The Pastor and his Humanity

One of the delights of my ministerial life has been reading, as a part of my devotional experience, A Minister’s Prayer Book, edited by John W. Doberstein. Many times when my spirits have been low and the “blahs” have taken my will captive, I have picked up this little red book almost disinterestedly, only to grab hold of pure ecclesiastical energy! The image portrayed of the pastor as God’s faithful hero and undershepherd, going about his unheralded tasks in humble service, raised my spirits, rescued my will, and lovingly patted my depressed ego. I would then leave my early morning study, bound to the hospital, the committee meeting, or the funeral home, more determined than ever to be St. Francis, John Wesley, and Billy Graham-all in one!

Then it hit me.

These stained-glass ministerial images didn’t have much humanity. Where was their human side? Why was I so prone to the “downs”? Was I the only pastor who sometimes resented my work and often felt as though I were suffocating in the straitjacket of the ministerial role-model?

Didn’t any of these guys have families? Families cause problems-as well as give blessings. Didn’t their spouses ever writhe under the restraints of being married to a preacher? Don’t they know PKs are often difficult to raise because they know Dad’s halo is a mirage?

By the time most adults reach middle age, only a few Santa Claus images remain. One which lingers is the role in which many people cast their pastor. After all, if you can’t trust your pastor to be a little better than everyone else, who’s left to lean on? Many people assume that their pastor is supra-human. Though some may be cynical about the clergy, the vast majority will attribute to him qualities, virtues, and abilities that no mere mortal could possess in such abundance. Something persistently beats within the human heart that wants to attribute special qualities to those who are supposed to be the best.

I once read a book about a well-known TV evangelist which indicated that although many of the prayers he prayed for healing were not answered, people were loath to tell him they were not healed because they wanted so desperately for him to succeed.

Perhaps it’s the “a-little-larger-than-life” syndrome where all of us, consciously or subconsciously, are looking for someone who represents, or at least approaches, the absolute. Obviously, the object of that search can be found only in God and his Word. As a pastor and a human being, I can only direct people’s attention to Jesus Christ, while hoping they understand I too am a seeker.

Most pastors in my circle of friends have said they wish more people would allow for their humanity and personal limitations. They live in fear that they might be “found out” and rejected.

Who are these colleagues? I’m talking about redeemed people with feet of clay, even though those feet regularly stand behind a pulpit. I’m talking about ministers who, in spite of their highest aspirations, daily deal with their own anger, sexual drives, and ambitions. They get headaches, pull muscles, are “irregular,” and age. Oh, how they age! They may be overcome with sorrow or devastated with depression. I can remember many Sundays going into the pulpit to lead in worship and not feeling like it at all. T just went through the motions, hoping it would soon be over.

A pastor’s weekly schedule whipsaws him through the total spectrum of human emotions, including his own. He regularly swings by the nursing home where the elderly slump in their sad array of human senility; he haunts the hospital corridors to visit those of all ages who are terminally ill; he is on call at all hours to give comfort to the bereaved; he moves quickly to a different hospital where he can rejoice over a successful operation or a newborn baby. He occasionally struggles with suicidal people, trying to give them a reason to live. He agonizes with alcoholics in their own private hell of addiction. He tries to comfort women whose husbands have rejected and left them. He prays with distraught mothers and fathers whose children are going wrong. He is caught up in a chain of committee meetings where hassles, conflict, and competition are permitted of everyone but himself.

Emotional fatigue and “people tiredness” become serious problems, and can be just as debilitating as physical weariness. Many of my clergy friends suffer from insomnia because their bodies are wide awake but their spirits are “zapped.”

Perhaps it sounds as though I am seeking sympathy or using this opportunity to “dump” on the laity the accumulated frustrations of someone who is mismatched for ministry.

Please let me set the record straight. I am a pastor because I want to be in ministry; the rewards far outweigh the problems. Opportunities and experiences come my way every week that most people may not enjoy in a lifetime. I’m good at what I do, and I strongly desire to become a better person as well as a better servant.

But I am human. Even though I am called by God to professional ministry-a man of the cloth, a “holy man,” the voice of God in the pulpit, a Rever-end-I am as trapped by the garment of corruptible flesh as the person in the pew.

I’m susceptible to compliments and criticism. When someone compliments me, I warm to it, I feed on it, my ego gets stroked. On the contrary, when I’m criticized, even mildly, it’s difficult for me to restrain the hackles that insist on standing up. I may carry a grudge just as sinfully as anyone else. But no matter how hard I may try, my feelings toward a person who has criticized or complimented me will be colored by these realities.

One area where humanity exerts itself is in my relationships with people I dislike or with whom I have had a disagreement. In my pastoral role I feel an intense need to “get along” with everyone. It is as if I am under extreme obligation to be neutral in all squabbles, and to never take sides for fear of polarizing the church. What do I do when I tangle with someone and my humanity really surfaces- and I must later relate to that person as a pastor, leader, and friend?

I am thinking of a particular man who came up to me after a business meeting and really “cleaned my plow” about a difference of opinion. As he finished dressing me down, he spun on his heels to leave, red-faced as a weightlifter. I grabbed at his arm and said, “Hey, you can’t say that and just walk off. Let me explain . . . ” At this point he blurted, “Yes, I can!” and left. I fumed about the incident for a few days, and finally wrote out my “explanation” in a letter and mailed it to him with a sincere apology.

