The Occupational Hazards of Ministry Part 1
A life spent as a Christian pastor is a tremendous blessing. It is a beautiful thing to spend our days telling the story of God and hearing the stories of his people. Nevertheless, local church ministry comes with certain challenges which I call “occupational hazards.” You won’t lose a finger to a table saw, but ministry will cost you. Perhaps one of the greatest occupational hazards to ministry is that it is an easy place to hide—from your people, yourself, and also God. Here are some quotes from Frederick Buechner’s Telling Secrets.
“Sad to say, the people who seem to lose touch with themselves and with God most conspicuously are of all things ministers. As a minister myself I am peculiarly aware of this. I don’t say they do it more than other people, but they do it more publicly. It could hardly be more ironic.”
“Ministers run the awful risk . . . of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives — let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to — of a living God who transcends everything they think they know and can say about him and is full of extraordinary surprises.”
This last one is not about ministers, per se, but anyone who stands on a stage has a greater temptation to put forth an edited version of themselves.
“What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . . ”
Do you hunger to be known beyond the public image you put forth? Do you suspect that you’ve lost touch with yourself or God? Reach our to Good Shepherd Soul Care or someone else before it’s too late.
