Gratitude, Part One

When someone is called to church ministry, he or she is not just applying for a job and looking for a certain amount of pay for a certain number of hours. God gave us--us professional ministers--the gifts of clarity, of vision, of a sense of mission, of a humility that tells us we go when and where God tells us to go. We serve at the pleasure of our Creator, seeking only to be trustworthy servants of a compassionate God.

We have also been called, by the boundlessly insightful Stanley Hauerwas, "quivering masses of availability." And it's true: I have seen great men and women of ministry, in the stupor of unrelenting schedules and a sense of overwhelming responsibility, crash and burn, or make dumb decisions that cause enormous pain for all concerned. I see clergy--and teachers and social workers and others--who are almost debilitated by nervous tics and sleepless eyes. I know my own unhealthy stress responses (meet me at the fridge in ten minutes and we can talk about it). I've seen passionate servants flame out way too early.

So, sure, the ministerial instruction manual, if it existed beyond the Bible, would say, "Sometimes, you just have to say no to a pastoral request." Great, thanks for the wisdom. The reality? Not many ministers I know are very good at saying no. And despite what I've written above, a lot of times, we shouldn't say no. This isn't just a job; it's a calling (vocation) from God. Go, labor on, spend and be spent.

And thank God for it. My gratitude to God knows no bounds, although I'm pretty lousy at either expressing it adequately, demonstrating it, or even remembering it. But I am so thankful to be in the position that I am in, as the pastor of a church full of amazing, miraculous, humanly flawed like I am, but basically good and generous people.

And so my gratitude must first be to God, but God's trustworthy servants in Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church have always treated my family and me well, as one of their own, and we feel that we are. So secondarily, my gratitude also belongs to my church. They have seen fit to address the standard six-day work week, the sacrificed Mondays off and abandoned vacation days, the missed study leaves, the 70-hour work weeks, the absence of things like sick days or rollover vacation days, with the only thing I could really have asked for, if I didn't think it was too bold: time. Namely: eight weeks from mid-July through early September, 2009. As I begin my tenth year of ministry at CBPC and 16th year of ordained ministry overall--20th year of fulltime participation in the life of the Church, for that matter--I will gratefully receive and salubriously use the Session's gracious gift of two months of time away from the office and away from the pastoral demands of parish work. Elsewhere I have begun to outline different aspects of Ministry Renewal Leave in general and this sabbatical time in particular. But for now, the only word I can think of is gratitude.