The worst...

People often ask me what it's like to be a pastor. How did you become one? Why do you like it? What did you do beforehand? Things like that. At the same time, they seem to recognize how hard it can be. What's interesting to me is what they perceive to be the worst bits. They'll say...

It must be really hard...
Working such long hours
Getting phone calls after hours.
Helping people when their life falls apart.
Conducting a funeral.
Sitting with people as they die.

For sure, some of those things are very hard. I've lived through some harrowing times in ministry. I have to say though, most of the things mentioned above were not the worst. There are things that were much harder to live with. One of them was serious harassment and resistance in our community. Another was trying to live on less than half an income. I have to say though, I could deal with them, coz I knew they were par for the course at some level.

Nearly the worst things I've dealt with involved watching and dealing with Christians behaving badly. This is really heart-breaking stuff for all sorts of reasons. Harder than that was having to sit down and gently ask them to stop their poor behavior and fix the damage. That's the gritty part of real pastoring. This is hard because in many situations, despite my best effort to love, care, be tender and understanding, people were unwilling to listen and walked away. Sometimes just from me and our church, other times from Jesus and Christianity.

Now I'm not saying I'm perfect, but in most cases, it wasn't me at fault. In other cases, people just walked out and I'm still none the wiser as to what happened. Was it me? Was it something else? Who knows, coz they never gave us a chance to find out. Every time, it was heart-breaking. A few times I seriously considered resigning and going back to being a musician, teacher, or running away to join the circus... and you don't know how much I hate clowns.

Seriously, I can't tell how many time I wanted to run away and never come back.

However, as hard as all that was, it wasn't the worst. No, the worst bit wasn't suffered by me.

The worst bit... was what happened to my wife.

You see, every time something happened to me, the church or someone in our church, she copped it at least as hard as I did. It's about now I have to be very careful what I write. I can feel myself getting angry. Why? Well, it goes like this. Most times I've gone and had a hard conversation with someone we've found out the same way.

They "un-friended" her on Facebook.

Seriously. They're upset with me, something I said, or a suggestion I made about following Jesus from the Bible. Always gently, always carefully, coz I love them. So they decide, "I'm out of here" and they ditch her and I on social media. She wasn't even at the meeting. She didn't know what I said, how I said it or whatever. Like dogs and the royal family, she has no right of reply.

All she knows is, "I now have one more person who will never speak to me again".

If we're lucky we get the familiar email. It reads like this...

"Dear ....
Please take us off the roster.
Thanks"

If we're really lucky it will include another sentence...

"We won't be attending your church anymore."

My wife is also a very gifted church administrator. She gets all the church emails. She writes all the rosters. She has to fill the holes people leave. So when ANYTHING bad comes in, she gets it first. And that's the way it works. And it cuts her up really badly. There have been numerous times she's been crying her eyes out for hours. All down to one callous email, or someone who just dumped her as a friend because she's married to me. You might be thinking I'm overstating this, but unfortunately it's been observed as a repeated behavior over and over.

It's very cruel.

The sort of thing I've mentioned above saps all the energy out of me. It totally sucks the life out of her. It's like having every good thing you've done for someone thrown back in your face, with no explanation. Twice now she's lost the closest female friend she had in our church. Both times it wasn't her fault.

I guess the thing that upsets me the most is the amount I see her doing to welcome, love and care for people. She could easily work full time and we'd have a stack more money. Other pastor's wives do. Instead, she deliberately volunteers full time and does most of the jobs no one else wants to do. She cooks copious meals, invites half the suburb to events (literally), writes the rosters, does letterbox drops, keeps all the records and stats, prepares paperwork, serves on community committees, organizes me and goes without any number of things. For four years she didn't really buy any new clothes because we were being paid so little. She's followed Jesus and chosen self sacrifice willingly.

I'm sorry if this post has sounded a bit rant-ish. I've tried to be objective, but you can imagine how hard it is. I guess I'd like people to think about what they do when they're upset. You might be upset with your pastor. He might have challenged you a little and you're feeling slightly uncomfortable. Maybe he's been brave enough to gently tell you the ugly truth and it felt super raw.

He did it because he loves you and it's his job to tell you. I've been in your hot seat. I've been challenged and rebuked. I needed it. You probably needed it, otherwise your pastor wouldn't have raised the issue. Do you think we enjoy this stuff?

Let me tell you, we don't.

Despite all that, please be careful with his wife. Please don't take it out on her deliberately or by accident. No doubt she loves you too. She doesn't deserve to be ditched like his bad luggage.

Jesus commanded us, "love others as you love yourself".

He didn't just mean that for when life is easy...