The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.
At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed.
Ministry is a profession in which the greatest rewards include meaningfulness and integrity. When those fade under pressure from churchgoers who don’t want to be challenged or edified, pastors become candidates for stress and depression.
Wow. I'm incredibly convicted by the "courageous best" line. It's a struggle sometimes to find my courageous best. To be sure, the pressure to be entertaining and attractional can definitely beat that courage out of you. I'm afraid that I give in to that pressure more than I care to admit. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the goal should be to NOT entertain. As if a sermon should instead be yawn-inducing or completely irrelevant.
What really resonates for me about the above quote is that I know I am called to lead where people aren't asking to go. But you deserve my courageous best. I'm sorry for not giving you that. And for sometimes selling you short. I know that many of you are more than willing to chase after Jesus, no matter what. You know better than I do that if the journey is hard, it's hard because it's worth it.
I guess I just want you to know that I'm more excited to chase after it than I have been in quite a while.
