As an executive presbyter I am very aware of how much parish pastors do for others on a daily basis. I was in the parish myself for 22 years, so I understand the stress and strain on both pastors and their families. What I also know all too well is how often many are under-valued, taken for granted, or at the worst, devalued as doing little more than preaching on Sundays. Those of us in ministry have encountered a few colleagues who are lazy and slide by with doing as little as possible, but as a whole, ministers in the parish are oftentimes under-appreciated, underpaid, and forgotten until there is a crisis and they are desperately needed. I don’t mean to imply that no one ever says “thank you,” or shows some form of kind affection.
What I know, however, is that what every pastor needs is more than a simple comment like “good sermon” at the door on Sunday morning.
Today’s pastor is the last general practitioner of “soul work.” We not only study and teach and preach, but we baptize, serve communion, pray by the sickbed, perform weddings, or read Scripture at a graveside. Pastors are largely there at the beginning of the significant rites of passage in people’s lives, and often walk hand-in-hand with their parishioners, and many times strangers, through the hard journeys of life. Pastors are often on the front lines of sensitive caring as they spot the people in the pew who are going through the struggles of lost jobs, failing marriages, deep depression and doubt, or questioning whether or not God even exists. Being a pastor is never easy, and probably never has been, but in our rapid-paced world of changing realities and multi-tasking, where we look out on some Sunday mornings to watch folks text messaging in the middle of worship, we have to ask where in the world the church is going and what role do we have to play in leading our “flocks” into the future.
Unfortunately, I don’t see many articles in the church press, much less the secular media, about the pastor’s place in post-modern culture. There are a score of books for pastors themselves on self-defense and self-care, how to become better managers of church systems, or how to improve on our homiletics and leadership in worship. What I don’t see often is an affirmation of who these servant leaders are, or the ongoing role we play in care-giving. We all know the horror stories that do make the secular press about clergy misconduct, to the point that national opinion polls that used to have clergy at the top of the list in regard to public respect and trust now show us somewhere pretty far down in the rankings of professions. A few bad apples, of course, can spoil the professional barrel for all of us.
This seems a shame to one who works weekly with some of the finest people I have ever known and with whom I am proud to share the title “Pastor.” I’m speaking of men and women who have a deep sense of calling to serve others, whose love far extends beyond themselves, and far too often their own families, and who walk the extra mile with care-giving that many weeks puts them into the sixty- to seventy-hour work week category. Other professionals do the same, and I’m not discounting their hard work; but there is a crunching demand both physically and emotionally for those who have weeks when a pastor does two or three funerals, speaks at the local Rotary meeting, is up at dawn for the men’s prayer breakfast, has a Wednesday night Bible study to get ready for, and a sermon and order of worship to prepare for Sunday morning.
This is multi-tasking at its base meaning. Indeed, ministers have been multi-tasking for thousands of years in one fashion or another if we take Scriptures seriously, way before the technological revolution and the invention of this term. We know what it’s like to move from the hospital room to the funeral home all in a day’s work, and turn right around on Sunday and baptize a newborn baby, perhaps after a wedding rehearsal and supper on Friday night and a wedding on Saturday. Who else in our culture experiences so much of a roller coaster ride of duties and emotions?
You can tell that I love those who are called and remain in pastoral ministry. The hard statistics, however, tell a tale of how quickly and easily pastors can become discouraged, especially those in their first calls. The drop-out rate in the first five years of parish ministry is staggering. More than 50 percent leave the parish for some other form of ministry, or find themselves in secular vocations. That’s not for lack of energy, hard work, vision, and trying to lead effectively. The barriers to change by well meaning church members can simply be overwhelming. I hear from angry members regularly how their pastor is wrecking their church because he or she wants more of a variety of music in worship, what some of us refer to as the “worship wars,” or how the pastor wants to start a bunch of new programs that nobody else wants. I often hear very revealing comments like, “I want my church back the way it was in 1978.”
Friends, as we say in the South, “That ain’t gonna happen.” There’s no rolling back the clock to what some think were better days.
I lived through those years of ministry that began with my graduation from seminary in 1969. I remember all too well the anger and revolution of the Civil Rights Movement of which I was a part, and the label of being a “liberal communist,” for opposing the Vietnam War. Today’s pastor, if he or she is outspoken in even mild ways on issues like the Iraq War, global warming (which really isn’t a hoax or an invention of Al Gore’s), the needs of the poor and the elderly for universal health care, or God help us, gay and lesbian ordination, may find ourselves badly out of step with the majority of a congregation, not to mention an angry Session. That’s one reason I think so few pastors have “stick ability” in the same place for long. We find ourselves internally haunted by our own consciences for remaining silent and not rocking the boat, or feeling we aren’t up to being prophetic. Yet who else shall be the prophet voices that both the church and our culture need to hear? Who else will hold culture accountable as the voices of moral reason and persuasion if not the pastors? That’s not only a part of calling to ministry in the name of Christ, but it’s a primary role of pastoral leadership. How else are people to hear both the compelling truth and the liberating Good News of the gospel?
Perhaps there is a close connection here for why the mainline denominations seem not only to have been suffering from an identity crisis, but have lost their edge on those crying justice, mercy, and mission issues that confront us every day. Maybe that is why so many people stay away from church. We can compare ourselves in “the mainlines” all we want to with the non-denominational mega-churches, but what we really need to understand is not their seeming successes with numbers, but the vast colonies of spiritually hungry persons who see no need or reason to be connected with what feels like irrelevant, if not hypocritical, religious institutions. Some weekends Habitat for Humanity, or the Sierra Club, have more people “in church” than anybody else. I see young, energetic pastors, or even second career ministers, give up on trying to motivate people in the pew to get beyond their own sanctuaries by “getting their hands dirty with God,” as I’ve heard one friend in ministry put it. Some lead the way by getting plenty of blisters and sunburned necks with something like Katrina Relief, or working to help rehab a building for a refugee congregation. Some even succeed at bringing out the best in others through such mission experiences. Some of these pastors have congregations that are actually growing significantly in membership year-by-year, but not without the cost of often neglecting their own care, or that of their families. All of us who have served parishes have done that, I suspect, more than we want to admit. We’ve all probably also modeled the worst of workaholic behavior patterns because we feel a calling that is compelling to help those in need and to share in making our world a better place.
So here’s a big “Thank You” for all who give themselves with such self-sacrifice, humbly, with not much verbal expression of appreciation, and who serve quietly without complaint. Here’s also a word to those in the pew. Learn how to listen to even those things you don’t want to hear without condemnation and angry retribution. Don’t wait until there’s a death in your family and you need the pastor to show him or her that you want to be in a loving, caring relationship. Don’t assume that your pastor has ESP and knows your every hurt, or concern. Talk with your pastor when you disagree, feel rotten, or just need someone who will listen to you for a while. Most of all, allow your pastor to minister to you, not only when you need him or her, but each and every week. That’s what pastors are in the “business” of doing: caring for others. That’s our calling.
And for all of you in pastoral ministry, I thank God that you are. I think about, talk with, and pray for and with many of you every day. Thanks be to God that you are there for us!
Phil Leftwich is executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Middle Tennessee, in Franklin, Tenn.
