I’m on the interstate, solidly in the middle of heavy traffic, trying to hold my own at a comfortable 65 or 70 or slightly more. Suddenly, from out of nowhere–maybe he dropped down out of the sky!–a motorcycle is all over me, appearing suddenly on my back bumper or just to my left elbow, then swerving around in front. The noise is horrendous and completely unexpected. He zooms past like he was jet-propelled and disappears into the distance.

I am unnerved.

Honestly, I need to exit immediately and find a rest area where I can kill the engine, get out and walk around, and get my wits back.

That was frightening.

The cyclist has no idea what he did. Or maybe he did.

Common sense says the fellow under that helmet drives a car from time to time and surely has had the experience of having a daredevil on a Harley materialize out of nowhere and scare the blazes out of him.  Or maybe not.

If he had, he’d never do that to anyone else.

Continue reading →

“Apart from these external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28).

When showing his scars and enumerating his sufferings, the Apostle Paul ends with a mention of the daily care of the Lord’s people.  That too was a great burden.

You don’t bleed from caring for the Lord’s flock. But you hurt as much as if you did.

The worst part of pastoring, the burden that keeps hammering you down into the ground, is the perfectionism.

It’s not something the Lord puts on us–well, not any more than on anyone else–because “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that  we are but dust” (Psalm 103:14). He is under no illusions about any of us. The quickest way to divine frustration, I would think, is for the Father to expect perfection from His children.

He’s smarter than that. Thankfully.

Nor is it something most congregation put on us. Most members know their pastors are human, even if some do tend to lose sight of that sometimes.  (I heard of a pastor whose teenage daughter has come up pregnant, and some in the church are calling for the pastor’s resignation.  He ministered to them in their crises, but let him go through one and a few are ready to cut him off.  What is wrong with such people?! God bless the leadership of this church and help them do the right thing.)

The perfectionism that hounds the pastor and nags at him without letup he mostly puts on himself.

Continue reading →

Those of us who counsel pastors and teach future preachers are known to caution them to “study the Bible for itself, just to receive the Word into your heart, and not to prepare sermons.”

We might as well tell Sherlock Holmes to enjoy crime scenes for the beauty of the occasion and stop looking for criminals, tell Mike Trout not to worry about actually striking at the baseball crossing the plate but to relax and take in the inspiration of the moment, or tell Hollywood beauty queens to forsake plastic surgery.

Some things you do because this is who you are.

When a pastor comes across a great insight in the Scriptural text, does anyone think for one minute that he is going to file that away in a personal-edification file, never to be shared in sermons?

Yes, he is blessed by it, and certainly it enriches his own soul. But if it does feed his spirit and call him to realign his priorities, you can bet that he will be off and running to trace out similar teachings in the Word with a view to sharing the results with his flock.

That’s how it ought to be. It’s not an aberration at all. He’s doing what he does, what God called him for.

At some point in a Sherlock Holmes story, someone complimented the sleuth on his brilliant deduction. He said simply, “Of course. It’s what I do.”

Continue reading →