The Toughest Job You'll Every Love
I am taking a moment from a busy day and my last week of the seminary to say this.
I have been an ordained pastor for nearly 27 years. I was
ordained on my 21st birthday by a counsel of Pastors, Sydney Ackerbloom, Fred
Taylor, and my dad, Donald E. McKinnon (I'm Donald J.). I served the first 21
years as an associate pastor and the last four as a lead pastor (ministry years
minus a few years off).
Let me say this; they are two vastly different things than
most people realize.
When you serve as an elder or associate pastor, you are
responsible for the church you are at. You fit into a captain or lieutenants
role in military rank. You may be a corneal or a major if you're the #2, but
you have your sergeants and corporals in the ministries they oversee.
As a lead pastor, you are a five-star general who answers
directly to the Commander and Chief in Christ Jesus, and you feel the weight of
the world on your shoulders. You may not have been an emotional person when you
were an associate, but as the lead, you genuinely mourn with those who mourn
and rejoicing with those who rejoice. Your friends, who are not in this role,
struggle to understand your time constraints because, after family, your
congregation needs their pastor. You feel pulled in many directions, and you
want to be all things to all people, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9. After the
Army, this has been the hardest job I will ever love.
That said, the last few weeks have been a roller coaster
with health concerns of several members ranging the gambit of ages in our
church from nearly the youngest to the oldest, and in between, this week
especially. I also have had friends announce different things going on in their
lives, from moves to health concerns, and it adds to that weight because while
you are their friend, you are also a pastor, and you know Jesus wants you to
pray for them and lift them, and you do.
So for my friends who wonder why their pastor needs prayer,
why he sometimes seems distant, sometimes looks down. Understand that as undershepherd,
we have a great responsibility from the Great Shepherd, and we take it seriously
and need your support in prayer.
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