October 7, 2024
I would put the pastors (including our Commissioned Pastors) in this presbytery up against any group of clergy in any presbytery anywhere in this country. The Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley is blessed to have outstanding pastors who are caring, visionary, dedicated, creative, and loving, They care deeply about each member of their congregation and they care deeply about the whole of the congregation itself as they seek to guide their flocks in the way of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
October is Pastor Appreciation Month. This is a Hallmark Holiday (yes, you can buy a Hallmark card for just this occasion) dreamed up in the early 1990’s by the Evangelical group, Focus on the Family. When I was the pastor of local congregations, I pooh poohed the idea of a “Pastor Appreciation” month; such a concept just didn’t fit with my experience of actual pastoral ministry where the love and appreciation seemed to flow both ways, and I imagine many pastors share that sentiment.
But from my perspective as a General Presbyter I want to shout my appreciation for pastors from the rafters because, friends, pastoral ministry is a uniquely complex vocation and our pastors are exceptional. Pastors are called upon at some of the most vulnerable times in a person’s or community’s life – a birth and baptism, a wedding or a divorce, a family crisis, a local or national crisis, a hospice bedside and a graveside. They hold the joys and sorrows of each person in the community in their hearts all the time. They are expected to (and do) speak a Divine Word over your life – from the pulpit, yes, but also at that bedside, the town council meeting, the grave. They give their congregants a vision of the Kindom of Heaven and lead them to work so that kindom may come on earth as it is in heaven.
Courageously and compassionately pastors engage in the sublime. And also the ridiculous. I belong to a Facebook Group entitled TTDTUIS – “Things they didn’t Teach us in Seminary.” It is filled with questions and reflections on the gap between the seminary’s preparation for ministry and what pastors are actually called upon to know and to do once they were in a parish. Here is a brief sampling of some of the posts. Things they didn’t Teach us in Seminary? Managing conflict, unclogging a toilet, that my job would be showing the Boomer pastor how to use technology (that one riled up the Boomers a bit), how to get a dead dear out of the retention pond we discovered on a Sunday morning, what to say when called on to bless a fox hunt. And on and on. Day to day tasks that often land on the lap of the pastor for which seminary had not prepared them. Bruce Reyes Chow, former Moderator of the PCUSA sums up some of the various tasks when he prays, “Thank you, God, for the plumbing, floral, janitorial, web design, baking, marketing, bookkeeping, sound engineering, and other “duties as assigned” skills that pastors bring to their pastoral work.”
And yet, and yet…. One young pastor asked poignantly, “Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim the kingdom, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers and cast out demons. Today I wrote the newsletter, sold some chicken pot pies for the youth fund-raiser, marked a grave for a burial this weekend, and unclogged a drain (none of which I was trained for in seminary!) These are all good and useful things that need doing, but some days I wonder about the gap between what I actually do and what Jesus commanded the disciples. Anybody else feel this way sometimes?”
I would venture a guess that, yes, all pastors feel that way from time to time. The miracle of pastoral leadership is that our pastors flex and adapt and take it all in stride with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.
Does your pastor know you appreciate her/him?
As ever in prayer,
Sue