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I think that most
seminarians cannot comprehend the kinds of things they will encounter from
some parishioners once in the pastoral ministry. Hearing it is one thing;
experiencing it, quite another. The strain on a pastor’s family from
living in a “glass house” can be devastating . . .
(1.) On a pastor’s wife:
Virtually all congregations used to provide their pastor with a manse
(parsonage, rectory, vicarage) in which to live, and wise congregations
would treat the manse as the pastor’s home, keeping their distance
unless invited. Sadly, that is not always the case. In one church that I
served, my wife decided to make new curtains for the living room. I paid
for the fabric out of my own pocket, and she slowly labored with her
sewing machine for several weeks. They looked great. But one day several
of the “Women in the Church” decided to drop by to “visit”—that
is, to engage in manse inspection. When they saw the new curtains, they
became upset and very critical of my wife, demanding why she had taken it
on herself to do this.
Over the years my wife and I have listened to a lot of pastors and their
wives. Many pastors’ wives are terribly depressed, some having problems
with alcohol or prescription drugs. An affair is not unknown. It’s tough
on women when their husbands are out night after night, often leaving them
alone with small children: Sunday night service, Wednesday night service,
session meetings, deacons meetings, committee meetings, visitation nights
. . . to say nothing of all the events that you’re supposed to attend
for people in the church and their families: wedding rehearsal dinners,
funeral visitations, dinners for people’s anniversaries, birthdays,
retirement and various awards . . . stuff that’s not strictly speaking
“work,” but stuff which if you don’t do, you’ll end up on somebody’s
black list. Never underestimate the power of somebody to blackball you
with subtle comments once you’ve ticked them off.
On one occasion, I put in eighty hours in one week. That’s
just insane. But what do you say when the phone rings at two in the
morning, and somebody’s boy has shot himself in the head? You splash
water on your face, comb your hair, throw on a suit and chug down a cup of
lukewarm water with three tablespoons of instant coffee in it, hoping you
don’t throw up.
I am very grateful for the church that I currently serve. Other than
asking about possible repairs and maintenance, they treated the manse as
our house. Nobody here has ever been critical of my wife’s not attending
Sunday School. She would dress our children and drop them and me off at
the church and then return home, put some music on and spend the time in
prayer before heading back for morning worship. Our children are now
grown, and we do much of the non-preaching work of the ministry together.
Doing visitation and then going out to eat can be a kind of date, no
kidding. I now do all counseling of females with my wife. Not only does
she pick up on things that I don’t, she keeps me out of trouble.
(2.) On a pastor’s children:
My mother was a child of the manse, her father having been a Presbyterian
minister. She used to tell me that even in adult life people would say,
“But you’re a preacher’s daughter.” Mama’s
now dead, but her last remaining sibling, my beloved
Aunt Ruth, still quotes the phrase with such sarcasm in her voice—it
must have really stung. People may sometimes mean well, but critical
comments made to pastors’ children have pushed some children away from
church for good.
It’s one thing that I urged people never to say to my children: don’t
correct them by the standard of being a “preacher’s child;” correct
them because of the standards to which the Lord holds all Christians.
However, on one occasion, feeling quite desperate with one of my children
during the teen years, I said, “If you keep acting like this, you’re
going to make me lose my job.” It wasn’t completely untrue—I had
gone to the session and confessed that I wasn’t in control of one of my
children and offered to tender my request to resign to presbytery—but it
was a really stupid thing to say to a teenager and put an enormous power
in the hands of a child.
(3.) On a pastor himself:
(3.1.) You find certain types of people in most congregations: the huge
group of the less than committed, the smaller group of the visibly
committed who do a lot of the work and a handful that you try to pour your
life into. It’s no big deal when somebody in the first group decides to
leave and join the big church on the other side of town: you lose some to
them; they lose some to you. But it really is devastating to lose somebody
you were slowly grooming for leadership. They don’t all move away;
sometimes they get caught in some scandal. Years ago one of my elders came
by the office to see me. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I got fired.”
“Fired!? You’ve been the plant manager for years. What on earth
happened?”
