{"id":17451,"date":"2018-04-12T19:07:02","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T02:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17451"},"modified":"2018-04-12T19:07:02","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T02:07:02","slug":"pain-is-inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/pain-is-inevitable\/","title":{"rendered":"Pain is inevitable…"},"content":{"rendered":"

To be honest I was not sure I wanted to read this book. I remember sometime last semester Dr. Clark saying sometimes you will have to not read a book and still do a review, and then see if anyone notices, or something to that effect. I have had plenty of pain throughout my ministry life, but that does not make me special, it makes me just like every other minister who has walked this terrestrial ball we call home. It was odd, I had actually, for whatever reason, not purchased this book before last week. I guess it slipped my sight. Then I actually started reading\u00a0Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth<\/em> by Samuel Chand, and I was rewarded for my effort. The insight is something every pastor should have to read before ever taking their first position at a church. The idea that your best friends will betray you, your heart will be broken, you will be lied about, your family will be attacked (sometimes physically). All these things and more pour from these pages. If we are not aware of what we are getting into, then we may not survive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Borrett, in his review states, “this is a book about experiencing and working through our pain, hurt, disappointments and betrayal as christian leaders.” [1]<\/span>\u00a0It is just that, learning to work through the pain of ministry which will keep ministers vibrant. That and learning you cannot do everything. I feel like I am a broken record sometimes when I look back at my last position. I did everything I could think of to make myself indispensable, the youth minister, the IT director, media director, missions minister, Upwards basketball director, and in the end nothing mattered, I had friends stab me in the back to move me out of a position I loved doing. It took me over a year to come to grips with what happened to me and to move on. Chand addresses this when he writes “If you lead long enough, you’ll inevitably endure the deep wounds of betrayal. It’s a paradox of leadership” [2]\u00a0He goes on to discuss that it only takes a few of these kinds of people to create this kind of chaos for a pastor. So, the question then is this, if ministry is so hard, and you can guarantee some kind of heart break, why do it at all? Why put oneself into the crosshairs. The answer is both simple and complex (don’t you hate it when people do that).\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The simple answer is because we have been called to minister in a fallen world to sinful people who do sinful things. Jesus was betrayed, not only by Judas, but all of his disciples ran for cover when the crap hit the fan. Peter, the rock, the one who would be leader denied him three times. So why do we, as pastors, think it will not happen to us? That should be the answer we should be ready to hear, right? Then why, when it does happen are we so shocked. It always seems as if it has come out of left field and knocked us for a loop.<\/p>\n

The more complex answer to this question lies at the heart of what the real problem usually is, we have messed with a sacred thing and people are very quick to defend what they perceive as a sacred thing. I cannot tell you how many times, in my church that I have only been at for a little over a year I have heard one person say, “I like the King James version of the bible, it was good enough for my grandmother and it is good enough for me”. It upsets this person tremendously that I do not preach out of the King James version. I do not care how many times I point out the version I use is a great translation, that the greek used to translate the King James was not Koine greek so it misses some of the intricacies, or that there are better translations for that are easier to read. None of this matters to this person, and you know why, his grandmother led him to Christ, his grandmother was the one who took him to church and gave him a love for her favorite translation. Now, I could be a tyrant and just berate this person until I made an enemy, or I can understand his love of his bible, celebrate the fact that he is passionate about it, and let him vent when he needs to.<\/p>\n

The sacredness of things in the church can run from the music, the length of a sermon, the color of the carpet (you know red the the best right), even the translation of the bible being used by the pastor. People have the things they like, and they do not want to change, it was good enough for the last 50 years why should we change. I think this stabs at the heart of my problem. People want to feel comfortable in their church, they want it to be familiar, like an old blanket that you want to snuggle with during a cold winter night, it just feels right. The problem behind this thinking is it leads to death, the death of a church, a ministry or just plain dying of boredom. Chand makes it perfectly clear why we have pain “the basic premise of the book is that growth = change, change = Loss, Loss = Pain, and therefore, growth = Pain.” [3] If we are not going through a difficult time, then we are not learning to lean on God. He does give us reprieves from the pain but, it is through our pain that we grow,, that we learn we are capable of so much more than we think we are, God grooms us and that grooming can cause pain but it is worth it in the end.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n