Unspoken Expectations (or “when the should hits the fan”)

There are a number of unspoken expectations on a pastor, and, like most unspoken expectations, they are not fair.

Think of all the things many people believe their pastor should do:

• Preach every Sunday unless he is gone
• Visit the hospital for every person in the congregation, and their siblings, and their friends, and their sibling’s friend’s dog’s niece.
• Be available 24/7
• Live in a constant state of grace, understanding, patience, acceptance
• Not live in a state of grace, understanding, patience, and acceptance when it comes to certain sins
• Have a perfect family consisting of three well-adjusted children who have memorized the Psalms and a wife who plays piano.
• Be content. At $30,000 a year and no retirement. With $120,000 in student loans.
• Know the name of every person who crosses the threshold of the church, their kids’ names, their occupations, and their pets’ names.
• Lead singing and play guitar.
• Be able to tell them where “that one verse that goes something like” is.
• Drywall.

These unspoken expectations are a big steaming pile of should, and I step in it frequently. Unfortunately pastors do not find out they stepped in the should pile until enough of it has built up that it hits the fan and some congregant or another calls a meeting. Then the should really flies as a person hits the pastor with a long, sometimes well-documented, list of shoulds that the pastor failed to perform, none of which were in his job description.

Unspoken expectations ruin relationships and battle against authenticity as pastors are made to tread cautiously, not wanting to inadvertently make a mess. Pastors should work against this by leading with boldness and not out of fear, but their congregation can help by clearly communicating what is expected and accepting some responsibility when a pastor steps in a pile of should.

The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back (or “twitter broke my heart”)

It begins with a monster disguised as a little bird. I’d made my obligatory Twitter account a couple of years ago, but at some prompting or another decided it was time to take it for a test flight. Three hours later I was down in flames. The public profiles of my students revealed their keen ability to communicate bitterness, hatred, vileness, and immorality in a never-ending barrage, each one efficient to 140 characters or fewer. Each post left me deeper in despair. This is no overstatement, I was moved to tears, an anomaly, as I soaked in their bile.

I was just coming off a seemingly powerful weekend youth retreat, one of those “mountaintop” getaways described in such impressively exaggerated summaries: “God really showed up!” “The students were moved!” “Life-changing!”  In Youth Pastor currency I was a very wealthy man; certainly Pride and Ego, those ever-hungry beggars of the mind, were momentarily sated. Oh, the good I thought I had accomplished.

Then the little bird, that logo of the site of hatred, the dump site, where my students had been publicly displaying their projected selves while I was blissfully ignorant and thinking myself effective, tool of God.  Tool, alright.

I read for three hours.  I looked up weeks when I knew we were on some big youth trip.  I studied.  I searched.  Eventually I became desperate to see one tweet, one casual side comment, one single mention of truth, wisdom, love, purity, godliness… all the things I thought I had been effectively teaching!  They certainly mentioned God, but in acronym form and certainly not honoring, especially when my Student Leaders had room to employ the ‘F’ character.  One student had retweeted a few Bible verses (one student out of many, we are a somewhat larger youth group, though not huge), but none of her self-written posts mentioned God with anything resembling honor.  Soon my students noticed I was ‘following’ their posts and began to block me, some before I even got to their profiles.

My heart sank, shriveled, and partly died.  Some would say I took it too seriously, kids will be kids, and teens will be monsters, but this was my life! I was ten years into ministry, and by modern evangelical standards I was a success! My identity was wrapped into this ministry, I had sacrificed so much time, so much effort! What had ministry already cost my family? And I had thought things were going so well!  Just a week earlier I had written my annual report, declaring the youth ministry to be healthy, growing, and effective. Everything I thought I was accomplishing, all that I thought God has blessed and touched through me, was false. We are known by (identified by, judged by) our fruits, and my garden was full of manure and weeds wrapped in falsehood, like rotten pumpkins.

I prayed.  I vented, then humbled myself as recently read words came to heart. Ann Voskamp’s book was my judge/guide: There is God in it, there is something here to be thankful for, God is at work even in this. I cried to God, I pleaded for eyes to see His fingerprints even in this, the realization of my failure. I’ve just lighted on the pile I’ve received from God in response to this prayer, this blog will be my searching through, cataloging, marveling at the pile.