Have you seen these memes floating around the internet? They exist for a number of professions, and they crack me up. There's truth here, of course. For those who only see one sliver of my pastoral role or another, it is hard sometimes to communicate the full picture of this calling. And for hopeful optimists like me, even my own expectations of the calling sometime look very different than the everyday reality of it.
For those of us who lead the church, a very personal part of our lives - our faith! - becomes a very public part of our lives - our call to ministry! - and it is sometimes easy for people to forget that this calling is all-encompassing. It isn't a job we go home from at the end of the day, because our faith and our hope and our spirituality don't just flip off when we leave the building.
So here are a few gentle reminders about things that I, your friendly neighborhood pastor, want you to know:
We care deeply about...everything. More than you might realize. And sometimes we get tired and overwhelmed by the task. We grieve when members die. We grieve when community members die. We watch the news and it makes us anxious. We see people in pain and we weep. One of the casualties of devoting your life to speaking the hope of Christ into places of despair is that you become far more sensitive to all places of darkness and brokenness and grief in the world. And it piles up. A mass shooting, a declaration of war, a funeral, news of a family in struggle, news of a broken relationship: all of these things can literally make it impossible for us to summon the emotional energy to answer non-urgent emails or return voicemails. It's hard to explain that part of our "job description" is to feel all of the feels. There's nothing much to show for it. But it makes up a huge part of our energy. It's why we are tired at night. And why, sometimes, we can't sleep.
We care deeply about everything, but not necessarily equally. Or all at the same time. Or with the same priority that you do. Because we are sensitive to the needs of the congregation and world around us, it is sometimes hard for us to shift gears and offer similar emotional energy to things that do not feel quite as ultimate. It's not that we don't care about the other details - really, we do. We know that you are living your own callings and passions in the church, and we are blessed by your commmittment to everything from proofing bulletins to organizing church lunches, rewriting personnel policies to caring for our building and grounds. We need your gifts! Just know that, especially when BIG THINGS are looming, it is hard for us to dial down and care as deeply about smaller things or smaller details that aren't as immediately pressing. We'll get there and pay attention to you and answer your emails, we promise. But we ask grace and patience.
We care deeply about YOU, but we don't always know how to show it. Oh, my friends. As soon as we put down roots with a congregation, we invest in our relationships. Even if we've only known you for a year, or three years, or five years, we love you. When you hurt, we hurt. And sometimes we don't know if it is best to call you or to visit you or to send you a note. We pray for you fervently, but don't know how often to tell you about it. We don't know whether you want church to be a place where you can grieve openly, or whether you want church to be a safe space where you can detach from the griefs of the world. We don't want to say the wrong thing to you, or to reach out too boldly, or to do anything that would appear perfunctory or insincere. Especially for us introvert pastors, we worry about awkward silences and we worry that we will be emotional in moments when you need us to be a rock for you. And so we try to show you that we love and we care, and we feel like we flub it up a lot.
We care deeply about the church, and this means that we care deeply about the future of the church. It is daunting to walk into a new congregation because, whether the congregation is 50 or 150 years old, there is a lot of history to learn. There are traditions. There are former pastors. There are old conflicts and old wounds. Bigger than the local congregation, there are community histories and denominational histories (with their accompanying theological histories). For pastors, however, all of this historical work, while important, is the foundation upon which the future is built. We are charged with leading congregations in sharing the good news of Jesus with the world. So sometimes it feels like we are more interested in talking about visions and adaptations and changes for the future instead of focusing on preserving the past. It's not that the past isn't important. But if we are trying to love the church, then we need to work for its future. And if we are trying to share Jesus, then we need to focus on getting the church into the language of the people and the context of the community. We love the church and we love Jesus and we feel responsible for the survival of the church and (as crazy as it sounds) the survival of Christianity. So we always feel pressure to be looking forward more than looking back.
