When I stop to think about the four churches that I have served since my ordination and the half dozen I served in my years of preparation, I have mixed emotions. It is a great privilege to be in ministry, to be trusted to enter into the heart of people's lives in the many and varied ways that clergy do. On the other hand, churches can be harsh places, and ministry can be a lonely profession. It is not easy to be in public life in this era in this country.
Any public figure is open to extreme scrutiny and unrealistic expectations.
While the Bible portrays very human individuals through whom God worked miracles, churches often expect clergy to be something other than human, and it is easy for pastors to begin to expect as much from ourselves or to live with a constant sense of under achievement. In the context of these musings, I was moved to read these opening paragraphs of an editorial from the Conference Minister of Connecticut, the Rev. D. Davida Foy Crabtree. Time was when an ordained minister's role was limited to that of scholarly interpreter and preacher of the Word of God, who administered the cure of souls. Over time, understandings of ministry have expanded. The cure of souls began to include pastoral calling, then counseling, then knowledgeable assessor of resources and referral agent.