![]() ![]() Tensions were high for everyone, trust was low, and to explain my particular “career path” at that time would take a book in and of itself. From day to day I never knew if or when I would come into work and find that my department just didn’t exist any longer. I worked for a major computer company during the worst of the economic downturn. I have provided an excerpt from that chapter, below, but I wanted to touch more on this topic in light of some recent conversations I’ve been a part of or have been witness to.Īs I mention in the book (in the excerpt below), I took a pretty wild ride during my corporate career. In what my editor called “likely the most difficult chapter” of my book, I take a look at the roles and responsibilities WE have to our church and even our pastors. ![]() Very little time, as Christians, is spent thinking about our role to our pastor. We think about how their sermon was, whether or not we feel loved by them, and… you know, how their hair was this week. When we think of pastors, we often think of their role to us. The goal of this series is to hopefully show you the simple truth that your pastor should receive “double honor” and hopefully inspire people to take Pastor’s Appreciation seriously… not just this month, but as a habit. If those elements are there, they are simply due to my own error in judgment, not in intent. And, as always, I hope you see my heart in this and don’t read this post as condemning or condescending in any way. Pastors who are doing their best (pastors are still prone to temptation and may be attacked with even more intensity by the enemy) to live up to God’s standards are worthy of, in the Bible’s words and the subject of part 2 of this article, “double honor.” But, before we can move on to “double honoring” your pastor, we need to see the other side of the equation. However, often times congregants confuse their standards with God’s standards. Your pastor is called to a higher standard. Now, please understand (as I point out in the book excerpt, below) that your pastor DOES have some pretty intense guidelines that they have to live up to. In fact, one former pastor who recently left the ministry described what he was going through/had been through as a form of PTSD and his psychologist did not disagree. While some could certainly point to the token pastor who drives a Lexus and lives in a mansion, that is by far not the typical pastor. Speaking from the ranks (and at the risk of that revelation making this entire post look self-serving) of those who are in vocational ministry, I can tell you without hesitation that by and large pastors are often under-appreciated. You see, October is Pastor’s Appreciation Month… something overlooked by most. Now, while I will more regularly write about music as I have in the first three parts of In the Silence of the Mind: Purity in the Media (which will have a concluding part or two after this brief interruption), occasionally there are just other topics that need to be addressed. When Brandon first came to me about writing a regular feature on the site, he placed the caveat that I could write about anything I wanted, not just music. Pastor’s Appreciation Month – Part 1 of 2 In the Silence of the Mind: October 3, 2013 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |