It is fairly difficult not to live some or all of our lives in the shadow of someone. If it is not within our working lives then there is often someone within our families. Sometimes we know that we are living in that shadow; other times we don't. Sometimes they are a person we continually remind ourselves of and other times they are a person someone is always reminding us of. To live in that shadow can make life unbearable; can mean we are always looking over our shoulders.
Although it is something I was very much aware of when I started out in ministry, in the past couple of months, the fact that I am now living in the shadow of another has become very much a reality. The photographs of previous ministers that don walls in vestries or vestibules; the dropping of a previous minister's name into a conversation and being told that's not how the previous minister did it. In the first few months of ministry, it is not an easy place to inhabit because there is always the sense that you are being compared to the one who came before.
In a small denomination, the likelihood of you knowing something of the previous minister is quite high. But the probability of finding yourself called to the previous pastorate of a college tutor must be quite low. However, here I stand in that shadow and its an odd reality. I have caught myself questioning whether my congregations think I will do something a particular way because I have been taught by their previous minister. I have found myself feeling a little bit like piggy in the middle because of old arguments that have left their scars. I have even had moments where I have wanted to shout I am not the previous minister I'm me, when for the hundredth time someone has said, "oh so you're the new [previous minister's name]". But instead laughed it off.
Shadows... if only we didn't have to live in shadows. But we do, there is no getting away from them because we even cast our own shadows which eventually someone else with find themselves in, even if it unintentional from our perspective. I guess all we can do is try and live with that shadow, rather than in it. Use the knowledge that it provides, rather be overwhelmed by it. After all, it is just a shadow, even if you know the person who originally cast it.
