When We Don't Get No Respect - Christianity Today

The question caught me off guard. "Do you work?"

I studied my next-door neighbor's features carefully. No, he wasn't joking. He just wanted to know.

I had been in my church for about six weeks when my neighbor threw that uppercut to my ego. I'd told him about my pastorate. I'd even talked about my faith in Jesus Christ and invited him to church. And yet just a few weeks later, he flung that insulting question at me without the hint of a smile.

With what dignity I could manage, I reminded him I was the pastor of the First Baptist Church. Oh, he remembered that, he said. But he sold real estate, and he was just looking for a few good men to consolidate his network "I'm sure your weekly message must take a lot of work," he offered, "but surely not so much that you couldn't move a little property on the side."

I never again tried to talk with him about spiritual things; in fact, I could barely find the self-respect to talk to him about the weather.

A few months later, a troubled church member sat in my office talking about his frustration at being in his mid-thirties and still scratching out a living as a day laborer. "What do you think you will do if you ever leave the ministry?" he suddenly asked. "Will you get a regular job, or what?" I didn't reply to his unintended insult, but inside I was angry.

Why does it seem that respect is so hard to come by in the ministry? With the general disrespect of our secular society for professional "holy men" compounded by the sexual vagaries of some famous evangelists, all of us feel, from time to time, like Moses, the tame raven who represents religion in George Orwell's Animal Farm:

Moses, who was Mr. Jones's special pet, was a spy and a tale bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but many of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain.

There may be some very secure pastors who never worry about respect-gospel gladiators who clank around in armor-plated psyches and dare the world to turn thumbs down. I lack that hard shell. My self-respect is vulnerable to a disrespectful society. In the face of society's scorn, I sometimes nurse my wounded pride and ponder a career selling timeshare condos.

After seven years in ministry I'm still seeking a final answer to the problem of respect. But a few changes of attitude and action have helped me learn to respect my work and to begin to teach others to respect it as well.

Respecting Yourself

The first thing I've learned is that ultimately respect must come from within, from my own understanding of the importance of the work God has called me to do. No esteem anyone else can give me can take the place of self-respect.

I find it easy to make the mistake of seeking self-respect from others rather than from within.

A few years back, a commercial for laundry soap proposed an interesting solution to an especially nasty stain: Shout it out! I notice pastors sometimes attempting to find security in a similar way: we try to drown out our inward insecurity with outward noise. Psychologist Wayne Oates calls it "overshouting the doubt."

Perhaps our most common method of overshouting the inward doubt is by collecting testimonials to our greatness. Of course, everyone needs reassurance now and then. I've learned not to reject sincere expressions of appreciation; a simple "thank you" when someone compliments a sermon seems more sincere to me than falsely modest protests. But it is important not to become addicted to praise. If I'm not careful, I can find myself baiting the hooks of praise and trading my calling as a fisher of men for one as a fisher of compliments.

It's a pitfall I try to, but don't always, avoid. Like the wicked queen of "Snow White," I'm tempted to linger before sycophantic mirrors who chant, "You are the fairest of them all." But I've discovered the respect that comes only from others' praise doesn't last. In fact, it promotes only more insecurity: like the wicked queen, those who become too dependent upon it often end up spreading poison apples around to ruin the reputations of others who threaten them.

My response to critics gives me another clue when I'm not working at self-respect from within. For a time, I felt compelled to talk back to anyone who besmirched the dignity of the ministry. I wrote angry letters to the local religion editor after she slandered "raving fundamentalist preachers." I shouted at the television set when I saw unflattering portrayals of pastors. I rehearsed my grievances against religion's critics to my bewildered wife.

But the more I talked, the angrier I became. The doubt was too loud to overshout. In the end, I discovered I was really working to convince myself, not my detractors.

Ministry, and not debate, is the key to self-respect. The best way to respect the ministry is to minister. Every time I hear another fallen-preacher joke or see a sit-com parson portrayed as an inept hypocrite, I seek an opportunity to meet needs in the name of Christ. I sit awhile in the hospital beside someone who is a mass of pain and surgical tubing; I hold a blue-veined hand in a dreary nursing home; I get out of bed at 2:00 A.M. to settle a dish-cracking battle between troubled newlyweds. I minister for a while and learn to respect my ministry.

For me, the ultimate source for self-respect is offering the gospel to those who've never received it. That's become my cure-all for professional anxiety. I don't win all of those to whom I witness; indeed, I win only a fraction of them. But I always return from outreach with renewed respect for the way I spend my life.

I have learned that the search for respect will end in failure as long as it remains a matter of "overshouting the doubt." The real answer lies in developing an inner respect for the work to which God has called me.

Genuine Respectability

A second thing I've learned about respect is that you can't expect it unless you deserve it.

I got a speeding ticket not long ago. My wife encouraged me to fight it. After all, she pointed out, I had the right to be heard in court, and having the violation on my record could increase our insurance premiums. So why not take on the system?

"Because," I replied, "I'm guilty."

A similar dynamic operates in our search for respect. At times, I haven't deserved respect. It's no wonder I couldn't command it.

When I first became a pastor, I soon realized my schedule was largely at my discretion. In a small church with no other staff, not even a secretary, no one really knew how early I came or left, or what I did while I was there. Frustration over conflicts I was having with church members added further incentive to avoid my responsibilities. I found the snooze button on my alarm an incredibly easy target on a cold morning.

John W. Drakeford, in his book Psychology in Search of a Soul, cites the results of a survey of pastors who'd left the ministry. One of the chief factors turned out to be what Drakeford calls the "temptation to indolence." A pastor is self-employed, punches no time clock, and isn't paid by the piece. Consequently, some pastors find themselves falling into the habit of looking busy while accomplishing very little. That frustration, Drakeford found, eventually drove them from the ministry.

I can sometimes fool my church members about my activity-or lack of it. But I cannot fool myself. If I know that despite the number of meetings I attended or charts I produced I have actually put in a week of short, empty hours, I don't have the nerve to demand respect from those around me.

My answer has been to develop a workman-like attitude toward my calling. I try to keep regular hours. I get out of bed in the morning and go to the office, just like those people with "regular jobs." Of course, my schedule is not so easy to control as some people's; what begins at 9:00 A.M. may finally fade out somewhere in the weary blur of midnight, and I have to make up the rest some other time. Still, the effort to be stable in my work habits earns greater regard from those around me.

I also insist on good sermon preparation. I've sworn off the "Saturday Night Special," a snub-nosed homily cheaply manufactured from an old volume of Spurgeon. I try to study hard and according to a regular pattern. I try not to prevent the Spirit from overriding my plan, but I never expect him to override my lack of one.

Most important, I take my product seriously. When I entered the full-time ministry, I had no regular, daily time of prayer and Bible reading. But, like a vegetarian butcher or a pacifist Marine, that's an awkward position. I can't recommend to my parishioners what I'm not practicing myself. I now attempt to discipline myself to a regular regimen of Bible reading, prayer, and Scripture memory.

In short, I can't get respect for my ministry unless I've put forth effort that deserves respect.

Expect Respect

Not long ago, I attended a conference for pastors and youth workers. As our car pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a lot of people were sitting in their cars, wondering what to do. One of the men with us was a retired Marine major. He jumped right out of the car and began looking for the room where the session would be held. That caused an interesting response: all the rest of us got out and followed him. He acted like he expected to be followed, and we trailed along.

This is a third lesson I've learned about respect: you get respect when you act like you expect it. Of course, if it were that easy, we'd all be respected. It isn't. Misconceptions hinder us from expecting respect.

One that has troubled me is a false concept of humility. Somewhere along the line, some well-meaning soul had convinced me that Christian humility removed any expectation of respect. The humble Christian, I believed, knows he has nothing of his own of which to be proud. So how can he insist on respect?

That misconception troubled me for years. My first step in learning to expect respect was to tear false humility from my mind and replace it with true humility. I came to see that real humility is not so much a denial of gifts as it is a recognition of them. And recognizing that they've come from Someone other than myself.

This definition places the emphasis on the word gift. "What do you have," asks Paul, "that you did not receive?"

A preacher who acknowledges his gifts is like the person who operates a bulldozer. The bulldozer jockey sits atop a clanking mass of machinery capable of altering entire landscapes. The operator does not confuse the machine's abilities with his own; he would never attempt, by himself, to move the hulking mounds of earth that lie before him. But just because the machine's strength isn't his own doesn't mean he neglects or abuses the machine. Instead, he carefully protects it and would never allow anyone to vandalize it.

Similarly, ministers employ gifts God has invested in them. They know the gifts aren't their own, yet they also realize that, if they are to do the job God has given them, those gifts must be developed and cared for.

And they insist that others don't vandalize those gifts. People vandalize the ministry subtly. They usually don't spray-paint obscenities across our sides but punch small holes into our working parts-minute damage that can eventually destroy us. When I see vandals at work, I try to stop them.

For example, I take a dim view of jokes about my ministry-jokes like, "What do you do the other six days of the week?" I suppose it would demonstrate a certain amount of security to brush off such remarks. But I care too much for the ministry to ignore them.

Early in my ministry I discovered a way to stop that kind of joke: don't laugh. No punishment known to humanity can compare with the embarrassment of having a joke fail. If this seems rude, pause to consider how rude it is to make fun of someone else's work.

Another way I show I expect respect is to let God define my calling, and then stick to that definition. Many times we feel that we must minister in every way other people tell us to, that our vocation has no definite shape other than to respond to that which others ask of us. Our congregations, taking their cues from our uncertainty, may assume the reason our ministries have no central focus is that they have no relevance to the age in which we live. The church becomes in their minds a quaint social throwback on the order of the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park, surviving only to adorn the real activities of society. No wonder we find our schedules burdened with trivia, and our worship services more concerned with advertisements for the Girl Scout cookie sale and the scrap-paper drive than with preaching the gospel!

I try to keep a narrow focus to my ministry: the eternal work of curing souls. True, I pay a price for this. Some people have left our church to find one that would support the community blood drive or announce the Lions Club car wash. Still, people eventually get the idea that our church is an independent entity with goals and purposes of its own. If popularity is the goal, my method may be a failure; judged, however, in terms of respect, it's a success.

The Semantics of Respect

A fourth lesson I've learned is that we can teach people to respect the ministry by the words we use when we talk to them about it.

In Victorian England, tables and chairs did not have legs; they had limbs. Women had neither, since no one dared refer to any part of their anatomy south of the Adam's apple. Such word games seem silly to us now. Parts of a chair by any other names don't tempt us to break commandments. And clearly the Victorians, to judge by the lives of their writers and artists, were quite familiar with the female of the species, whether or not they had names for all her body parts.

Christians can play similar word games. A woman once berated me for saying I was "hired" to do the work of ministry. She gave me a 20-minute lecture on the evils of trying to serve God and mammon.

I'm well aware of the dangers of a hireling ministry. But I'm also aware of the dangers of a professional religious elite who refuse to soil their hands with anything so mundane as common toil. If we make workplace words too dirty for the ministry, we run the risk of making productive labor an obscenity in the ministry as well.

I have added a few terms to my vocabulary. I practice saying them daily, not in front of a mirror but in front of church members. All of them are short and fit easily into common conversation. I begin with the word work, as in "No, I cannot go fishing tomorrow. I have to work." How about job? "I'm glad you liked the sermon. I tried to do a good job on it." Add to the list words like hard and tired, as in "I've worked hard today, and I'm tired."

My congregation consists primarily of blue-collar laborers. Because I describe my ministry using the words they use to describe their own work, they've gained a new appreciation for what I do when I'm out of the pulpit. Not all of them understand work that has primarily to do with study and mental exertion, but they all know that their pastor "works" and seem to regard his activities as his "job," and it seems to help all of us. I don't defend my work to them; I don't think I need to. I simply describe it to them in terms they recognize.

And it helps them to respect the work God has asked me to do.

When in Doubt, Minister

All of these ideas have proven to have some value for me. But they contain not even the slightest amount of magic. Even with these principles in practice, I haven't seen a change in everyone's regard for my calling, nor have I always felt self-respect.

For me, the best answer to disrespect for the ministry remains: when in doubt, minister. Whether or not people give us the appreciation we think we deserve, ultimately our calling comes down to a choice to give ourselves in service for God no matter what the cost.

In a letter to his brother, Mark Twain once described his work as "a 'call' to literature of a low order-i.e., humorous." Said Twain, "It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit."

Whatever the world thinks of what I'm called to do, whether people regard it as a high calling or low, it remains my calling. I have invested my life in it for God's sake.

Even in the midst of my deepest doubts, when the noise of a disrespectful world drowns out the reassurances of others, I know the Father has called me.

He respects me. It is for him that I minister.