{"id":24074,"date":"2023-03-05T21:16:31","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T02:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=24074"},"modified":"2023-03-05T21:21:40","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T02:21:40","slug":"how-to-tell-you-have-arrived-as-a-big-shot-preacher-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/how-to-tell-you-have-arrived-as-a-big-shot-preacher-3\/","title":{"rendered":"How to tell you have arrived as a big-shot preacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay.\u00a0 Tongue firmly planted in cheek now…..<\/em><\/p>\n

The Lord called you to preach the gospel and you answered. You went off to a Bible college or theological seminary of one kind or the other, and you got yourself some degrees which you now display prominently on your wall. You finally got past those tiny churches which many consider boot camp for the pastoral ministry and now you are uptown in a fine facility with your name boldly plastered on the sign out front as the (ahem) senior pastor.<\/p>\n

Have you \u201carrived\u201d in the ministry?\u00a0 Well sir, here\u2019s some of the ways you can tell\u2026.<\/p>\n

1) You have a Bible published with your very own commentary notes.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe Official Jerry Bigshot Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n

It still has the basic 66 books of the Holy Scripture of course, but no one is buying it for that. They purchasing it for the wonderful, scintillating, incisive\u2013and insert a lot of other dynamic adjectives here!\u2013notes at the bottom of each page.<\/p>\n

How in the world Martin Luther pulled off the Reformation without your assistance is anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

2) You have two secretaries.\u00a0 One who works for you and the other who works for her.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your secretaries sometimes lord it over the rest of the office staff since they work for the (ahem) head guy, but hey, that\u2019s life and it\u2019s to be expected.\u00a0 After all, they take phone calls for you from leading pastors around the country, publishers of major printing establishments, and denominational executives.\u00a0 They are in high cotton and if they\u2019re a little prideful, well, who wouldn\u2019t be?<\/p>\n

3) You have research assistants to do your Bible study for you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can recall when you had time to check out the root of that Hebrew word.\u00a0 You used to enjoy taking a full morning at the seminary library. But those days are behind you.\u00a0 You\u2019re just too busy for that any more. So, that young intern sure comes in handy.\u00a0 His sermon ideas have given you some messages that have been well received, too. He\u2019s going to make someone a great preacher one of these days. Hopefully, not too soon.\u00a0 You are depending on him too much.<\/p>\n

4) You get invited to large events to speak. Or, if you don\u2019t, you leave the impression you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And you never get invited to the small churches and small events, because to be blunt about it, those people know you are \u201cout of their league\u201d now that you have arrived. If you were invited to Mount Pisgah at Route Four Podunk, you would have to fudge and tell the pastor how much you would love nothing better than doing this, but your schedule just will not allow it, and thank you for calling and have a blessed day.<\/p>\n

Surely the Lord will forgive your little lie. You were just trying not to hurt the guy\u2019s feelings, after all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

5) The media calls for your \u201ctake\u201d on events of the day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And you find yourself practicing in advance for their calls, which you know will be coming.<\/p>\n

You love getting phone calls or emails from friends far and wide saying they saw you on CNN or Fox and what a great job you did.\u00a0 You find yourself hoping that your own members see the same things.\u00a0 One appearance on a national news show will earn you a hundred goodwill-chips, to be cashed in the next time you need extended time away or support for a pet project.<\/p>\n

6) You no longer have to attend those preachers meetings in your own county.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone there knows you\u2019d certainly be there if you just were not so busy flying hither and yon to speak.\u00a0 These days, you no longer know those pastors anyway, so attending their meetings would be awkward. Best to spare everyone the embarrassment by avoiding them altogether.<\/p>\n

7) The mayor treats you like the CEO of a major employer in the community.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The funny thing is that you soon discover he wants your popularity to rub off on him the same way you want his public recognition to enhance your status. So, you help each other.<\/p>\n

8) You\u2019ve almost forgotten what the inside of a hospital room or nursing home looks like.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You have other people doing the actual shepherding of your congregation.\u00a0 You\u2019re above that sort of thing now.<\/p>\n

The only time you get to the hospital now is when one of your key guys is in critical condition. They make their little jokes that, \u201cI must be in bad shape because the head pastor is here!\u201d but there\u2019s a lot of truth to it, and the reality is there is not a thing you can do about it. It\u2019s just the reality of your life these days.\u00a0 Success has its price and one of those prices is you can\u2019t be everywhere, you cannot do everything. Something has to give and it\u2019s the actual work of pastoring. After all, anyone can visit a hospital room.\u00a0 Your gift is in vision-casting, motivation, leadership. Big stuff.<\/p>\n

9) You camouflage your dereliction of pastoral duties by fancy terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like vision-casting, motivation, and leadership.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the pastor of the smaller church down the street is doing the actual shepherding of some of your members.\u00a0 They actually call him.\u00a0 The words vary, but mostly they sound like: \u201cPastor Johnson, if you\u2019re going to be at the hospital this week, could you run by and see my daddy?\u00a0 I\u2019d ask my pastor but he\u2019s so busy.\u201d\u00a0 Or, \u201cPastor Johnson, I wonder if you have a few minutes to talk with me about a problem?\u00a0 I\u2019d go to my pastor but he\u2019s off at the meeting of the World Alliance for Global Alliances.\u201d<\/p>\n

10)\u00a0 And finally, you know you have arrived as a big-shot pastor when you lie awake at night, unable to sleep because you are missing the actual work of pastoring your people.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You envy the pastor down the street.<\/p>\n

Now that you are somebody, your days are spent planning with your executive staff, flying to high-level conferences on important issues, hob-nobbing with celebrities (hey, they need witnessing too!), writing your books and doing your book tours, and pontificating on important moral issues of the day.<\/p>\n

If that floats your boat, go for it. Someone has to do it, I suppose.<\/p>\n

But if God called you to pastor His people, you just might want to take a look back down the road and ask yourself where you took that fatal detour, that side road that led you to ten thousand perks but far away from the actual shepherding of God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n

Personally, I would rather be a pastor of the Lord\u2019s people than to dwell in the White House for eight solid years, than to have a widely-watched program on Fox or CNN, than to be on the best-sellers list every year for decades.<\/p>\n

Only those called to pastor can understand this.\u00a0 The rest will be tuning up their resume\u2019 in search of the First Church of Bigtown.<\/p>\n

I hope you find what you\u2019re looking for, friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay.\u00a0 Tongue firmly planted in cheek now….. The Lord called you to preach the gospel and you answered. You went off to a Bible college or theological seminary of one kind or the other, and you got yourself some degrees … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24074"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24081,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24074\/revisions\/24081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}