Pastoral Mystique

I am struggling here this morning with tiredness. Thought I got plenty of sleep last night but it seems something is not quite right...so I thought I would post about something that I've been thinking about while I drink a Mountain Dew. Craig Groeschel,l lead pastor of Lifechurch.tv, was taught in college that pastors should maintain what a professor called the "pastoral mystique." This is when a pastor maintains a distance from the congregation and basically doesn't have friends. He keeps a safe distance so that he will be respected and admired from a distance. Indirectly I suppose I was taught this as well. I think it is a load of baloney.

I'm a pastor because God has called me to that. That doesn't make me better than a plumber or lawyer...it just makes me have a different career. Yes, my career is more focused on "God things" but it doesn't make me better nor need to maintain some kind of distance from others. This is so completely the opposite of what Jesus did. He was with people. He had friends. He had a family who didn't even believe him...that's how real he was.

As a pastor I have always had this tension when meeting new people outside of the church. A conversation can be going great until I drop the bomb that I am a pastor. Sometimes this ends the conversation. Other times it means I have to work all the harder to build a friendship with them. Either way it plainly stinks that there is this awkwardness with people. Recently we were over at some neighbor's house and the man of the house was basically falling over himself to please me. I just wanted to tell him to relax. I just want to hang out...not be served.

I guess it is one of the things that goes with the territory, but I refuse to maintain a distance...I refuse to try to put up some facade that I should be treated differently...that I can't have friends who really know me...inside and out and still have the ability to pastor them.

Some may wish I was a little less open at times. :)