“I got caught stealing. I’d been embezzling money for years. My
secretary caught me and turned me in.”
“Why?! How could you sit in church and listen to sermons and serve
people communion? Didn’t your conscience eat you up?”
“I was trying to please my wife and keep up with our friends.”
I was crushed. He was one of the elders who showed real aptitude for doing
the work of the ministry.
(3.2.) “What have you done for me today?” That’s a comment my Daddy
used to make—he was a health officer and knew that his job sometimes
hung in a political balance. He meant that people quickly forget the
things you did for them in the past and always want more. I remember a
family in whom I had invested well over a hundred hours: the husband had
been mangled in a wreck and took over a year to heal. I faithfully visited
him in the hospital and in their home after he was discharged. Their
live-in grandson got involved with drugs and stealing. When they were out
of town for a couple of weeks, and their grandson got arrested for
possession of marijuana, I bailed his sorry behind out of jail and took
him into my home until they returned. Some years later the boy got into
real trouble and went to the penitentiary. I would go to visit him, but it
was over two hours one way, plus almost an hour waiting for them to bring
him out—in short, it ate up pretty much a whole day. So I became less
frequent. One Sunday night at the end of the service, his grandmother came
up to me: “When was the last time you visited Joe?” she demanded. “About
six months ago,” I said. She then proceeded to bless me out, and the
family eventually left our church.
Going back to an earlier
satire on a comment a fellow pastor once made to me: Charismatic
churches attract psychotics; Reformed churches attract neurotics. That is
true—really and sadly true, and some of these nut cases end up on church
sessions.
(3.3.) Money. There are certain lifestyle expectations that come with
being friends with others. I eat lunch with various men in my congregation
every week. Not wanting to be a mooch, I like to pick up the tab if I’ve
asked the other person for lunch. If it’s regular, we alternate. It’s
just that when I spring for a twenty-dollar lunch tab, it’s out of my
pocket, and there’s a lot less in my pocket than in some of my guests.
Evening meals are even more expensive, so we are cautious there because we
can’t afford the reciprocity. When my wife and I have attended pastors’
functions in certain communities, we’ve both marveled at what some of
those clothes had to cost. But my wife buys some of her stuff at Goodwill,
and I’m happy for a second hand suit. This past year I received two fine
suits from a dead man—two grand a piece—I love them; they’re
beautiful. But I usually buy my dress shirts at Sam’s—pressed, under a
two thousand dollar suit, who can tell I paid around ten dollars?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m blessed financially. It’s just that it’s
easy for a preacher to get himself head over heels in debt, trying to keep
up with his congregation. What’s the old loan company saying about to
whom you shouldn’t loan money? Was it the infamous “P”s: preachers,
plumbers, policemen, politicians?
(3.4.) Women. I’ve ministered to more than one pastor who fell into
adultery. Women scare me to death—not women themselves—my awareness of
the potential for sin that’s still inside me. Very few people suddenly
start stealing after a lifetime of honesty, or getting drunk after decades
of sobriety. But it’s not that way with sex. A man can live a very
disciplined life for years and then be hit with something (like falling
into real pride, for example.) that can eventually lead to adultery. I
know more than one minister who has experienced women in his congregation
making romantic overtures toward him. In the mercy of God, it hasn’t
been that way for me—my wife tells me that it’s not because I’m not
handsome. (Smart woman! But I need to warn her about flattering me too
much.) She says that it’s that I don’t “send off signals.”
Whatever . . . it’s grace . . . that’s for sure. But some women are
attracted to power, and they see real power in the influence wielded by
preachers. They’re seduced by that power, and they try to seduce the
preacher in turn. One pastor friend confided in me that he had had an
emergency call a couple of months back. The woman deceived him into coming
over late at night by telling him that her husband was desperate to talk
or something like that. Only her husband wasn’t at home. When the pastor
arrived, she opened the door and was buck-naked. He turned and fled.
My wife and I wish that we could take a week every so often and do a
seminar for seminarians and their wives. It isn’t that the ministry isn’t
terribly fulfilling. It is. It’s just that it isn’t anything at all
like we expected back in the sixties.
Bob Vincent |
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