A young pastor who feels he might be out of place in leading a church sent me a note the other day. With the constant demands upon his time and the unending situations that call for wisdom and patience, he’s feeling like the fellow who was eaten alive by a school of minnows. He wonders if he’s cut out to be a pastor.

He said, “I hear people talking about those who have the heart of a pastor. What exactly is that?”

Great question. I’ve pastored seven churches over 42 years and preached in another two hundred, but have never been asked that until now.

Perhaps a pastor’s heart is like what someone said of art (and a lot of other things!): “I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.”

My friend Chris was grieving over the reassignment of their church’s associate minister and his family to a new congregation several states away. Recently in the church hallway, she was passing one of the women on the church staff. The minister said, “Good morning, Chris. How are you today?”

Chris burst into tears.

With that, the minister pulled up a chair and gave Chris the next 30 minutes of her day. In telling me about it–and expressing her wonder at such sensitivity and kindness from the staff member–Chris said, “They must teach this in the seminary.”

No. They don’t. It’s what a pastor’s heart looks like.

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Over the last weekend, Congress passed the President’s health care program and did it with three votes to spare.

This has been the most controversial piece of legislation in decades. I’m tempted to say the most in my lifetime, but that takes in all the debates of the 1940s, the Cold War of the 1950s, the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s, the Vietnamese War issues of the 1970s, and so on.

But this one has been so mean-spirited, I wonder if it’s not in a class by itself.

The disturbing thing to me is how ugly some people can be even when they are occupying the high ground morally.

As congressmen and congresswomen worked their way through the crowds surrounding the Capitol building last Sunday–their safety was not the primary concern; security and police were everywhere–they had to listen to epithets being spat in their direction by these champions of the unborn. (Okay, not by all of them, but some.)

The gay congressman heard, “Fag!” yelled at him. The N-word was hurled at Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights movement if one ever existed. And we’re told that in the House of Representative itself, a congressman yelled out, “Baby killers!” to those voting for the health-care legislation.

I was in Springfield, Illinois, watching this on television from my hotel room in between worship services at one of our Southern Baptist churches. The pastor and I were discussing the behavior of the demonstrators.

That’s when he told me of the time a deacon hit him in the face and “busted my tooth.”

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Tommy Bowden, former football coach of Tulane and Clemson, is quoted as saying, “I don’t want to follow my father at Florida State. I want to follow the coach who follows him!”

His father, the one-of-a-kind Bobby Bowden, has just retired after several decades at that university where he racked up the second most victories ever for a college football coach.

Preachers advise one another not to follow a pastor who either died or went to the mission field. You will never live up to the image left in people’s minds, whether it’s accurate or not.

People are funny about preachers. They give them a hard time, expect far more from them than any human can ever deliver, and are not unhappy to see them move on. But let a new pastor come in and suddenly the old one looks mighty good. Pray for the new guy. He has to listen to a constant stream of “When Brother Henry was here….” and “how Dr. Henry did things” without it seeming to bother him or slow him down. He smiles and mutters something about, “We are blessed to have had such a wonderful pastor, aren’t we?”

If he is experienced in the Lord’s work, he knows two things: 1) the fellow who followed him back at his former church is having to hear the same junk and 2) give it a little time, and he can outlive the memory of Brother Henry.

No offense to anyone named Henry. The name just popped into my head. (How many Pastor Henrys do I know? Jim Henry, Henry Cox, Bill Henry…)

The business of preferring one preacher over another is not a new phenomenon. In fact, that little carnal activity was not only present from the beginning, it wormed its way into the New Testament.

Paul talks about the “liking one preacher better than another” syndrome in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. In case you wonder, he was “agin” it. No wonder, since he came out on the short end of the comparisons. You and I are amazed at that. How could any preacher begin to measure up to the great Apostle Paul, much less surpass him?

No one surpassed him, I venture to say, except in popular appeal. Paul did not fare too well there. Apparently, he lacked somewhat in looks and his stage presence was not strong. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians goes into that, particularly chapters 10 and 11. Readers will want to pay especial attention to Paul’s resume in chapter 11. Pressed to verify his right to be called an apostle, he does the opposite of what they might have expected. He gives them what I call a “reverse resume,” listing not his awards and achievements, but the scars and suffering he has endured for Jesus. Let them try to match that!

At the moment, for our purposes in this piece, we’re turning to I Corinthians 4, the first 5 verses.

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As a pastor leading your own congregation, you don’t get out much. Every Sunday, you’re tied down to your own assignment. The old saw about the pastor working only one day a week is tired, but it contains one great truth: he really works on that day.

So, when he gets a chance to sit in on the worship service of another church, it’s a rarity, a blessing, and in many cases, a vacation.

The pastor is visiting his parents, he and the family are on vacation, or they are en route somewhere. On this Sunday, he leaves the tie in the closet and dresses like normal people. He is looking forward to this. Today, he gets to sit in a pew and worship without being responsible for anything.

After leaving the active pastorate nearly 6 years ago, visiting other churches has become routine for me. Most times, I’ve been the guest preacher, but often I was there as a friend of the pastor. Sometimes, as with other ministers, I was on vacation, visiting my mother, or traveling.

In the last three Sundays, I have worshiped in three greatly different churches: Williams Boulevard Baptist in Kenner, Louisiana, the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, and Eutaw Baptist Church of Eutaw, Alabama.

The first is just across town from where I live, the late pastor of that church was a longtime friend, and the present interim pastor, Mark Tolbert, was interim at our church (FBC Kenner). I love that great church and decided to visit.

My pastor, Mike Miller, approves this church-hopping thing of mine. We’ve discussed it. I send my tithe, my prayers, my family, and I’m there fairly often.

The second church–FBC, New Orleans–is likewise pastored by a dear friend, David Crosby. That Sunday, he was preaching on an event that took place in the days following Hurricane Katrina and which continues to suck the air out of the atmosphere around here. I had been praying for him and wanted to hear the sermon.

The last church, Eutaw, Alabama, my son and I were en route back to New Orleans from spending the weekend on the farm with my mom and the family. We had planned to stop for church along the way and this church, located 30 miles below Tuscaloosa on the interstate, was perfect. Rick Williams is the pastor, but we were meeting for the first time. My father-in-law grew up in Eutaw, so we figured that half the people around us were related in some way to my son.

What other pastors do irregularly–visit another church–I’m doing as a matter of routine. It occurs to me that we might make a suggestion or two as to what the visiting preacher will want to do. That’s what follows:

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