Our greatest fear is
irrelevance.
It’s not losing our jobs,
hurting your feelings or accidentally saying the F word during a sermon.
Those fears are there. But
they are nothing compared to the nagging fear that what we say and do is making
zero difference in your life.
That you are only showing
up to church because of habit, or obligation or mental illness. That we are
laying ourselves bare to write and deliver a sermon every week that nobody is
hearing.
If your pastor has made an
actual difference in your life ever, by word or deed or example or
friendship, take some time this week to let him or her know, in as much detail
as you can. You cannot imagine how far that will go.
We are mama’s boys.
Apologies to the female
pastors, this one’s just about the guys. I’ve read studies that higher than 80
percent of male pastors say they are much closer to their mothers than their
fathers.
This has a lot of
implications, and it explains why we’re more likely to play an instrument than
fire a gun, have coffee with a friend than watch a game, read a book than
restore an old Mustang. It also means that nobody in the church gets our
attention as much as the old ladies, who can make or break our day with a kind
word or a disapproving scowl.
When you’re dealing with
your male pastor, keep in mind that he’s more likely to speak the language of
nurture over discipline, collaboration over competition, forgiveness over
punishment. These aren’t things he learned in seminary, these are things he
learned in diapers.
She or he sees you when
you’re sleeping.
Some people in the pews
think there’s a two way mirror between them and the pulpit, that they can see
the pastor but the pastor can’t see them.
Wrong. We see you yawn,
look at your phone, whisper something into your wife’s ear. Sleep.
Which is fine. If we’re
boring, it’s not your fault, it’s ours.
But just be aware that we
see you, and that if you can manage to at least look like you’re a little
more interested, it might actually feed some energy back to us and give us more
zing. Energy goes two ways.
We think about quitting a
lot.
Behind closed doors, most
ministers talk about moving on with regularity.
The job is hard in a way
that people who’ve never done it cannot understand. Not physically, or even
mentally. But emotionally, it can wreck you. I don’t fully understand why,
although I have theories.
But just know, when you’re choosing
how to interact with her or him, that your pastor is probably hurting and tired
and wishing she or he could quit. And that, in most cases, the only thing
keeping him or her there is a sense of love and obligation to you. Be gentle,
sensitive and grateful for that.
We envy people who can be themselves.
We wish we could cuss or
mess up without it making headlines. We wish we could be enthusiastic about a
hobby without people raising their eyebrows about how much time and money we’re
spending on it. We wish we could make angry political remarks on Facebook.
You know, all the things
that you feel free to do all the time.
You want us to be human,
but not too human. Believe me, we know. And it’s probably for the best
that we are charged with setting a good example, it makes sense. But just know,
we sometimes envy your freedom to just be yourself.
We are often spiritually
starving.
Probably the most closely
guarded secret among pastors is how spiritually empty many of us are.
Like a worker at the
chocolate factory who no longer likes the taste of chocolate, or the prostitute
who gets no pleasure from sex, we deal with spiritual matters so much that they
often no longer have much meaning for us.
Worship, for us, is a
program that must be organized and executed. It’s work. It’s not for us.
It’s for you.
And then, when we’re not
‘on,’ often the last thing we want to do is something spiritual. Because it
reminds us of work.
We can’t read the Bible
without thinking of sermon ideas. We can’t pray without thinking of leading
prayers. We can’t meet with other church people without talking shop. So we’d
rather play golf, or watch TV, or anything else.
Which ultimately leaves us
empty. Not everyone, not always. But often.
We are sinful, no different
than you.
We don’t just think about
sinning. We aren’t just tempted to sin. We commit sins.
The same kind you do.
Believe it.
But also understand that
this doesn’t make us less qualified to talk to you about sins, but more.
If you’ve ever sat in the
pew and heard a pastor rambling on about temptations and sin and thought,
“Whatever, there’s no way she understands what I’m dealing with,” think
again. It’s very likely that she does, first hand. And that what she’s saying
comes from her own life, not just from a book.
We are lonely, because it’s
hard to trust.
Pastors often have trust
issues.
As well they should. All
pastors have heard stories about Reverend so-and-so who confided in someone in
his church about his addiction to whatever, only to have that person tell the
elders about it, which ultimately got him fired.
It happens. We know it
does.
So every time we interact
with you, even if it’s in a prayer group or some very intimate setting, we’re
not 100 percent open. We can’t afford to be.
It’s not your fault, it’s not our fault,
it’s just a bad system that doesn’t allow pastors to be as human as it should.
You can’t fix that, but you can have understanding and compassion for the man
or woman who loves and serves you week after week, who counsels you and hears
your confessions, and yet often has nowhere to go to get the same healing and
relief.
If that were true, I doubt
I’d know so many ministers who have quit, swearing never to return, including
myself.
The best way I can think to
explain why ministry is hard is to compare it to being the parent of a young
child. From the outside, it might not look like a lot of ‘work,’ but from the
inside, it’s the most exhausting thing you’ll ever do.
Because it’s not just about
the amount of things you do, it’s the total emotional drain of it. It’s
worrying all day every day about the people and programs you’re in charge of,
being on call and not ever feeling really free to be away, feeling like you
live in a fishbowl with hundreds of eyes watching you all the time and never
really knowing what they are all thinking of you (unless they complain, which
some of them do with regularity).
It’s caring for people to
the point that you have nothing left for your own family when you get home, yet
expecting that they show a certain spiritually-put-together face to the church
(because the church expects that). It’s often feeling empty, yet pretending to
feel full. It’s presenting yourself and your work to hundreds of people,
several times a week, for evaluation, and often getting no feedback except
‘constructive’ criticism.
And after all of this,
after years of this, it’s looking out at the people in your church and seeing
little or no change. Ministry is very hard, albeit perhaps in a different way
than your job is hard.
We are more sensitive than
you probably think.
Most ministers I know have
one or two people in their congregations who send them stinky emails weekly,
and another 10 or 15 who can be counted on to complain about things
about once a month.
Then, of course, there are
a handful of the angels, who hug and love and say encouraging things every
week.
But guess what. The people
who complain are far more thorough and specific and persistent than those who
encourage, and they are the voices that keep us up at night feeling bad
about ourselves, wondering if we suck at this.
Most ministers have skin that
is way thinner than their congregants think it is. We have to be open
and sensitive to you, because it’s you we are charged with caring for.
This means that the things you say to us can reach far deeper inside than they
could otherwise.
If you need to criticize your
minister for something, please just be aware of this. Tread carefully, and with
a lot of love and appreciation for her vulnerability. We are not above
correction. Nobody is. But please make the extra effort to wrap it in as much
care as you can.
We care about you more than
you can imagine.
The best moments of being a
pastor for me, by far, were the times the ministers would gather for staff
meetings and talk about the week ahead.
Did we discuss worship and
youth outings and air conditioning and budgets? Sure, for maybe 20
minutes.
And then for three hours
we’d talk about the people we were serving, what’s going on in their lives, and
how we might help them.
I always wished the whole
church could be in those meetings and just see how much these people care, how
much their hearts break for them, how much time and emotional energy they spend
wanting to help them.
Those meetings are my most
sacred memories of church, because those were the moments when I saw men and
women who had every reason not to care, to phone it in, to even be resentful.
And yet, in spite of all of it, at the end of every day, they still cared,
sometimes to the point of tears.
You might have no idea how
much.”
~Mark Love.