We love the idea of preaching, but struggle with the task of preaching. We love digging into a scripture text. We love reading books and articles and poetry. We love exploring ideas and pathways. The problem is that we have to preach what we've written to a real group of real people. Being a faithful preacher means that we need to start with scripture and prayer, and then consider the layers of context into which we preach: the lives of our listeners, our congregation, our community, and our world (all of which are moving targets). Sometimes the lectionary throws out challenging texts that focus on radical justice and hospitality and peacemaking, and depending on the week, some of these texts sound awfully political, no matter what we do. Each week, we have to discern whether the congregation needs to be challenged and unsettled (which the gospel often does), or whether the congregation needs to be reassured that God loves them (which the gospel also often does), or whether there needs to be a mix. We have to figure out whether a sermon needs a lot of citations to support what we're saying or whether our own words are sufficient; whether the anecdote or poem we have chosen actually adds meaning; whether the sermon should err on the side of being too short or too long. There are hundreds of unseen considerations that go into preaching a sermon, and lots of doubts and gaps that we rely on the Holy Spirit to fill. There will be weeks that the sermon is spot-on for you, and weeks that it doesn't connect, and weeks that it might upset you. And that's okay. We don't always get it right. But we don't always get it wrong, either. And Jesus never said that the gospel would be easy, either to preach or to hear. So we do our best together.
We know when you are taking advantage of us...and we hate it...and we have a hard time doing anything about it. This applies to requests for discretionary funds. This applies to going over our heads or going around us to make decisions. This applies to emotional blackmail. This applies to all threats of withholding from the church your giving, your time, or your presence until the church does what you want it to do. Our calling as pastors is to serve and lead congregations, but we know that, ultimately, the congregation (alongside the Holy Spirit, hopefully) is the one that calls us. And when you exploit our responsibility to serve the congregation in order to subvert our calling to lead the congregation, we know it. And it breaks our hearts to have those two pieces of our work pitted against each other.
We have lots of gifts that we bring to this calling. And we have lots of expectations put upon us. And the gap between those things nearly kills us. The work of a pastor is multi-fold. That is one of the reasons that I love it so much. We get to be preacher and teacher, blesser and anointer, counselor and visionary, worship leader, caretaker of the institution, evangelist, community organizer, musician, graphic designer...as well as being our own tech support, public relations representative, editor, communications specialist, and social media strategist. This calling is not boring. We bring gifts to all of these tasks, though not in equal measure. We are better at some things than we are at others. We feel tired, defensive, and hurt when people focus on our areas of weakness without giving a nod to our areas of strength. We know that we have growing edges and we appreciate being held accountable, but it hurts when people ignore the things we have spent worthwhile time and energy on, because they wanted something different from us or our time. It also hurts when you wait for us to miss an opportunity, and then come to us only after you have been let down, disappointed, or hurt. We want to be proactive, we promise! We don't want to miss or ignore what is important to you! But mind-reading is not one of our gifts. So please tell us what you need. And give us a chance. And offer a little grace, especially when we are trying things that don't come as easily to us.
We chose this calling to ministry because this calling chose us. We believe that the Holy Spirit has given us the blessing of this work. When things are good, when things are hard, when we feel confident, when we burn out, we still walk around with this calling on our hearts. And you are a huge part of our vocations and our lives! We can't do ministry alone. We want to be your partner in faith even as we are a leader in the church. We promise to love you and show you grace. And we hope that love and grace are a two-way street. Because we need each other to fulfill our calling to share God's love with the world.
I would be lying if I said that this work wasn't hard. I would also be lying if I said that this work wasn't beautiful and amazing and fulfilling and even a lot of fun.
If there is a theme here (and I think there is), it is that ministry takes a lot of risk and asks a lot of grace. The face of ministry is different than it was a generation ago, and two generations ago. My gifts are different than the gifts of pastors before me. The needs of our congregations and our world are shifting, too. So ministry is never one-size-fits-all and it is never static. This is why, more than anything else, I would ask for grace on behalf of pastors. Grace and conversations. Grace and conversations and prayer. Because we are all in this together.