When Pastors Get Together

            As many of you know, I was recently at a meeting of pastors.  Now, if you’ve never been at a meeting of pastors, there’s something you need to understand.  You may think that, when pastors get together, they talk about the people in their congregations.  Let me reassure you that yes, that’s exactly what we do.

            That’s partly meant as a joke, but only partly.  We don’t spend the entire time talking about you, and we don’t reference you by name.  When pastors get together, though, we do spend a fair amount of time talking about, and in some cases complaining about, the people in our congregations.

            That’s not because we don’t love you.  It’s not even because we don’t like you.  It’s just that every job, even a job that we love, has some frustrations attached to it.  I’m sure yours does, too.  It’s just the way life is.

            We pastors are all too human in this regard.  Because of that, sometimes we just need to vent a little bit, to blow off a little steam.  It’s not because we don’t love our jobs; most of us do.  It’s not because we don’t love our people; most of us do that, too.  We simply need a place to unload our frustrations once in a while, just like you do. 

There are not very many places a pastor can do that.  We can’t go to the bar or the coffee shop and start talking about our frustrations, for obvious reasons.  Even if we develop close friendships within our town, we really cannot discuss the frustrations of our jobs.  We can discuss them with our spouses, and we do, but that’s not really fair to them, either.  So, what do we do?  We talk about them with each other.  We tell war stories.  Sometimes, we even exaggerate a little, because the point is just to get a few things off our chests.

The reason I’m telling you this is that when this happens, I always feel a little out of place.  I really don’t have any particular frustrations in my job.  I don’t have any war stories to tell.  Everywhere I’ve been a pastor, I’ve been blessed to serve with wonderful people.  The people of Wessington Springs are wonderful people.  The people of The ARK are wonderful people.  The people of the Wheatland Parish are wonderful people.  I wrote last time about all the blessings I’ve received in my life; this is another one.  Those parishioners I keep hearing about must be out there somewhere, but so far, I’ve never had one in my parish.

            So, basically, this is me saying thank you.  Thank you to all the wonderful people of Wessington Springs.  Thank you to all the wonderful people of The ARK.  Thank you to all of the wonderful people of the Wheatland Parish.  You continue to make my time in ministry a joy.  I hope I continue to feel out of place at those pastors meetings.  Maybe, instead of war stories, I can tell some peace stories, because ever since I’ve been a pastor, I’ve felt at peace.