Okay. 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 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.
Have you “arrived” in the ministry? Well sir, here’s some of the ways you can tell….
1) You have a Bible published with your very own commentary notes. “The Official Jerry Bigshot Bible.”
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–and insert a lot of other dynamic adjectives here!–notes at the bottom of each page.
How in the world Martin Luther pulled off the Reformation without your assistance is anybody’s guess.
2) You have two secretaries. One who works for you and the other who works for her.
Your secretaries sometimes lord it over the rest of the office staff since they work for the (ahem) head guy, but hey, that’s life and it’s to be expected. After all, they take phone calls for you from leading pastors around the country, publishers of major printing establishments, and denominational executives. They are in high cotton and if they’re a little prideful, well, who wouldn’t be?
3) You have research assistants to do your Bible study for you.
You can recall when you had time to check out the root of that Hebrew word. You used to enjoy taking a full morning at the seminary library. But those days are behind you. You’re just too busy for that any more. So, that young intern sure comes in handy. His sermon ideas have given you some messages that have been well received, too. He’s going to make someone a great preacher one of these days. Hopefully, not too soon. You are depending on him too much.
4) You get invited to large events to speak. Or, if you don’t, you leave the impression you do.
And you never get invited to the small churches and small events, because to be blunt about it, those people know you are “out of their league” 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.
Surely the Lord will forgive your little lie. You were just trying not to hurt the guy’s feelings, after all.