Pastors

A quote found in my notebooks: "I wonder if the strong sense of frustration which comes over me so frequently on Sunday evening and to which many other parsons have confessed is merely due to physical lassitude or whether it arises from the fact that every preacher is trying to do a bigger thing than he is equal to—and fails. I have an uneasy feeling that it may be native honesty of the soul asserting itself."
—Reinhold Niebuhr

Niebuhr's "Sunday evening" was often my "Monday morning." In other words, I've been there. What pastor hasn't awakened on Monday morning filled with self-doubt and second-guessing about the day before? "Did I really say that?" he/she asks. "Why were they not there yesterday? How could I have forgotten … ?"

Perhaps someone will do a study and discover that Monday is the day most pastors come closest to the temptation to resign. On such Mondays in the past, I did a lot of re-reading of Elijah's "morning after" in the wilderness in I Kings 19. How ...

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