Simply Being a Pastor

Yesterday could be considered a fairly large waste of time. I worked for about three hours in the morning on emails, plans, and communications. That was it, all I was afforded was three hours. So many things did not get followed up, so many ideas not put down on paper, so many emails not sent to people that are important to our work and the support of it.

The rest of my day was spent sitting and listening to people talk, and try on occasion to insert a hopefully wise sounding word. People talked about worries, they talked about dangers that stressed them out. They wanted assurance on a variety of issues. People talked about how they had been hurt, and in rare moments admitting how they may have hurt someone else. We explored together what the church could look like fully formed, and I saw first hand the struggle of trying to find the 1 out of 99, especially when it meant having to humble oneself. All of these words, so little measurable progress, and at the end of the day more than a little frustration with a long list left undone.

Yesterday I was not a development coordinator or the principal of a college. I was not a great administrator and I was not able to make significant contributions that will take our organizations far into the future. Yesterday, I simply tried to be a pastor to the people that needed me. It is something that in the midst of job changes and moves across several locations in the last year that I don’t feel like I have gotten to do nearly enough. Maybe I will try it more often ;).