What Pastors Do on Weekends

Mostly, we worry. The command notwithstanding (Matt. 6:34; Phil. 4:6), worry is pretty easy to come by for a pastor. We worry about our families, our congregants, our most recent sermon (Sunday afternoons are glorious for rest, but are also pervaded by lingering concerns regarding the coherence, or lack thereof, of the sermon just preached).

This past Sunday, I was joined in my worry by my twin brother, Tucker, who is a pastor in Iowa. He and his family traveled to Chicago to visit us and to enjoy a short vacation in the city. There was a time when any gathering in my family was marked by long, intense theological debates. These debates are hard to come by nowadays when Tuck and I get together. Arguing the merits of paedobaptism, for example, seems a bit superfluous, however important, when daily confronted with issues of life and death, virtue and sin, families in crisis, health, etc. Thankfully, both Tuck and I attended good seminaries and received excellent training in theology. I'm equally thankful that we don't need to be constantly affirmed by other people in our beliefs, which is typically the source of most theological debates. We read a lot. We write a lot. We continue to be grounded in Scripture, doctrine, and orthodoxy. We simply don't need to convince each other of the merits of our respective positions. (By the way, Tuck and I agree on an overwhelming number of issues; and to be completely honest, we do still find it intellectually stimulating to split theological hairs regarding those few issues we do disagree upon.)

My wife thought she was marrying a lawyer. Indeed, lawyers have all kinds of things to worry about, but most lawyers I know compensate for their anxieties by going on vacations and buying things. Pastors wives don't have that outlet. So, Julie's weekends are marked not so much by worry (at least not beyond a wife's normal prayerful concern for her husband's well-being), but by patience in coping with and encouraging me through my worry. She gave up Saturday nights as "date-night" the weekend of my ordination. We both found that Saturday night is prime time for Satan to disrupt, shame, and abuse servants of Christ--particularly those who will be proclaiming the Word and administering the Sacraments on Sunday morning. So, her Saturday nights include being a single parent--getting the kids ready for bed and tucked in while I pray and go over my sermon numerous times. I've grown accustomed to Saturday being a weekly installment of the "Dark Night of the Soul," as inevitably I feel harassed, unsettled, and full of questions about my calling, abilities, and worth of the sermon written over the course of the week. I am typically, by 9:00 p.m. Saturday, crawling out of my skin. Julie patiently contends with this, assuring me that my sermon is not a heap of garbage, that I am a good pastor, etc. Every week. This all sounds rather dramatic, but it is true.

Pastors kids deal with this, as well, though perhaps in ways more subtle. Our kids often find me staring blankly into space as, unbeknownst to them, I am puzzling over some word or phrase in the Scriptures or prayerfully thinking of a congregant coping with physical, emotional, or relational issues. Our kids have to deal with me insisting that I read them (yet again) the Chronicles of Narnia, surely puzzled each time (they know the parts) when Dad will tear-up and even sob as he reads. They patiently endure as I go on much too long praying over our food and at bedtime. They perhaps never wrap their minds around the fact that a skinned knee or hurt feelings receives little more than a shrug and peck on the cheek, while some minor skirmish at church can cause a pre-occupied vigilance and consternation that goes on for days.

Some pastors drink way too much--it is their way of coping with the stress that is surely a part of the job. Others simply pour themselves relentlessly into their work, sooner or later finding themselves on the operating table (pastors are prone to heart attacks) or alone (someone once handed Billy Graham an infant at the end of the day during one his crusades...he thought the child looked rather familiar; someone thankfully told him it was his own). Julie and the kids would never let it come to that. (Thank God.) I cope through intense exercise. As far as vices go, that is a pretty good one.

In the end, the pastor's life looks quite a bit different from an "ordinary" workaday life. It is harder than different vocations in many ways; easier than others. What sets it apart is, of course, the call. My older brother, who is not a pastor but has lived with two in his family for many years, has often remarked: "Who in their right mind would sign up for this?" It's a fair question. No one would. Ian, our oldest boy, is ten. For several years, he was convinced he wanted to be a builder. When he hit eight years he said (with an alarming amount of conviction and seriousness), "Dad, I want to be a pastor when I grow up." He said this at about the time that I was going through an insanely difficult stretch in ministry. I said to him, "E-Boy, are you sure about that?" When a call comes, however distant or soft, all rationality that would compel us to do something, anything else flies out the window.

All of this might suggest that being a pastor is no great shakes, or that perhaps you should pity the poor fool who is engaged in such a vocation. Not at all. This is the very best vocation in the world, and there is absolutely nothing I would rather do--not for all the money in the world. It is the most challenging, difficult, heart-breaking, exhilarating, joy-filled, honorable, humbling, refining, exhausting, and life-giving job I could ever possibly imagine. It is an unspeakable joy to be a pastor, and I thank God for it everyday. (Even on the weekends.)