The Weight of Pastoring Part 1

There is a weight that pastors feel that I don’t know translates into other jobs. I think that people in churches can know about it, but not fully understand it. I know that as a youth pastor, I didn’t truly understand the weight of pastoring until becoming a lead pastor. For no particular reason, it just worked that way.

While there are many weights that a pastor carries, some of them are just human weights that others carry (including parents), but I thought up five that I think pastors particularly carry on a daily basis because of what they do each and every week. There is an important distinction here, these are not pains. These are the weight of pastoring. There is a huge difference between pain and weight (so no one misses that).

Next week I’ll share the joys of pastoring, as there are many, but for this week, the weight of it.

Weight #1: Preaching God’s Word every week

One of my favorite parts of my job is preaching every week. Yes I call it preaching not teaching. For me, the goal of preaching is life change, not to pass on information or to make people smarter.

There is this weight of knowing that each week, you are standing in front of a group of people and trying to communicate in an accurate way what the Bible says. The idea of God using you and speaking through you is incredibly weighty. The idea that in our church every week, there are broken marriages, addictions, pain, hurt, questions, doubts, people who are struggling with their faith, people who are trying to piece together their faith, and people don’t know Jesus and are going to spend eternity without Him.

This is weighty.

It keeps me up during the week, it humbles me as I read, as I pray, as I think through the faces and the stories every week.

While I don’t decide for people, I don’t make people change. The weight is the part that I play in this. The weight that God can and does use preaching every week is weighty.

The weight that if I’m not prepared, I dishonor God and the call He has placed on my life. If I’m not prepared, someone may think their suspicions of God, church and pastors have been confirmed and they move farther from God rather than closer.

One of the things that I try to do every week and it doesn’t always happen is to stand up at Revolution and preach like it is the last time I am going to preach (thanks Perry for that line). This is pastor talk for leaving it all on the field.

I’m often asked by people how they can help me or support me. Here are some ways:

• Pray during the week when I’m studying.
• Pray on Friday night. I rarely sleep well on Friday nights as I am thinking about Saturday night.
• Come on Saturday expecting God to show up.
• Don’t bring something up on Saturday before church, wait until after church. That sounds rude, but for me personally, if I can stay focused before church on my message, it goes so much better for me.
• Pray and support Katie. The best way to serve and care for a pastor is to serve and care for his bride. While I carry a weight and have a target on my back, Katie feels it even more and it is often lonelier and heavier for her.