OUR PASTOR'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY - The Reverend Michael J. Magee, MD

As a child, my seven-year-old playmate died of acute leukemia. The comment, "God called her to be an angel in heaven” was not satisfying. So my call to medical oncology was my first call to Christ. I graduated from UT Medical School in 1977, married my classmate and first love, Debbie Deason, and completed training in cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, and hematology at Vanderbilt. I have practiced oncology and hematology since 1983 at Baptist Hospital, and am a former president of the Nashville chapter of the American Cancer Society. But I have found that folks don’t care what you know, until they know that you care. My vocation as a medical oncologist teaches me that suffering includes not just physical pain, but also anxiety, despair, and loneliness. I find that one can be physically broken but spiritually whole, and physically whole but spiritually broken. That healing can occur even when cure does not. Every day I am reminded that words, presence, and touch have more healing power than medication or surgery. So I pray with and help my patients find God’s healing presence in their suffering. I served on the board of Alive Hospice, and have served as the medical director for Trinity Hospice. I founded and co-led a family support group for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America, and have honed my listening skills as a Stephen Minister trainer.

In 2000, after pondering Mt 25:35-40 ("For I was hungry”), loving my neighbor became my second call to Christ. I organized my home church’s first year in the Room in the Inn program in 2000. In response to Tennessee Medicaid dropping over 190,000 patients, I became a member of the "Bridges to Care” network, the Nashville Academy of Medicine’s attempt to provide an indigent care safety net for them. I also volunteered at Siloam Family Health Clinic every Monday night for 18 months, a clinic which serves those without health insurance and without financial resources. I have represented the Presbytery of Middle TN on six missionary teams to the Peten province in Guatemala. We worship with and eat our meals with the Kekchi indigenous, help them build churches, organize theological training for the village pastors and vacation Bible schools for the village children, and 11/1-11/8 of this year, lead a 14 member medical team to the Peten province in Guatemala. The Kekchi’s God-given cheerfulness and praise in the midst of their poverty is humbling. Despite the heat, the poverty, and the absence of first world conveniences, I pray that heaven will be like rural Guatemala.

But I eventually came back to the gnawing question of my childhood; "Why would an all powerful and all loving God allow a child to die of acute leukemia?” I discovered that medical science explains how, but not why. So I enrolled at Vanderbilt Divinity School in 2000 to learn the answers to the "why” questions. There, in Daniel Patte’s New Testament class, I heard my third call to Christ, the call to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. I was ordained and installed at Brentwood 1st Presbyterian Church on 11/12/06 as a minister of the Word and Sacrament, and I preach there every Sunday.

My maternal grandfather worked his peach orchard 6 days a week, but as United Methodist clergy, he preached on Sundays in rural Virginia. My father worked as a chemist for Dupont 5 days a week, and as management was on call 24/7, but preached on Sundays as Episcopalian clergy in Donelson, TN. I feel my personal family precedence as well as early church precedence indicate God's call to a bivocational ministry is authentic and not "outside the box."

Decision sharing is crucial in both the setting of a chronic illness like cancer, and in the setting of a church. I shift into a decision-sharing mode when I walk into a church, as when I walk out of an ICU and into a multidisciplinary tumor board where cancer treatment is planned. Pastoring a church and practicing medicine are not dissimilar. Everyday I am reminded that words, presence, and touch have more healing power than medical science. Patients from rural Tennessee use the words "help” and "hope” interchangeably. They ask me to "hope” them. This is what pastors and physicians have in common. Both are in the business of "hope.”