Musings about the life of a pastor (originally posted 10/2/07)

1)Telling people you're a pastor can be like telling someone you're a mortician or an exotic dancer. Some people are noticeably uncomfortable and/or become immediately disinterested in hearing more about your line of work.

2)The life of a pastor is paradoxical. What I mean by this is that in one hand I feel rather segregated from the "normal" man or woman who works Monday through Friday. In a world of carpenters, factory workers, plumbers, school teachers, cooks, truck drivers and nurses, the pastor finds him or herself in a rather unconventional line of work. It's hard to put into words, but my work just seems so abnormal. What exactly do I do? Well, I seem to spend a lot of time theologizing, reading the Bible, consulting commentaries and trying to develop youth group and Sunday school lessons. I also play a lot. I spend a lot of time hanging out with youth: hiking, paint balling, going to the beach, table tennis and Frisbee golf. (We in the ministry call this Contact "Work"). Seriously, what kind of work is this? I feel kind of distant from the "real stuff" of life. What would the aging carpenter say to this? How about the loyal factory worker and the tired nurse? I feel like I should go run and hide. Now for the paradoxical part. Although I feel rather distant at times from the normalcy of life and what I ambiguously refer to as the "real stuff" of life, there are aspects of a pastor's work that couldn't be more in tune with the normalcy and the so-called real stuff of life. The pastor is usually one of the first to hear of a new birth, called upon to conduct a marriage, asked to visit the sick and dying and inevitably the one to presideover a funeral. Birth, marriage, sickness and death. Does it getanymore normal than this? Does it get anymore real than this? Thisis the stuff that life is made of, is it not?

3)When it comes to drinking alcohol it's a lose-lose for the pastor.Whether or not you choose to drink you're going to piss off someone. Say you do determine that having a beer every now and then is acceptable. In this case you are like 99% of the world's population. However, somewhere along the line it became unreasonable in some people's minds for a pastor to partake of fermented beverages. This leaves the pastor with the following scenario: either drink and risk being thought of as morally promiscuous and flirting with a tool of the devil, or decide not to drink (to appease the Pharisees) and find your self at a BBQ in the middle August with a cooler full of unopened Coronas because you're the ordained elephant in the room that has suddenly made everyone self-conscious because of the glass of Crystal Light in your hand.