I had a friend tell me today, “I don’t know of any pastors who are really happy.” That got me thinking about myself… again. We’d been talking about how the church is a wonderful source of fellowship, support and even joy, but at the same time it is a source of incredible struggle, sorrow and pain.
We seem to always experience the loss of friendships, the severance of relationships, the drifting away of loved ones. It doesn’t matter which way you skin this cat… it always hurts. I suppose I could rise above it in some seraphic and heartless meditative trance and be immune to the complexities of love and relationship… to, in some gnostic way, float above the entanglements of the flesh. But that doesn’t seem human to me. This is the cost of love: the risk of loss. To love someone unreservedly contains the risk of losing that person. Lisa and I realized years ago that having children complicated our lives because it meant more people to give your heart to without reserve and that, in its very self, consisted of the risk of pain and loss. As they grew older and started leaving home we thought it would get easier. But it didn’t. It meant that their struggles and sorrows became more serious. And as they started to give their heart to others, such as their girlfriends, it invited us to give our hearts to them too. So our hearts continue to stretch and stretch in love to more and more people, which means, inevitably, that our hearts will not only experience more love but more brokenness.
The same with our church community. I see why some people refuse to invest in community at a deeply relational level. It will mean pain. Love hurts. Love cuts like a knife. We instinctively know it and so instinctively resist it. But my friend saying that there aren’t many happy pastors made me realize that even though this hurts, even though it cuts like a knife, even though this whole church scene has forever complicated my life and irreparably wounded my heart, there is love. I love! I am loved! And that is a precious, precious thing. The whole story of the incarnation breathes this very truth… that the staggering cost is worth the price. I agree. Love in a community context, though often complicated, exhausting and agonizing, is still, in the end, love. And I have to finally surrender and admit: I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So, David, since you have made the choice to love and be loved, make the choice to rejoice! Because you’ve finally received what you’ve always wanted. Someone to love.
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David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
I know of some who are happy, myself included, but the journey is a rollercoaster. I don’t know any pastor who is not on that rollercoaster. Whether or not I “feel” loved depends on who I’m with at the moment or what is happening. In any given day it’s a heaven and hell tour. I have literally had it happen to me that I’ve gone in my office and gotten an e-mail or fax that says, “you’re the worst pastor I know…I can’t believe you’re in the ministry, yada yada” – something that basically makes me sound like the anti-Christ and then literally an hour later somebody calls or sees me at church and says, “Pastor Deanna, I can’t even express to you adequately how much I love you. You have invested so much in my life and truly, you’re the best pastor I have ever known…” Seriously, it is THAT stark of a difference sometimes within an hour’s time or less and you feel like you are jerked back and forth and around and around all day long as a pastor sometimes. Whether or not somebody thinks you are happy depends on who has just gotten ahold of you and what they said.
I will say that I am not the same with everyone in our church and really I don’t know any pastor who is any different from that in that we are on different levels with different people. I met a church member today for lunch that I’m in a very deep level with in relationship…my heart is extremely invested in that relationship and if something happened it would be a huge blow emotionally. There are some people who are on that level with me in the church and others I love but aren’t that deep with. How much they can hurt me depends on how deep I am with them. Years ago after our church split I told myself, “I’ll put up a wall and that way nobody will hurt me anymore if just ‘professionally’ invest in them, but not on any sort of intimate level…” then I saw that I could keep myself from being hurt (to a degree) but I would also prevent myself from being loved, or having the joy of loving another fully. I decided it was worth the risk.
David, this is such a good…and loaded topic. We are all told in Bible College, “don’t be friends with church members…guard against the ’spirit of familiarity’…don’t ever get close…” I just personally can’t function that way – either I’m in or I’m out. My heart is there or not. I am fully alive or totally dead, and I’ve chosen to be alive and invest my heart in others. It’s a painful journey sometimes but so worth it.
Thank you David, for making us think…saying it so eloquently as usual…this gives me added joy going into the Wed. night service tonight thanking God all the more for these special people He’s given me to love.
Having a downpour in Tampa, FL ~ Blessings..Deanna
My best friends in the whole world are the ones I hang out with here. They’re not ‘my’ church but we are a church. I’m happy and some days I get tears mixed in with my laughter. I go through periods of depression but that’s not because I’m a pastor – it started before that – and I think we should all burn down seminaries and Bible colleges that tell people that you can’t be friends with church members. How did we not recognize that as the rambling reflections of the insane? (and hurt)