Sometimes in my world I get caught up with thinking that it’s just youth pastor’s who wrestle with their jobs. That’s just not true. Ray Pritchard, our former pastor in Oak Park, writes about something he calls "Resignation Fever" in the pulpits of America.
Almost everywhere I go, I talk to pastors who are frustrated and church
members who are upset. It’s hard to quantify these things, and I do not
think that it’s harder to be in the ministry today than it was five
hundred years ago. It’s not like Martin Luther had an easy time of it.
Jonathan Edwards, arguably the greatest theologian America has
produced, was voted out of his own church. As Howard Hendricks says, if
you’re going to be a shepherd, you’re going to get sheep dung on your
sandals. Call it an occupational hazard. And sometimes ugly things
happen that embarrass us all. There’s no fight like a church fight. [Read the whole entry]
I think he’s right. This feeling of uneasiness creates an impatience in the pews with their pastor’s and the pastor’s always feeling pressure to perform somehow. Can we all just relax? Just for a little bit can we all just be human? Why is it that everyone looks at this from a nuclear position… as if there weren’t going to be conflict in churches or something… when there is a conflict… do we always have to put pressure on everyone? Why not just BE and allow I AM to be God for a while?
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