7 Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Jen F. over at Conversion Diary; I haven’t participated to this point, but it seemed like a good day for it.
>1<
I love being a pastor, but there are many days I couldn’t rationally tell you why. Today would be one of those days . . . in fact, this week would be one of those weeks. Our poor congregation is dealing with multiple major health issues (most of them in key people or families), on top of the economic issues that are hitting everyone, on top of some other issues in particular people’s lives, at the same time as we’re trying to develop a plan to revitalize the congregation and its ministry. Suffice it to say, things are a bit overwhelming around here just at the moment.
>2<
My hope is that we’re dealing with all these stresses because we’re moving forward in our efforts to revitalize the church—that we’re under deliberate spiritual attack to keep those efforts from bearing fruit. We want to be faithful to do what Christ calls us to do, and we’re praying that he will work through us to draw people into his kingdom, and to raise up mature, godly followers of Christ; if we’re truly beginning to make progress in that direction, one would expect the enemy to try to nip it in the bud. So, from an optimistic point of view, this might be evidence that we’re doing things that will ultimately bring new life to our congregation.
>3<
Of course, it isn’t really our effort that will make that happen, if it does. You’ve no doubt heard it said that “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called”; that is, I think, truer in pastoral ministry than in most places, because there’s simply no such thing as being qualified for this job. As David Hansen put it in his book The Art of Pastoring: Ministry Without All the Answers, being a pastor is impossible—except by the grace of God. If we’re trying to do this in our own strength, we will fail. True, there are those who will appear to succeed, because those who have the gifts to build great businesses can do that just as well in the church as on Wall Street; but they won’t be pastors.
>4<
The corollary to that is that we can only pastor well when God’s the one making everything happen. I sometimes think that pastoral ministry is like the plot of The Phantom Menace. The remarkable thing about that movie—I don’t say good, just remarkable—is that everything that happens on screen (aside from the emergence of young Anakin Skywalker) is diversion and subplot; the real plot, Palpatine’s deep-laid scheme to seize power, all takes place off screen. It’s somewhat the same way being a pastor; we put all this effort into sermons, meeting with people, administration, planning, and the like, and all our work is just scaffolding for the Holy Spirit to do his work—and it’s his work that builds the church.
>5<
I respect my friends who are ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ within the Catholic church, and I understand the logic behind a celibate clergy; but I don’t see how they do it. Leaving the whole issue of sex all the way aside, I couldn’t survive in pastoral ministry without my wife. I don’t say that she always gives me exactly the help that I need, and still less that she gives me everything I need; she’s not up to that standard any more than any other human being is. But she’s an incredible source of strength and support and wisdom and love, and I really couldn’t live this life without her.
>6<
One thing about being a pastor is that it’s taught me a certain new respect for politicians. That might seem strange, but it goes like this. I have long been of the school of thought that I wouldn’t trust anyone to be president who actually wanted the office. Then one day it occurred to me that I could really say the same thing about pastors—I wouldn’t trust anyone to be a pastor who wants the job. By that I don’t mean that you should only seek to be a pastor if you really don’t want to do it; but someone who’s just doing it because they like the idea and find it appealing either will be fried by it, or will like it for all the wrong reasons and probably be all the wrong kind of success. The only intelligible reason to be a pastor is because God is calling you to this ministry and you can do no other; it’s the only thing that can make it worthwhile to be a real pastor.
And then it hit me: our nation needs political leaders, and especially a president, the same way that the church needs pastors; and therefore, it logically follows that God calls people to political life, and ultimately to the presidency. And if God calls you to run for president, then by cracky, you’d better run—and that can make it worthwhile, when nothing else I can possibly imagine could.
>7<
Which is why, in the end, though I often couldn’t rationally tell you why, I love being a pastor. The price is high, some days, and some days the return for your efforts seems pretty low; some days, you have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place, and the hurrier you go, the behinder you get, and that’s just how it is. But we have this assurance, that this is God’s church, and as solid and forbidding as the gates of Hell often look, they will not prevail against it—and that God has called us to play a particular part in their defeat; and if our part often looks improbable, well, we worship a God who specializes in improbable victories.