Matching and Dispatching

Description: This book takes you ""behind the scenes"" of the weddings and funerals you attend to show the not-so-visible side of what occurs. The picture can be marvelously heroic, deeply inspiring, fun, hilarious, tragic, angering, or disgustingly pathetic. The one thing certain is that you will see a comprehensive portrait of the human condition, the assorted things we people do when we marry and bury one another. We are at our best and our worst, and we reveal it clearly. The purpose of Matching and Dispatching is to entertain and provide enjoyment, but also to show a rich, usually hidden side of the pastor's world, the pastor being the chief architect behind weddings and funerals. To this end, Jim Chatham has drawn from his four decades of experience as a Presbyterian pastor. Endorsements: ""Storytelling is an art of every culture whose purpose is to structure meaning of life experiences. In Matching and Dispatching, Jim Chatham has captured everyday stories that pastors experience. Written by a master storyteller, these narratives find a way to your heart. They evoke and confront memories of what it means to be a minister and a member of the Christian community."" --James A. Hyde Former director, Marriage and Family Therapy Program Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary ""'As we live,' King Lear said to Cordelia, 'we take upon us the mystery of things.' James Chatham's intriguing pastoral remembrances are deep musings on what Phillips Brooks so poignantly signified as 'the hopes and fears of all the years.' These winsome stories, about the better and lesser angels in each of us, recall into our presence Reinhold Niebuhr's profound reflection 'that the mystery of human selfhood is only a degree beneath the mystery of God.'"" --Dean K. Thompson President and Professor of Ministry Emeritus Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary ""Many clergy fantasize chronicling their favorite wedding and funeral stories. Jim Chatham actually did it! Maybe because he's had more zany and sacred experiences than a roomful of ministers. Or maybe because as a tall man he sees life differently than the rest of us. Regardless, Chatham's keen pastoral eye and deft writer's hand allow those of us on a lower plain to see the Sacred all around us and that the Holy One has a God-sized sense of humor to match the divine heart of love."" --Joe Phelps Pastor Highland Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky About the Contributor(s): James O. Chatham is Pastor Emeritus of Highland Presbyterian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, where he served for twenty-five years. He is the author of Sundays Down South: A Pastor's Stories (1999), Is It I, Lord? Discerning God's Call to Be a Pastor (2002), Enacting the Word: Using Drama in Preaching (2002), and Creation to Revelation: A Brief Account of the Biblical Story (2006). He currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina.