her to name it all instead, it was just incredible.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
That is a beautiful thing.

Teddy Ray:
And very affirming.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Why law? I don’t think we covered that yet.

Teddy Ray:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I mentioned some about just the exposure to people and government work. And so, for me, law is really hopefully, probably, I think right now, working in public service in some way.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. It’s recognizing the opportunities to work to improve people’s opportunities, access to resources, compassion, justice, advocacy. And then the way that the law works, there’s something about it that I’m attracted to. That’s the whole reading Supreme Court opinions and dissenting opinions; there’s something about the way that it works that’s fascinating to me. And both that I’m fascinated by it and that it seems like a work that can have a significant impact on people’s lives.

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). For sure.

Teddy Ray:
That’s the draw.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Excuse me. How will you see your legal work differently because of your ministry experience?

Teddy Ray:
Oh yeah, that’s a good question. They have a diversity statement on these applications, and I wrote mine about being a pastor for 20 years and just said I have… When I started in pastoral ministry, I was not very interested in the people’s side of it; I was interested in preaching, teaching, leading, even administrating, but not people stuff. And it’s been the sitting across a room, across a table from someone and being across from them during a time of crisis, some of their hardest times; those have been some of the most formative times for me and important and ending up, really grateful. Those are the honors, those are the greatest honors is that someone will sit and trust me with some of those times.

Teddy Ray:
And so I talked with someone yesterday who said, “You are still going to be a pastor. You won’t be licensed or ordained to administer the sacraments, but you’re going to be a pastor to a lot of people and you’re going to have a lot of opportunities to talk to people in the midst of crisis and hardship. And you know how people are during those times.” That’s what I said in my diversity statement is that having sat with people during some of those times, I think, I hope will be something I can really contribute and add in the legal profession and to my law school class.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, to go be useful.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Because that’s one of the things that you-

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
I do think about that conversation a lot. But one of the things I also know, and different people have mentioned it to me lately, is that in seasons of transition, it makes the middle places of our lives, it makes space for God to move or us to recognize God’s movement in our own lives in ways that when we’re on a path and we feel like that path is straight that we might not recognize it. I’m curious what you’ve learned about about God, or are learning in this middle place that you are in right now? Because you’re finishing one place, you’re moving, you’re starting something new. What have you or are you learning about God that you didn’t know in 2019 or early 2020 when this all started?

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. Oh gosh. I don’t think I should say learning as if this wasn’t there and now is, but trusting that things are God’s and not mine all the way through leaving a church that I… This community, it does feel like my other child. I love this community. And now I’m needing to let go and trust that God’s work continues in this. It’s never been about my power, but even to have to fully let go now and trust. Yeah, trusting.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, I actually, I finally got a spiritual director back last fall. Al Guin.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, you may have talked to him for this at some point. I don’t know.

Heidi Wilcox:
I don’t know that I have, but I know his name.

Teddy Ray:
Well, Bishop Guin actually, he hired me at First Church many moons ago when I started, and then he was elected bishop maybe a month after I had been there, so I spent all of a month with him but have continued to really respect him. And he had come and spoken to a group about… And so much of what he talked about was spiritual direction in his life and someone who had always been so impressive, buttoned-up, took care of everything just right, but then the other side of him that I’ve seen even more now in his retirement… I think it had always been there, I just didn’t get to see it quite as much, is this person who just has a deep prayer life, this incredible deep faith and sees the movement of God just in nearly everything.

Teddy Ray:
He spoke to this group and I was like, I want this, and so I asked him about spiritual direction. And he’s just been guiding me through this process of both celebrating how my identity’s been connected to pastoral ministry and also this, “But this is not your identity before God.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, yeah. I can answer the test question right on that. I could’ve answered the test question on that right five years ago but it’s a different thing to answer it right with my heart. This is not my identity before God. And so him just gently guiding me through how do you stand before God? And what of that changes now and what stays the same?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, those are great questions. Wow, yeah, that’s awesome.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Well, Teddy Ray, we have one question that we ask everybody before wrap up.

Teddy Ray:
Oh my.

Heidi Wilcox:
But before we do that, is there anything else that you want to talk about that we haven’t already covered?

Teddy Ray:
No, I enjoyed this. Thank you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
You talked when we met a few years ago about this great fear of ending up on plan B-

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Teddy Ray:
And, see, so you’ve come all the way around on that just saying earlier here, “That’s no longer a fear. I’m no longer worried that I could screw up God’s plan here.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, yes, yes. I don’t have that much power, you know?

Teddy Ray:
Yeah. Right. That’s a significant move in trust, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah.

Teddy Ray:
And just to celebrate that.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out because I hadn’t really realized that that much had changed. I realized it had changed for you, I hadn’t realized how much had changed for me because it seemed like a smaller thing.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, but it’s a huge deal thing.

Heidi Wilcox:
It is a huge thing.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah, you carry yourself differently.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Well, thank you for those kind words. I really appreciate that.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
The one question that we ask everyone is because the show is called the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast, what is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now? It can be anything.

Teddy Ray:
Gratitude. This may be same one that I shared with you. I don’t recall.

Heidi Wilcox:
It wasn’t, because I re-listened to-

Teddy Ray:
No. Oh, okay.

Heidi Wilcox:
… so it wasn’t.

Teddy Ray:
I’m kind of interested in what I said then. But-

Heidi Wilcox:
It was Sabbath.

Teddy Ray:
Okay, that was my number two for this time. But gratitude in when we went to Spain the first time, they gave us this acronym, RAFT: Reconciliation, affirmation, farewell, and think ahead. I’m usually not a big fan of simplistic acronyms, things of that nature, but it was so good for us. And especially the affirmations that I started and then continued for about six months into that year in a really intentional way. And I had started saying, “I think we should have some prompt toward those things, even if we’re not moving, if we’re not doing something different.” But now I have the grace of having a direct prompt again, and so I’ve just started in the last couple of weeks writing a whole lot of thank you notes again. And gratitude in a process of grief, even, is helping to reorient some of that to, hey, this has been really good. And rather than just being upset about leaving it, I’m going to be so grateful that I’ve had it, so grateful that I’ve had these people in my life.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Thank you so much, Teddy Ray, for being on the podcast today, for sharing about your journey. It’s been an absolute delight. This hour has gone by so fast.

Teddy Ray:
Oh, yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
I feel like we could just keep talking.

Teddy Ray:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
But thank you so very much.

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Teddy Ray. I really appreciate Teddy taking the time to share with us today. There’s a lot to take away from today’s conversation. For me, it was the thought, the learning around being able to step out in faith even when what you have is really, really good. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as well, and be sure to let Teddy Ray know how much you appreciated it.

Heidi Wilcox:
As always, you can follow us in all the places: On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @asburyseminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.