Bill Goettler: A pastor’s heart in the YDS administration for three decades

Name an innovative project at Yale Divinity School in the last two decades—Bill Goettler was probably involved or helped it along.

The mid-degree student consultation—he got that going. The Transformational Leadership Program—ditto. The Lilly-funded “Reimagining Church in the 21^st Century” gatherings—he organized them. The historic M.Div. degree revision last year—this faculty-led initiative welcomed him as a co-chair.

By training and temperament William Goettler, Associate Dean for Ministerial and Social Leadership, is a pastor, activist, administrative problem-solver, communicator, adviser to students, and observer of the shifting religious scene. A nimble and buoyant competence on multiple fronts has made him crucial to the School’s work in an unpredictable century that demands creativity and flexibility. Now, after 28 years on the Quad, he’ll retire this spring.

“I started at a time when a lot of people were rethinking what it meant to be a church, what church leadership should look like,” he said in a recent interview. “A broad range of students were coming here to try to figure that out. And I wanted to be a part of that—to help them get clarity on what the heck they’re doing in divinity school and where it might take them. And let them know that kind of discerning is welcome here. As new programs were built out over the years, I wanted to help where I could. Each time I stepped into something new, it was fun.”

A new palette

He’s also an artist, and after retiring in June he plans to take up paint and canvas even more seriously. Pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts degree isn’t out of the question. 

“I’m really drawn to landscape, but in the workshops and course work I’m doing these days, it also involves still life, portraiture, realistic or impressionist or abstract. I’m interested in all of those things.”

The arts have nourished his take on life at pivotal times. As a parish minister for many years before joining YDS full-time, he leavened his sermons with the humanizing spirit of writers he admired. Without that, his ministry would have gone dull and deadening, he said.

“I worked with a whole range of writers from Michael Cunningham to Grace Paley, people who were telling stories about human beings with an open heart and a deep understanding of a human story, which is also what theology tries to do, I think. I always took the Reformed theological tradition seriously, but I really wanted a different voice in the pulpit than just the theological preacher’s voice. Paying attention to fiction writers absolutely changed my preaching and the way I approach theology. It’s a kind of writing with your left hand instead of your right. It kept me alive to that task.”

Vocational fits and starts

Growing up in Allentown, Penn., he was a churchgoing kid in a progressive Presbyterian congregation, and his parents were social workers. Those twin themes from his background, Christian tradition and contemporary social reform, put him on the search to find the right vocational fit. 

After graduating from Allegheny College, he did stints as a newspaper reporter. But soon he realized he wanted to be closer to the action in social justice work. He became a community organizer in Utica, N.Y., working with children in low-income housing neighborhoods and advocating for tenants’ rights. He took a couple of courses at Syracuse University’s School of Social Work. Still, something was lacking. Memories of church were tugging. The call of belief beckoned.

“I realized I was missing the faith dimension that I thought was necessary for the transformation of society,” he said. “So I looked at a couple of seminaries. In the mid-1980s, Union (Theological Seminary) was known as the school that took up liberation themes. I felt I was in the right place. And I was shocked that I got in. Somehow the money showed up to pay for it.”

High-wire moments

There in New York he saw new possibilities for theological conversation, activism, and parish ministry. He had his share of high-wire moments as a minister-in-training. One summer during seminary he signed up to be an intern at a small Presbyterian church in rural Maine. The plan was for him to assist the minister for a few months. Suddenly, though, the minister was hired away to a church in another state. Goettler found himself as the pastor in charge all summer. It fell to him to give the sermons. He’d never delivered one before. 

“And I remember the day I got there, there was a funeral. I’d never been to a funeral. So those folks in rural Maine taught me a lot of things, including how to preach. Still, I’m glad I don’t have copies of those early sermons …”

After graduating, he and his wife, Maria LaSala, took jobs in Albany, N.Y.—she as a chaplain at a girls school, he as associate minister of a church. With their next move a few years later, to Delaware, they found a way to refocus their vocations by teaming up to be co-ministers of a downtown Wilmington congregation. They were there 10 years (the last seven as co-pastors) before taking a similar co-pastor position at First Presbyterian Church in New Haven in 1998.

Destination New Haven

“We didn’t know what New Haven would be like,” he said. “We didn’t know how long we’d stay. But we loved that congregation. It all just worked. We built a new building, and the church thrived. We had very deep relationships with members.”

Quite early on, YDS faculty who attended the church got acquainted with the Goettler-LaSala duo. Soon Bill and Maria were teaching the Presbyterian polity course at the Divinity School. When Bill moved to full-time at YDS in 2008, Maria took over the class on her own.  Today at YDS she is Lecturer in History & Polity of the Presbyterian  Church, Lecturer in Homiletics, and Director of the Reformed Studies Certificate Program.

In the mid-2000s, YDS was casting about for a durable model for assessing student progress, as recommended by the Association of Theological Schools. YDS faculty weren’t satisfied with the standard ways of doing it. They turned to Goettler, who drew on his own vocational adventures and empathy for student anxiety around purpose and livelihood. His idea was to build an assessment program around a candid conversation between the student and a gathered selection of the student’s mentors, professors, and other trusted individuals, and to do it midway through the student’s degree program experience. The notion was to help each student identify personal skills and goals in the uncertain contemporary conditions of institutional religious life.

“It made sense to me that we would gather some people with students and look at what the students are learning and what they’re not learning—engage each student in the process so they get meaningful counsel from people they trust to say, ‘Here are some directions you need to cover if you want to get to the place that you want to go.’ It involved real mentors instead of merely people who they needed to get ‘yeses’ out of in order to continue the path they’re on. With people they trust, the conversation is much more wide open, giving students a chance to really explore the range of possibilities that are before them, and to say out loud some things they hadn’t said out loud to anybody except maybe a friend over beers, about where they hope their lives would go—and then hear back either doubts or affirmations about that from people they trusted. Really rich conversations have come out of this.”

Transformational ideas

YDS meanwhile was nurturing other programs designed to enrich the School’s curriculum offerings, denominational certificate programs, and its response to the changing nature of vocation and leadership. Goettler was instrumental in many of these efforts, for instance the expansion of the supervised ministries program to include many more opportunities in the nonprofit world. The Transformational Leadership initiative eventually emerged from an earlier lunchtime Pastor’s Study program, growing into a series of for-credit weekend intensives that expose students to entrepreneurs and practitioners on matters ranging from emotional intelligence to fundraising to climate change.

Behind so much of his endeavor as a Presbyterian pastor or a YDS administer is an abiding belief in the life-giving elements of communities of faith—the solidarity people find, the sacred stories they share and remember.

“Religious communities show us the possibility of being agents of the holy and agents of the good in the world. The ways we practice being together with strangers, offering welcome to those who are unknown to us, the ways we worship and seek God and are reminded that we are not alone—I don’t think there’s anywhere else in society that does those things in a similar way. We’d be much poorer without them.”

Art and activism

In retirement he’ll turn attention to new vistas—the world of painting, as well as the excitement of being a new grandparent—but also revisit old causes, including social activism.

“I think the organizing needs to be done by a younger generation, and I need to be a follower, but I need to be out in the streets,” he said.

“Otherwise, I don’t have another career in mind. I’ve engaged with many people every day for 40 years. What’s it like to not do that? I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to finding out.”