Is it just me, or does it often feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all of the things that we want (or need) to do?

As pastors we can find ourselves sought out for a variety of reasons.

And we can give ourselves to a lot of different ministry-related tasks and to-do’s.

Some of this happens for good reasons, some for the wrong reasons and some due to no decision of our own.

But I find myself wondering how frequently many of us get sidetracked, or even sidelined, by giving too much of our time and attention to the wrong things.

As I continue to work my way back through some of Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, I find myself trying to process the following excerpts in light of my current ministry practices:

(*NOTE: the “Tuesdays” Peterson refers to in the quoted text below are in reference to his time with a group of clergy who have been convened weekly by a psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins over the course of a two-year period. The purpose was to educate and equip the clergy to better assist their congregants and their growing levels of insecurity and stress).

Besides orienting me in the details of the emotional, mental, and relational difficulties that bedevils people’s lives, an orientation that I very much-needed, it did something even more important — it clarified what I was not: I was not primarily dealing with people as problems. I was a pastor calling them to worship God.

… The people who made up my congregation had plenty of problems and more than enough inadequacies, but congregations is not defined by its collective problems. Congregation is a company of people who are defined by their creation in the image of God, living souls, whether they know it or not. They are not problems to be fixed, but mysteries to be honored and revered. Who else in the community other than the pastor has the assigned task of getting men and women and welcoming them into a congregation in which they are known not by what is wrong with them, but by who they are, just as they are?

… And my work is not to fix people. It is to lead people in the worship of God and to lead them in living a holy life.

… I liked helping people. I liked the feeling of being important to them. But it was on Tuesdays that I realized in my self a latent messianic complex, which, given free rein, would have obscured the very nature of congregation by redefining it as a gathering of men and women whom I was in charge of helping with their problems.

The messianic virus, which can so easily decimate the pastoral vocation once it finds a host (me!), is hard to get rid of.

I believe that our role as pastors to students does include pastoral care.

But we have not been called (or likely even been trained) to serve as psychiatrists or professional counselors.

Others have been called to these roles.

We have been called to serve as pastors.

We’ve been called to point students towards God. We’ve been called to provide opportunities for them to enter into times of worship and drawing closer to the heart of God.

If we fail to remember this, or if we fail to manage our time with an awareness to what we’ve been called to (in contrast to what we have not been called to), then we could find ourselves (and our ministries) in a place far off from where we’ve been called to.

So how does this look for you?

> Do you ever find yourself struggling to know what, exactly, you’ve been called to in relation to all that others expect of you?
> Do you ever get wrapped up in “being important” and assisting others as a “problem-solver?”
> What’s most striking (or convicting) from this passage from Peterson?

Please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comment section below. Thanks!

Other posts inspired by Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor include:

> Every Step An Arrival
> Helping Students Identify a Call to Pastor
> Pastoring in North America
> Local and Personally Present
> A Story Among Stories
> The Americanization of Congregation
> Are Your Expectations Too High? Probably.
> When You’re Not the Star