The Divine Crash

No Sermon this week because I am on vacation from Tanoma, next week I will be preaching at Eldersville UMC for the first time.  In the mean time enjoy these thoughts on being a pastor.

What you are looking at is the giant cross that my congregation gave to me while it was loaded in my car.  

I am pretty sure this is not what Jesus meant when He said “Pick up your cross and follow me.”  However, it did make me rethink my job as a pastor, especially after the events of the day.

I arrived at the church and met a congregation member to teach them how to create and run slides for our projection system.  Then I loaded up the cross in my car and left until the evening when I met up with the youth for a pool party, but then I said more goodbye’s and left.

Is that the job of a pastor?  To come in, equip the people to do ministry on their own and then pick up their own cross and leave to somewhere new and start over?

As a pastor I am in a unique position to enter in to a person’s life, pain, joy, and sorrow and show them the cross.  To show them how much it hurt Jesus to go through all that for us but then show them that the cross is empty and that pain is temporary because Jesus is alive.  Then to teach and equip them to do the same thing without me.

And then, when that isn’t even close to being done but is as completed as I can make it I end up loading up my cross and going somewhere else and doing the same thing, again?

What a responsibility.  What a heavy job to do, I can see why some pastors give up after a few years.  It is exhausting to move a church forward but if that is what God has called me to do then so be it.

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Random Thoughts by RevBT