Being Too Reasonable & Compassionate

Are there times that you get tired of being reasonable and sensitive to the other person? It is the quality of a good pastor to continually see things from the other person’s perspective, to be sensitive to how they are feeling, to be concerned about being a peacemaker and building up the community, even if it is at your personal expense. You swallow your anger, accept insults without retaliating, look behind a person’s unreasonable behavior to the hurt in their own lives, and try to be Christ like in your expression of grace and love.

More times than you care to admit, it feels like you are compromising your own integrity and and the self that was inspired to enter the ministry is slowly disappearing.  You read the Scripture that you are a disciple of Christ who was sent to “bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 418-19) Yet you feel the pressure to keep people comfortable and not proclaim anything that might scare off new members, while focusing on raising a budget to support the institution. You were called to be a minister with a message that can transform the world and you find yourself drowning in minutia.

Are there times when you just want to explode? Do you feel the urge, just once, to stop thinking about other people’s feelings and let all those angry, hurt, and frustrated feelings loose, and tell the world how you really feel? Do you want to ignore being balanced and reasonable, compassionate and sacrificing, and speak your own truth?

Gee, maybe you want to be human before holding in all those feelings destroys both your physical health and your spiritual faith. I think there is a way for clergy to do that with integrity and not destroy their own effectiveness but rather enhance their witness to the Gospel. In fact I think that the quality of your life and your ministry may depend on it. I’ll pursue this in future blogs.