I'm Grateful for Being Pitiful

I'm glad I wasn't called to be a preacher. No, that's not true ... I'm eternally grateful for my lack of gifts.

In fact, I figure not being called to preach is such a huge blessing it'd be selfish if I asked God for any other blessings to make my path easier.

Some people may look at preachers and envy the attention, the authority, and the adulation some receive. But I don't look at it quite that way. I sorta see things the opposite.

I see being a preacher, especially one with a large congregation that's gotten lots of attention within its community, as someone who's answered a calling to carry a super-human burden of responsibility and accountability according to a standard that would find me pitifully inadequate and deficient.

I'd be a weenie preacher, Pastor Pitiful, and I know it.

I realized a long time ago that my gifts are better suited to warming the bench and filling water bottles than they are to calling plays or scoring touchdowns. I'm cool with that, and so long as God is too, then it's a non-issue ... and if the closest I have to get to a pulpit is staring at one then nobody's more thrilled than I am.

Because I couldn't handle the some of the stuff preachers deal with every day. Couldn't do it for an hour, I'm serious.

Stuff like being expected to say the blessing any time more than four people sit down to eat.

Or being called at home in the middle of the night because somebody's kid is in the hospital after playing basketball with a beehive.

I couldn't handle having folks in restaurants watch me eat to find out if preachers chew food the same way ordinary people do. I'd want to growl and start barking at people who kept staring as though they're expecting Moses to suddenly show up and join me for dessert.

And I'd worry about getting my feelings hurt if visitors from other churches didn't like the statue my congregration had erected in my honor.

I'm afraid I'd be hoarse from screaming at gossips Why Don't You People Get A Life?

I'd also have a hard time keeping quiet if I got criticized by older preachers ... especially narrow-minded preachers who'd spent a lifetime in the pulpit, and yet who have no trouble at all sleeping knowing they'll be retiring with a smaller congregation than the one they started off with 50 years ago.

I'd be bald from pulling my hair out every time I heard "You don't preach from The Bible!" from people who'd never once visited my church, but who were somehow experts on my relationship with Christ and what He's done, and is still doing, in my life.

I'm weak in lots of other ways, too.

I'd get headaches from banging my head against the wall, frustrated why members of my congregation didn't stay On Fire 24x7 ... and whether they were "getting it" when it comes to realizing that Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship with the living God.

If I was a preacher I'd start doubting my vision and start getting ulcers after hearing that a need existed that was going unanswered because "it's not in our church budget" to do anything about it.

It'd make me want to spend twenty minutes every Sunday reminding people "You're not going to need a big bank account in Heaven, because all your debts have already been paid. So loosen up those purse strings, brothers and sisters. It's not your money, after all."

But if there was one thing that might make me want to tell God I couldn't keep going, that there's no choice except to throw off my burden and sit down in the dirt to wait for the Rapture, it might be reading Acts and sensing the excitement and conviction that kept Paul going ... and then come across something like this in another book:

"Once a man makes the conversion of sinners his prime design and all-consuming end, he is exceedingly apt to adopt a wrong course. Instead of striving to preach the Truth in all its purity, he will tone it down so as to make it more palatable to the unregenerate. Impelled by a single force, moving in one fixed direction, his object is to make conversion easy, and therefore favorite passages (like John 3:16) are dwelt upon incessantly, while others are ignored or pared away."
--Arthur Pink (1886-1952), Present Day Evangelism

It's gotta make you wonder what battles the enemy's planning and winning while some churches are launching attacks against their own front lines instead.