For Reverend Stephen Sweitzer, the pastor of a prosperous church in a small Midwestern town, life has become both tense and dull. His marriage of twenty-five years no longer holds any joy, he worries about the his son Bill's revolutionary activities against corporate greed, and he feels that he no longer can bring about needed changes in his own congregation.

A sympathetic relationship with a new parishioner Ellen Dietrich turns into love. Stephen decides to start a new life with her in St. Louis. Before long Stephen realizes that he is perilously close to losing his own identity and he leaves Ellen to go to Chicago.

He enters a form of missionary work with the poor and destitute there, and acquires a new strength through these experiences and adversities. Reverend Stephen Sweitzer also learns his true place in the world and that God does not always use his disciples in the ways they expect.