My humanity told me he was the one who needed to apologize; but as a Christian and a pastor, I felt an obligation to go the second mile. I did it in the spirit of I Timothy 4:12, because I was his pastor. As I reflect on it now, I’m quite sure I did it because I couldn’t face the idea of someone not liking me. I was a winner. I was “Mr. Nice Guy.” I didn’t make people mad; I only inspired them. I didn’t lose friends; I won friends and influenced people. I couldn’t mess up my record and risk damaging my ego. So, I did the right thing for the wrong cause-my cause and not Christ’s cause. I did the human thing; but I wince, even now, to admit it!

Is a minister permitted even a modicum of professional ambition? Like other mortals, he would like to see his income grow. He wants his old age to be secure. He would like to retire without becoming a charity case. As in so many other areas, a double standard often prevails here. A CPA may move across the country for a better job with more prestige and considerably more salary, but if a minister has a similar opportunity, however valid the offer, he is thought of as ambitious, materialistic, and unspiritual. Because so many people do not allow for the humanity of their pastor, they fail to realize that he is just as susceptible to the success image in America as any other human being.

In professional ministry this often takes the form of larger churches, bigger salaries, larger cars, or appointments to prestigious boards. In his humanity, the pastor wants to be called to “more significant work.” Inside, he knows that rank ambition is unChristian, and he struggles with the tension of finding the fine line between carnal ambition and a desire to have his ministry grow.

The point is, he may be a minister, but it is not likely that he grew to full maturity as the result of ordination. He is “in process.” He has not fully arrived at Christlikeness, though his task is one of pointing people to Christ.

Hidden in his ambition may be his own personal demons of greed or covetousness. He may suffer jealousy over the apparent success of his colleagues, the wealth of their churches, the size of their sanctuaries, their mass-media exposure, success in publishing, or prize speaking engagements. I am constantly amazed at my own feelings in this area. Unfortunately, like many pastors, I do not recognize my own jealousy or materialism.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: the inability of many pastors to recognize their own humanity. They get caught up or intoxicated by the image that other people attribute to them, and try either to live up to it (and kill themselves in the process), or assume that they really do not have any “obvious” human weaknesses. Any person, minister or not, who knows who he is before the Lord does not need the public’s attribution of semi-deity in order to feel important. Through the gift of his own existence, he should know that he is made in God’s image, and as such, can neither add to nor detract from what God has made. He should simply accept the given of his existence, and with his gifts and abilities begin to move into the task to which he has been called.

Even from a theological perspective, the minister often copes with false images. We attribute to Jesus a kind of Greek-oriented perfection that the Scriptures never intended. Jesus did and said a lot of things that on the surface might be viewed as inappropriate. He really did curse a fig tree. He called the Pharisees and Sadducees a bunch of hypocrites and whited sepulchers. He seemed rude to the Syro-Phoenician woman, and delayed making a pastoral call on his sick friend Lazarus. These expressions and actions all seem very human.

Jesus was perfect and sinless, yes. But we would probably agree that Jesus’ “sinlessness” was not a matter of correct contemporary courtesy, etiquette, or even ethics. His righteousness, his propriety, was the result of his obedience to God. He did what God wanted, and that is what made him righteous. But he never lost touch with his own humanity. He wept when he saw the grief of Mary over the death of her brother.

I remember all too vividly the times when, as a young seminary student, charged with the responsibility of conducting a funeral, I could not suppress my own tears as the family came by to view their mother or father in the coffin. I find myself less able now to feel their emotion as I once did. Then, my humanity was untouched by my professional role; now, it tends to be suppressed by it.

What’s my point? The best ministers I know are those who are comfortable with their own humanity, recognize it for its strengths and weaknesses, and aren’t afraid to carefully share it with others, no matter how they might respond. They maintain a capacity for deep feeling, whether it is grief or elation; they have a rare ability to empathize with sinners, being sinners themselves, without condoning sin. In fact, they sometimes get mad at sin and “go after its jugular vein” without worrying about being reverent, proper, or formal. They are the people to whom I go when I need a pastor, not someone whose “Halo” is perpendicular to and symmetrical with his collar, and whose visage is as cold and austere as stained glass.

They are men and women who need personal friends with whom they can share confidences on an intimate basis; friends who will let them be human beings, who will let them step out of the role of super-pastor. Parenthetically, I have known some lay persons who, even though they wanted to do this, would betray themselves in the midst of deep sharing and give tangible evidence that they perceive their pastor, not as a person, but as a “minister of the gospel.”

Now that I’ve made that observation, let me hasten to add that perhaps I may be making the same mistake a lot of ministers make-attributing to lay people feelings that are not theirs, and drawing conclusions that are unfair. I know it to be true that many people do not mind the humanity of their pastor; they expect it of him. But they do mind his efforts to pass himself off as something more than human.

Perhaps it is we ministers who are ultimately guilty of maintaining and perpetuating this role-model we so despise and yet cling to, like some sacred “Linus-blanket” to cover the weaknesses of our humanity. We fear that the tattered edges and threadbare weave will expose us for the sinners we really are. We live under our own Damocles sword of rejection. In the long run, we would minister more effectively to our people, and actually be closer to them, if we would discard the overblown professional image of “God’s little brother,” and just be our brother’s brother. .

If our humanity was more vulnerable to the Spirit’s invasion, we would practice continuous incarnation. But the Spirit, like electricity, will not go in where he cannot get out. If we can acknowledge a few human cracks in our ministerial facade, the Spirit might animate us and flow out of us.