Sometimes Ministry Stinks

[Sam]

I've sent this out before but thought I'd send it out again. It talks about some of the
"stuff" (I could think of more descriptive words but I won't use them)
that we sometimes have to deal with in being servants or ministers.
This is written more to those who are pastors but I think some of it
can apply to any person who serves in any capacity.

I was recently asked if I was a minister. I answered, "If your meaning
of minister is a person who is a professional clergy person, then the
answer is no. If your meaning of minister is that all Christians are
ministers, then the answer is yes. Or if your meaning of minister is
servant, because that is what the word minister actually means --a
servant, then the answer is yes. I am a minister because I am a
servant. I serve people."

Jim Ellis
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Sometimes Ministry Stinks
How will you respond when you get stuck "holding the bedpan?"
By Craig Barnes

It had been a hard year of ministry and I was feeling discouraged. So I
went to an older, wiser veteran pastor seeking Godly wisdom. This is
what he told me: If you get stuck holding the bedpan, carry it like a
queen.

Bryant Kirkland had spent over fifty years as pastor to congregations
of a variety of sizes and locations. When I was in seminary he taught
my preaching courses, and continued to be my mentor till his quiet
death on Easter a few years ago. I loved going to Bryant for counsel
because he had such a gift for offering wisdom that was truly
spiritual—precisely because it never sounded spiritual. He reminded me
of the way Jesus made a theological point by cursing fig trees, eating
with sinners, or presenting over a hundred gallons of wine as a wedding
present. Jesus would have certainly used Bryant's line about bedpans if
they had been around in the first century.

When one of his daughters was born, Bryant was impressed by the quality
of the nurses who cared for his wife and new baby. When he complimented
a supervisor, she explained that the hospital trained all of its own
nurses. "We tell our nurses that there are a lot of smelly jobs in our
profession, but every job can be conducted with dignity. Our motto is:
If you get stuck holding the bedpan, carry it like a queen. Then the
focus isn't on the bedpan but on the graciousness of the one who is
holding it." I got the point.

There are also a lot of smelly jobs in the pastoral ministry. For
example, churches attract some odd people. That's our business. As
another of my teachers once said, "If you want to be the light of the
world you have to expect to attract a few bugs." Eventually the members
and elders of the congregation get bugged by the problem parishioner,
but it usually falls to the pastor to "do something about it."

The pastor also has to fire unproductive staff, meet with chronic
complainers, wade into conflicts between leaders, and represent the
unpopular changes being proposed by the church board. These are all
smelly jobs, but someone has to do them and often that someone is the
person who is being paid to come to church.

Most seminaries don't explain to their students how much time pastors
spend carrying bedpans, and even fewer offer guidance for how to do it.
Many of the Doctor of Ministry students in the seminary I serve are fed
up with this part of their jobs. "It just stinks!" they lament.

"Yes," I agree. "Now the question is how do you respond?"

Nothing in the ministry has the power to determine the pastor's
countenance. In the words of Viktor Frankl, "The last of the human
freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances." So why would you sacrifice that freedom to a bedpan?
You may have to carry the smelly mess but you don't have to let it into
your soul, where attitudes are created.

Dignity in ministry is found not in the task but in the one who has
called us to it. If you are clear that it is Christ who has called you
to serve this church, then you are always part of a royal priesthood.
But you have to choose to see that. It's the only way you can look like
royalty while doing a task that just stinks.

You can get a new job with another church if you want, but there will
be a few bedpans waiting for you there as well. After serving three
congregations, I can tell you that it's a lot easier to change the
pastor than it is to change the church. And the way to change the
pastor is to focus more on the Caller than the calling. Christ has set
us free by binding us to himself. This frees us from other lords, which
means the bedpan has no power over us.

The pastor is even free to determine if he or she will continue to be a
pastor. Few people are saying this, but pastors are always free to
respond to difficulty by quitting the whole business. There are higher
callings in the pastor's life than being a pastor. If you want to go
sell insurance, you are certainly free to do that as long as you
continue to serve Christ. But this means you are also free to stay in
the pastoral ministry, and as long as you are free your life is filled
with dignity.

Editor at large Craig Barnes is pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church
and professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological
Seminary.

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today
International/Leadership Journal.