Clergy appreciation

You don’t want to read it, so just throw the paper down. Trash it. Try never to remember the concept again: Clergy Appreciation Month. That’s the month of October. After all, “they” only work about two days a week. When they preach, they use Rick Warren’s, Andy Stanley’s, or Joel Osteen’s messages. They rarely pop in the hospital when someone in your family is critically ill. So, why? Why set aside a whole month to recognize the holy estate of ministry?

The web site of Focus on the Family (which gave rise to such a recognition) gave this answer: Pastors and their families live under incredible pressures. Their lives are played out in a fishbowl, with the entire congregation and community watching their every move. They are expected to have ideal families, to be perfect people, to always be available, to never be down and to have all the answers we need to keep our own lives stable and moving forward. Those are unrealistic expectations to place on anyone, yet most of us are disappointed when a pastor becomes overwhelmed, seems depressed, lets us down or completely burns out.

I have known a pastor I would have loved to kick to from one end of the county to the other. Yet, even that pastor provided nurture, love, encouragement, and plain old good times. We could laugh together about most things. But he had a flaw. As a young Christian, I could not handle that flaw and it became a huge mountain. So, I said, “Hasta LaVista.”

Shouldn’t. Should have stuck it out like my dear aunts and cousins did. But I thought the man in the pulpit should be perfect and money matters should not concern him at all. How foolish I was as young twenty-something.

Now, I am on this side of 33 years of full time ministry and I tell you the truth: to accept the call to pastor today is even a greater burden than for me in the early 1970s. Today, society demands that pastors assume the roles of astute administrator, consummate financier, five year planner, and a whipper snapper of a conflict resolution consultant.

Yet, the bulk of seminary training consists of learning Greek, Hebrew, learning how to use the tools of Bible interpretation, some counseling, and the underpinning of your belief called theology. My seminary never prepared me to be the CEO. It never prepared me for advertising campaigns. And on this side of all that, I still am not convinced my seminary did me wrong.

Yet, it’s the expectation that the pastor perform as expert in every field of church need.

I heard the voice mail of one pastor the other day. It was a very pleasant greeting, but bottom line he instructs the caller if he does not have some good news to share, to just end the conversation or something like that. So many pastors become land fields for people to dump their emotional garbage.

Talk about security. Delta employees have nothing on pastors. Just let eight families in a significantly large church decide the pastor has to go and it will happen in six to nine months. Just eight disgruntled families can unseat a pastor who, for the most part, has been having a satisfying ministry with hundreds of the congregants. It’s happened again in one of our old downtown churches. Just like that.

So, maybe you should, if you really have it in you, recognize your pastor. Do something for him and his family that clearly demonstrates your sustained support.

Just think about it: you have a critical need in the midnight hour and call your medical provider. You’ll get the word to call 911 or go to your nearest ER. Not so with your local pastor. You can call him at 2 a.m. and he will be at your front door in the time it takes him to put on a pair of pants, shirt, pair of shoes, and comb his hair.

On behalf of pastors I want to thank Dr. Dobson for leading the way to set aside one month to encourage churches to give honor where honor is due.