Deep

Flat as a pancake today! They say blogging is dangerous when you are in this state, so I am being careful today. But I may zig-zag the route a bit.

In the past 24 hours my mind has been on the scriptures of James chapter 3 - a real challenge for all.

I find being a Pastor in Christian ministry provides a fertile piece of ground to go to the very depths of despair and depression some days. I don't feel the personal freedom because of who I am as a Pastor to go around indicating to folks that that is where I am in these moments as that feels like some kind of attention seeking or quazi sympathy school. Maybe it just about being male?

I find that none of this is helped by people's perceptions and expectations of Pastors. I maybe wrong but there seems to be an entire spectrum of expectations that span the entire wavelength. No human can match these. I have learnt to my cost in 24 years of Christian ministry that people pleasing is the motorway to oblivion. God pleasing is the only appropriate target for Christian leaders, and thats why we are never paid a salary that suggests that we are employed, but a stipend that is to enable that God defined ministry to take place. God pleasing is by the way hard enough! The two are entirely different concepts.

I have learnt too that whatever I do in ministry it will be wrong - never right, in the eyes of humans. Pastors are effectively "dammned if they do and dammned if they don't" and we are rarely told that we are doing a good job except by the tiny few who are willing to stand with you (God bless such wonderful people) in this in what feels at times like a Schizophrenic vocation. All of the rubbish that gets thrown at us over the years (and whenever we meet in our fraternals the reports are generally the same from each of us in different churches) by those who think they have some divine right or window on heaven! Those are the things that make me personally want to leave the church of Jesus and go and live by the sea in peace and quiet merely looking after the family and walking along the beach everyday!

Some people think that Pastors are somehow equipped with Star Trek like shields that let "stuff" go over them or bounce off. Here's the truth - that a complete fictional untruth!

At the end of the day, Pastors are just humans with feelings, vulnerabilities and struggles who have been trained, equipped, tested and recognised by the larger church, not just the local, who are seeking to humbly do God's will.

So today I am flat. But God has spoken to me, but I am yet to rise. As I walked home from the school run and looked at the Somerset Hills, the verse of Psalm 121 hit me again - "I look to the hills, from there comes my help..." When I got home and forced myself to follow the Northumbria Community prayers for today, the first part of the reading was the completion of Psalm 121. Thank you Lord!

I'm still flat, and rushing out the deep is not something I can do. I have learnt that I have to travel. So today I should jog or cycle, but I will clean the house, iron the laundry, listen to some deep music to capture my soul.

Yesterday I was at a funeral in Weymouth by the way, of a World War 2 war hero, a friend of my dad's back in the village I grew up in. I took my dad and mum to the service and held dad's hand through most of the service. I wasn't sure if dad really knew where he was, but we were there. They were glad to have gone, and they saw lots of old friends. Life moves too quickly and getting old is not a joy, but a struggle for many.