Talking About Tough Weeks

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke.

I am Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut Podcast, where we talk about uncut topics, faith, life, ministry,

and we kind of just try and shoot from the hip a little bit, be honest, kind of let our

hearts show and kind of give some, I don't know, honest thoughts on whatever it is that we're

talking about. And today we're not starting with a clear topic necessarily defined other than just

to kind of like turn on the microphones cause we're both feeling a little bit tired, a little,

bit, not physically tired necessarily, but, uh, soul tired, soul tired. Um, some of the weariness

of trying to serve in ministry, trying to, you know, trying to

kind of honor all the different parts of ourselves and things like that. So we thought we would just turn on the

microphones and have a conversation about that, about

what does it look like to even process when we are weary, when we do not want to do the next thing. We would rather be, at

or at least I would rather be in a cabin in the woods somewhere. Yeah.

I feel like maybe when it's not even that you don't want to do the next thing,

but that you have nothing left to give to the next thing.

Yeah. You know, like as a, for instance, we're recording this on a Thursday afternoon,

almost three o'clock.

Friday's my day off, my Sabbath, and then I usually take Saturday off too

so I can have like a weekend, like a, you know.

Do things with your family, all of that. Well, it's three o'clock in the afternoon

on my last day of work,

and I don't have my sermon done, and I,

Want to have my sermon done and I wish it was done, but I'm in a place where my week has been.

My week has been like just really hard It's been really emotionally,

Taxing and draining. It's been really spiritually taxing and draining. I've been,

Wrestling with some really difficult things and difficult situations and not difficult people but like

situations that, you know, the frailties of all humanity are on full display, my own included.

And I'm just like, kind of, I'm at the end of my gas tank for the week without there being any,

any substantial rest or re-pouring or refilling,

which makes it hard because now.

I pretty much know that the rest of, probably after we're done here today,

I'm probably gonna be done for the week, done for the day.

There's no point in me sitting at my desk and staring into my computer

trying to write a sermon and just have nothing coming.

Staring at the proverbial blank page. Yeah, I'm in a similar place.

I've just been very, I don't know, I kind of hit this, the beginning of this year, I think,

I had the sense in talking with you, we both had the sense that this year was going to be a,

like, busy year, but also like a year with

probably a lot of really crucial things happening and just like a lot needed from us out of,

as far as leadership here at the church.

And I'm hitting a...

I need a breather marker or something like that. The last couple of weeks have just been a little

bit harder for me to bring my best self to just about anything. Last night taught our Wednesday

night class, which is like, love teaching that class. It's a lot of fun, but it's an hour and a

half of pretty intense talking. And if you've ever had to teach for an hour and a half,

you need to know your content pretty well. And it's content I enjoy. It's like, you know,

we're doing spiritual life and what does it mean to grow and what are the stages of spiritual

growth and stuff I think is really important, but like yesterday I was just like putting

together like this slideshow for it and I'm just like I'm really struggling to put two

sentences together and today has been similarly.

I've been able to, anything that requires significant higher brain functioning, I can

you know, move thing from point a to point B or do something kind of, um.

Uh, I don't know, more paperwork ish. Um, doesn't require creativity or,

no, it doesn't require my creative muscle.

Doesn't require my like emotional muscle doesn't require the like higher capacity intellectual muscle. Um, and there is like a,

As a point, I used to have to do this.

I don't know when exactly I learned this lesson, but there came a point, maybe it was when

I was in college and studying, or I don't know, but there comes a point when my brain

is done, and if I just try and keep going, I might spend another hour or two hours, paragraph

an hour or paragraph half hour, which is really slow writing space, because you're constantly like,

stopping or like, that's not right. What I want to say, you're kind of, you get it written. And

then I would come back to it the next day or even a couple of days later when I had my energy back.

And I would just end up deleting everything I wrote while I was in that point of exhaustion

because it was garbage. I'm just not doing work that's quality. It's not representative

of good thought, or where I'm at, or what I'm thinking.

It's just me trying to do something.

Right. Right. Yeah. Question.

When you, have you ever had the situation where someone has asked you whether or not

you think they should go into ministry?

Yeah, once or twice, I think. One kind of stands out in particular.

Yeah. How do you approach that question with people and what was your answer?

So my answer to this one individual in particular, I was in the latter half of my degree,

my pastoral ministry degree. And I was really loving the classes I was studying,

which I was studying a lot of counseling classes. I was doing like.

