Kim Logar Teehan was 12, lying on her bed in her home in Lorraine, Ohio, when she believes Jesus revealed her future. “It was very strange,” she said. “I was lying in bed at night but I was not asleep. All of a sudden, I had a vision and Jesus appeared ... He wore a white robe and held a staff and looked at me with piercing eyes and said, ‘You’re going to lead my people.’ ” People then and later tried to talk her out of her experience, telling her it was a dream. But Teehan said she was wide awake, and the startling vision changed her life. That is not to say she immediately launched toward becoming a United Methodist minister, as she is today.
No, Teehan’s journey first took her into a convent and then across oceans in Navy ships. It took her into denial and out, more than once. Teehan said she clung to her faith and calling when her family shipwrecked. The storm came when her 12-year-old brother rode his bicycle into the path of a train and was killed. Then 14, Teehan said her family did not get the pastoral help they needed. “My world as I knew it ended. I lost my family not physically, but emotionally,” she said. Teehan said her family had been faithful Roman Catholics, but they dropped out of church. She said nuns from her school helped her, but her mother went into depression and alcohol abuse. Her mother and father had divorced and her mother was angry with God, she said.
Though pulled from her Catholic school, Teehan said she still followed through on plans to go into a Dominican Sisters convent after graduation. “I was there a little less than a year. It was not a very good fit. Life in the convent was structured, orderly, quiet and a great place for an introvert. I am an extrovert ... I’m the one who stands up in the back of the room to ask, ‘Why?’ ” she said. That quizzical nature, plus some unresolved theological questions, led her to return home. “I wanted to be doing things for God. The convent was not like that then,” she said.
At age 18, she was at a loss for what to do next. All of the young women she knew were getting married and starting families. Then she saw an ad for the military. It was 1974, on the backside of the Vietnam war, and she believed she could do good things serving her country. She ended up in the Navy, and one of her first extra duties was working with a base chaplain, an assignment she felt was wrong. Her venture into religious work had felt like a mistake, she said, and the Navy was putting her into it again. “I tried to get out of working with the chaplain but I could not,” she said.
During those 11 weeks, the chaplain had her teaching Bible studies and even had her preach on Laity Sunday. “I knew and felt in my heart I was where I was supposed to be,” Teehan said. “It was the ‘a-ha’ moment.” The Navy trained her in communications and sent her to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She looked up the chaplain and he soon had her busy. “He was so happy to have help,” she said. At an assignment in Italy, her group was involved in a botched attempt to rescue hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, she said. Teehan said she was happy helping keep her country safe, but she didn’t feel at peace.
“Always in the back of my mind, I felt a nudging,” she said. On a visit to Indiana where her family had moved, Teehan said, she joined a Lutheran church because she liked the minister. In 1982, she married Paul Teehan, whom she met in the Navy. But when the Navy wanted him in Norfolk, Va., and her in Hawaii, he left. He began working in civil service in Hawaii. They were active in a Lutheran church and had a son, Trevor.
Trevor was 15 months old when the Navy wanted to put her on a ship for the third time. Teehan, a chief petty officer, said she decided to leave the Navy rather than go on a nine-month cruise. The family moved to Satellite Beach, Fla., where she did Navy contract work and her husband did administrative construction work for Delta rocket and Space Shuttle facilities. They joined another Lutheran church but it was more strict about women’s roles than Teehan had known in the past. The pastor did not let women teach Sunday school or greet people and he made sure the couple understood.
“My husband looked at me before we made the commitment and asked if I would be OK with it, and I said, ‘It’s what the pastor said so it must be correct.’ ” She said she served in ways she could, happily, but still felt God’s nudge toward more.
When Teehan learned in 1992 her mother had advanced colon cancer, she feared her mother would die without mending her relationship with God. She got nowhere talking to her mother. Teehan went to churches near her mother’s Fort Myers home, asking clergy to visit her mother.
“They did not know me. I was turned down nine times ... The clergy were nice enough but they did not want to get involved,” she said. After one minister told her it would be a week before he could visit, Teehan left in tears. She feared her mother did not have a week. “I was in the car and started screaming, ‘Why doesn’t anyone care?’ ” She said she was praying and crying and pulled off the road. She did not at first see she was in the parking lot of yet another church.
She went inside that United Methodist church, asked for the pastor and was shocked when a woman came out. Teehan said she told the minister that she was a “last hope.” The pastor cleared her calendar and left immediately with Teehan.“Mom was not happy. She was angry and nasty to the pastor. It was a short visit,” Teehan said. The pastor came back again and again and each time visited longer. Teehan said when her mother died, the pastor reported “Mother had made her peace with God.”
Teehan said after she went back home to the east coast of Florida, the minister kept calling to check on her. “About six months after mother’s death, she said, ‘Have you ever thought about the ordained ministry, because I believe you have the gifts and graces for it.’ ” The minister gave her the book “The Christian as Minister.” “When I read that, it was like a sense of peace came over me, like it was what God had been nudging me toward all along,” she said. Teehan visited Grace United Methodist Church in Merritt Island, Fla., and in her exuberance blurted out to the pastor, “Hi, I’m Kim, and God wants me to be an ordained minister.”
Teehan said that became her family’s church and she eventually taught Disciple Bible Study and started a congregational care program. Already a college graduate by then, she worked toward ordination, becoming licensed and studying at a branch of Asbury Theological Seminary. A district superintendent asked her to serve as pastor of a small church 90 miles away and she agreed. “They were great people and I learned a lot,” she said. When her husband needed to transfer to Huntsville for his NASA job, she was able to join the North Alabama Conference and transfer to Memphis Theological Seminary, where she earned a Master of Divinity degree.
The bishop appointed her associate minister of Monte Sano United Methodist Church in Huntsville in 2006 and associate at First United Methodist in Decatur in June. She told her story from the pulpit recently at First Methodist. Teehan said many listeners e-mailed or called to say they appreciated her sharing her struggle for faith and ministry. “The faith journey is a difficult one ... Maybe I’m the poster child for that,” she said. Teehan said every church and denomination in her past has made her better and strengthened her faith. Her former pastor in Merritt Island, the Rev. Dave Baldridge, said he saw her strong sense of calling and is proud of her accomplishments.
“She is a dedicated, faithful servant, doing what she feels God wants her to do,” he said. “She is going to be a wonderful asset not only to the church but to the community.” The Rev. Terry Greer, senior pastor of First Methodist, said Teehan is exceptionally qualified and will add an exciting dimension to the church. Teehan said she wants people to know not so much about her but about God who loves and walks with people in good and bad times.
“He is a God who places people in our lives so that we can see a glimpse of his glory. A God who opens doors so that we can feel his presence when life seems to slam other doors in our faces. A God who never gives up on us, even when we give up on ourselves,” she said. Oh, and that vision she had at age 12? Yes, she said, it has come true.
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