Clergy
He himself granted that some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-13
Underemployed? Questionable. Overemployed? Possibly. Always employed? Certainly.
The ordained ministry is one of the few professions where the time spent and the activities engaged in are not fully known, so ministers can work as little or as much as desired. What a minister cannot escape is the fact that he is constantly employed, 24/7/365. Constituents expect the pastor to always be available.
I was a pastor before the advent of cell phones. In order to have a vacation day I actually had to leave the county to be totally inaccessible. Today, with that ever-present nanny strapped to one’s belt, there is no place for retreat.
Couple this with that the pastor is always being observed. Many professions necessitate a public image above reproach, but only one requires you to be Jesus. Parishioners will claim they give allowance for the minister to have clay feet, but in reality, impeccable is the only acceptable standard.
Placed upon a pedestal the minister is looked upon as exemplar, or what I call a “baby Jesus.” But if the diaper becomes soiled, a natural occurrence in human behavior, tongues of judgement resonate throughout the congregation.
A congregation of 300 has 100 different agendas, so the pastor must live in the aura that a number of guests in the house of the Lord are going to express malcontent. Every individual has the demand that the pastor be shackled to her agenda. This is a chain that makes the pastor a slave to all, and a servant to none. While wearing an uncompromising straightjacket a minister must try to perform his duties.
When the minster first arrives at the church it seems as if he, or she, can do no wrong for the first six months. This has been traditionally called as the “honeymoon period.” When in fact this is the period of “reserved judgment.” During this time the minister is under a microscope, being quietly dissected. Once there is consensus, individuals and cliques have no qualms in expressing their disappointments in the one they have called to be their spiritual leader, believing, initially, he was the perfect fit for their pulpit. The minster came to the church as a shepherd, only to be perceived as a wolf.
It is an awkward pasture into which the shepherd ventures. Membership of the fold dates back several generations. Groups are well entrenched. Established leaders cannot be dislodged. There is a tribal mentality between factions. And the pastor is summoned – will he sit on the bride’s or the groom’s side of the aisle.
Ministers are called to word, sacrament, and order. It is both a leadership and spiritual position. All Christians, as outlined by the Apostle Paul, struggle to surrender the ways of the flesh. But has not the assumption among parishioners become that a minister be stripped of all flesh. A skeleton is found in a morgue, and not a living entity forthright in the pulpit has flesh, sharing in the common adversities of life.
I have a pastor friend, Jim Robbins, who is nearly blind. He shared that if he did not greet you in the mall, he was not being snobbish, but literally he could not see you. It was a confession to no avail. Parishioners still accused him of being haughty. I have Asperger’s and made a similar pronouncement. Yet, understanding was only an allusion. We were approached with a brass ensemble of ridicule rather than a string quartet of acceptance. A blaring trumpet sound of dissonance is played by the pious.
I first became aware of this in high school, when my pastor, Elmer Parks, was caught buying a Playboy magazine by a staunch lady in the church, leading him to confess from the pulpit he really did want to read an article: and as I have observed the straight-laced pastor for years, I suspect was the case. I wondered then, as I do now, who would want to be in that glasshouse profession? A house that I dwelt in ten years later as an ordained United Methodist minister.
Bring your pastor down off the pedestal, unlock the chain, remove the straightjacket, and allow him or her be human.