Let me share a cup of whine with you. Not the kind you drink, mind you, but the kind you sort of spew. It’s unbecoming, we may think, for a pastor to whine, but I’m going to whine anyway.
The prophet Isaiah says that even young men grow weary.1 Pastors do, too. We rarely soar on wings like eagles, though we may want our congregations to think otherwise. We grow tired of our work and our call. Unlike robots and stoics, we feel, and what we feel is often weariness.
We want to give voice to that, but because we think our honesty will be read as whining, we bottle it up and imagine ourselves as the only pastors on a thousand hills who feel like we do. Unspoken and unacknowledged, our weariness and uncertainty fester and lead often to a dark place. And so I take here a clue from Elijah, the patron saint of whine, who believed himself the only faithful one in Israel and said it out loud.2 Though he was only heard by God and maybe a few ravens, still his healing started with his whine.
In sharing my whine with you, I don’t want to trivialize your experience. Many of you are drinking very bitter cups right now. Your weariness is all the greater, and I don’t mean to make light of that. Also I don’t want anyone to think I’m particularly proud of my feelings. Some of these things I’ve been working on for years, which is why I have an appointment with my therapist next Tuesday at 2PM. But it’s also been therapeutic for me over the years to sit with a friend and say, “I’m tired” and have him say, “How so?”
I’m glad you asked.
+ + +
I'm tired of feeling the responsibility to fix people.
I’m tired of people trying to fix me.
I'm tired of not being able to say how I really feel.
I'm tired of trying to be holier than I am.
I'm tired of trying to hold a church together while fearing that it will fall apart.
I'm tired of being expected to understand the Bible more than I do.
I’m tired of trying to dodge critique from others.
I'm tired of comparing myself with others.
I'm tired of working too many hours.
I'm tired of wondering if I’m working enough to justify what I’m being paid.
I’m tired of everything I say being measured.
I’m tired of saying stupid things.
I’m tired of judging others.
I'm tired of trying to distinguish who is my friend and who is simply friendly because I’m the pastor.
I'm tired of being always on call.
I'm tired of being expected to care about every cultural issue that is supposedly destroying the church.
I'm tired of caring that I’m a small fish in a big pond.
I'm tired of constantly being on stage.
I'm tired of preaching, though I love to preach, because what I desperately need is to be preached to.
I'm tired of tirelessly pursuing an idea which in the end bears little visible fruit.
I'm tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’m tired of worrying about the church’s giving.
I’m tired of church power and politics.
I’m tired of the heartache when those I’ve grown to love and care for make troubling life decisions.
I'm tired of chasing church members when they choose to go elsewhere or just disappear.
I'm tired of being misheard and misunderstood and categorized and labeled.
I’m tired of ministry decisions made because they are the right thing to do being judged as being an acquiescence to some wider cultural or ecclesiastical battle.
I'm tired of watching the people I love be hurt, often by the church itself.
I'm tired of waiting for the things that sadden me to go away.
I'm tired of waiting for God to make all things new.
I'm tired of waiting.
+ + +
So, what does such a readily populated list3 say about me? I’ll leave that for you to judge. But I hope it at least says that you are not alone in the weariness you feel. It may be that I’m more practiced in my whining because I have friends to whom any item from the above list could be uttered, validated, discussed, and concluded with a hearty, “Yup. You’re right. You are a lousy pastor. I can’t wait to see what God does with you!”
We all need friends like that.
We are told that the pastors who wait on the Lord will renew their strength and shall mount up with wings like eagles.
My feet have yet left the ground, to be honest. Maybe you feel the same way.
Perhaps airing the things that weary us, though, may lighten the ballast and help us along.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
(Isaiah 40:30, 31)
1 Kings 19:10
External matters weary me as well. I’m tired of the way women or minorities or the vulnerable are treated in the church, for example. But then again, I’m tired of being expected to feel everything equally and all at once.
Wow, Randy! What a great post . . . all the way down to Footnote #3!
"Perhaps airing the things that weary us, though, may lighten the ballast and help us along."
May that have been so--and be so--for you this day.
Amen.
Oh Randy. Being a pastor is so hard. That’s why I really do believe they need a special calling. Jack wanted to quit so often, but he couldn’t. Because he knew he was called. And I know Jack felt this tired too. But he wasn’t as honest as you to share his feelings. And in the end his secret weariness probably led to his early death (although his last years were less wearisome—because he was no longer a pastor!) You are not alone.