Pastoral Ponderings...

Oh, to be a pastor now a’ days:

1. You have to be organic without being an organization. Oh, but don’t forget to be organized in your ‘organic’ized ministry. (say nothing of the decision to have or not have an ‘organ’)

2. You have to be relevant without forgetting to be reverent. Oh, but you’re also supposed to be different while being relevant. Don’t forget that.

3. You need to be a church without being churchy all the while preaching without being preachy.

4. You need to somehow make newcomers and old-timers feel inspired in the same service offering milk and meat in rations that don’t offend either camp.

5. You need to be missional, not attractional. All the while keeping in mind that while you’re doing mission it should be attractive, not repulsive.

6. You need to raise the bar of leadership while letting people that aren’t perfect assume roles of responsibility. Nobody is perfect, but they need to be above reproach…hugh?

7. You must bring a message of hope and potential and joy while ingesting inordinate amounts of bad news and stories of devastation.

8. You must be real and vulnerable with people without making them feel like you’re susceptible to the same issues that they are. Be human without being too human.

9. You must possess the qualities of a CEO and the innocence of a child with a seamlessness that allows you go back and forth between them without detection.

10. You need to be schooled in business management and biblical scholarship knowing when to switch hats on a moments notice.

11. You must have thick skin and soft heart, which is like asking a ballerina to go to battle.

12. You need to know how to live with unbridled passion for the kingdom/church and on the way home learn how to shut it off so that you can relax into your family.

13. You need to foster deep friendship without making others feel like you’re being exclusive and partial.

14. You need to know what’s going on in the world not just the church becoming a czar of culture and Scripture.

15. You need to love meetings and hate bureaucracy, love the stage and hate the spotlight, love people and hate people-pleasing, love the world and hate the world all at the same time.

16. You need to have a vision for the future while living with a passion in the present.

17. You must learn the art of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted…welcome to the doorstep of insanity.

18. You must entertain everyone’s ideas and opinions without being a pollster who is continually swayed by the special interest groups slowly and unknowingly losing God’s ideas and opinions.

19. You have to be a mix between a stand-up comedian, philosopher, theatrical performer, counselor, engineer, administrator, artist and theologian.

20. You need to be a place where people feel good without being a “feel-good” church, which is like telling a pretty women to be beautiful without making other women around her feel ugly. “Be beautiful, just not too beautiful.”

21. You must love people with every fiber of your being opening your heart to be beautifully loved or brutally crushed…this is the catnip and kryptonite of ministry.