From the law to the Lord, local Woman finds ministry true calling
The life of a Methodist pastor isn’t a series of afternoon tea parties. Especially for a minister who’s also a lawyer, wife, mother of three daughters and the leader of two congregations planning to merge.
Witness the busy, paper-strewn desk of the Rev. Ann Thomas, senior pastor at Griffith United Methodist Church, in the Huntridge section of Las Vegas, at 1701 E. Oakey Blvd. Her role is the same at Heritage United Methodist Church, at 2075 N. Lamb Blvd., in Las Vegas.
Although she’s still licensed and occasionally assists her husband, also an attorney, Thomas left behind a full-time career in commercial litigation and management-side employment law nearly eight years ago.
In her preministerial life, she’d become increasingly involved in the church, including every church music program for vocalists. The turning point came when her minister at Desert Spring United Methodist Church asked her to preach on Conference Sunday, a time when the United Methodist system’s annual conference draws clergy away to attend to business — with none left in town to preach.
She says preaching at multiple services was an epiphany.
“Person after person would come by and say, ‘I think you missed your calling,’ ” she remembers. “Which echoed what I was feeling.”
She applied for seminary that fall and began attending Claremont School of Theology the following fall, in Claremont, Calif. She also juggled the commute between Las Vegas and California with her continuing law practice.
She says ministry requires all of her skills and offers different challenges from lawyering.
“As a lawyer, it’s about fixing problems for people. As a pastor, it’s about helping them find their solutions,” she says. “As a pastor, we don’t get in between people and the world. It’s about empowering people in a different way.”
Bridging those two worlds, at first, raised questions for Thomas’ husband, Tim Thomas, about midlife crisis versus calling. “Being middle-aged, I’m like, ‘Is this something that you really are going to do, or something that you want to do, and you don’t really know what you want to do?’ ”
These days, Tim Thomas does church audiovisual work and youth group volunteering. Keeping things under control while the kids stay up all night, eat snacks, and play hide-and-seek in a dark church has been on his to-do list, as a minister’s spouse. He also occasionally joins other pastors’ spouses to discuss the special stressors they face.
The work schedule of a minister, in itself, is stressful.
Although an attorney’s hours are long and the work demanding, Ann Thomas says, “in ministry, you’re never done.” With a schedule racking up the hours on weekends and religious holidays, and evenings taken up with church meetings, family times must fit in elsewhere.
Tim Thomas, who does bankruptcy law, small-business contracts and litigation, shifted into private practice during the past four years, searching for flexibility. He says he gets plenty of calls from church people in financial trouble, and referrals from other churches — some needing free advice, and others, discounted pricing.
Not that any of it prevents him from riding his motorcycle or discussing football.
Ann Thomas says some church members are old-fashioned enough to expect more from a minister’s wife than a husband. But for her children, ages 9 to 18, other demands arise.
“I’ll make a point of telling people, you can’t just assume that the children will serve at the dinner, or whatever the particular project is,” she explains. “You need to ask them. And I’ll tell the kids, ‘You have the right to say, ‘No.’ ”
The congregations of Griffith and Heritage churches voted in late August to merge. Ideas about merging arose in the spring, given economic realities and “stagnating congregations,” Thomas says. The scarcity of young people at church, neighborhood language barriers and unsuitable church buildings have all factored in.
Rather than merging one church into the other, the goal is to launch a new church in another location, pooling resources to create a multicultural ministry with a focus on serving families, on Las Vegas’ east side. The projected launch date is Nov. 30, the first Sunday of Advent.
Filipinos and Samoans have a strong presence in the Heritage congregation. Many are related to one another, says 57-year-old Clarita Bugarin, who is herself Filipino, and a five-year Heritage member. She’s served as a vision team member for the merger.
“We’re hoping that we can bring more, different ethnicities to our church,” she says.
Reaching new people who aren’t attending any church also is part of the plan, says the Rev. Dr. Candace Lansberry, district superintendent of the North District of the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church.
“Being a lawyer in her previous life, Ann has the ability to do some church work that other people just don’t,” she says. “I’m really grateful that she’s here to do something that hasn’t been done in our annual conference before.”
Lansberry was Thomas’ mentor through her candidacy — and the first female pastor she knew.
Thomas has received flack for being a female minister, including a phone message informing her that her name had been “stricken from the Book of Life.” Then again, she says, every woman pastor she knows has received a threat.
Her advice for girls considering the vocation: “Be sure it’s what you want, because it’s not an easy job. The spiritual work you’re doing for your job isn’t necessarily feeding you. It’s feeding others. And you need to make sure you’re feeding yourself as well.”