You know, really digging into how do you work with people who are dealing with suffering. And,

I had like a preaching class, but then I was also doing leadership classes and things like that.

And I had a freshman come in who I had a previous relationship. He had gone to my

church. He'd been in my youth group that I had led. And he came and he was very

excited to be pastor. He wanted to be a pastor. And I was just telling him about

all the exciting stuff I was learning in my class. And he was like, is that, is that.

All the stuff? Like is that what the majority of your degree talks about? Like,

I had the benefit, the degree I took was very practical, so it was meant to

compete with an MDiv at an undergraduate level with a high emphasis on practicum. So it wasn't overly, like I wasn't taking tons of philosophical

classes, I was taking a lot of practical questions classes. And he was like,

how many theology credits do you get? I was like, oh, like these.

I was like, well, tell me, what do you think a pastor does? Like, what do you think a pastor's role, like what do you envision yourself doing in five

years, six years, when you graduate from your program and you're a pastor at a

church, what do you want to be doing? He's like, well I just want to sit in my

office and I want to read theology books and philosophy. I want to write and then

preach on Sundays. I was like, is that all you want to do? He's like, yeah. I was like, then

And you shouldn't be a pastor.

I just told him, I was like, do you have any interest in someone coming into you and having

a difficult experience or marriage or problem that they're wrestling with their faith and.

Counseling them through that or just being present with them and spiritual insight to that?

And he was like, that sounds awful. Then you should not be a pastor, friend, because you're

you're not even like, like the space you're going to end up in like, if what you what he essentially wanted to be was

like a professor wants to be a professor or high level teaching,

pastor where all the other pastoral responsibilities are off his plate. But you can't get to a position like that without

first being a pastor who has all that stuff on their plate. It's like you you should not.

Would you, how would your answer change if he asked you now?

After having, you know, six, seven years as a pastor? Yeah, I'd still say, like, to him specifically,

shouldn't be a pastor.

I think if I asked him, when one of the things that I did is I asked him, I said, why do you want to be a pastor?

And he was like, well, I can't remember specifically, but it was a family member,

I think it might have been his grandmother, had always said, oh, you'll make such a good pastor someday.

And he found church to be a really valuable thing in his life, it meant a lot to him.

Um, he really loved the jousting of ideas and wrestling with faith and theology.

So like he was really into the Bible and its correlation and intersection of philosophy

and loved all of that.

And he just thought that being a pastor was that. And I was like, well, that's like one, like you, just because somebody said someday that

you would make a really good pastor doesn't mean that you should be a pastor.

Yeah. That's – he was, I think, in some ways looking – because everybody who starts college as a

freshman is a little bit looking for direction still, even though they've declared a major.

And I think he was still maybe living out somebody else's plan for him more than he had a clear vision of his own plan for himself.

Yeah, or calling. were calling. And that was the thing is that he was absent any level of calling. It wasn't a,

no deep impression from God. If anything, it was a little bit more of a debtor's like,

God has done so much for me, ought I do this? Isn't this just the most faithful thing that I

could do? I was like, no, not necessarily. Especially if you're gonna just be a bad pastor.

Right right I had a seminary professor once at least I think it was the seminary I guess I'm a little foggy it's no it may have been undergrad it was

undergrad, it was undergrad.

And he, and I did an undergrad degree in,

I did a dual degree. It was a religion philosophy major first,

and then a, what was at that point called contemporary ministry, which was pastoral ministry, essentially.

And one of our Bible professors, New Testament scholar, who, you know,

at a relatively small college, like I went to Robert Swesslian College at that point, now University.

You know, if you take theology classes, New Testament classes, over the course of four years,

you're gonna get the same professors a lot.

Yeah, you're gonna get the ones that, yeah. And so, in a way, those professors,

if they have even a hint of a pastoral heart, end up really pastoring.

Yes, they do. Those kids.

And I would say probably some of the most influential men in my life, spiritually developing

my sense of calling, were some of my main professors in undergrad.

Dr. Casey Davis, Dr. Richard Middleton, Dr. Andrew Kale, Reverend and Pastor Wally Fleming,

Dr. Doug Cutlam, and there was a, there was at one point where we were, we had gotten

off topic of whatever the theological topic was, and we were talking about pastoral ministry

in general, and one of the, one of my New Testament professors was also a free Methodist

pastor. And he essentially said something to the effect of.

If there is anything at all that you can imagine or believe that you could do for the rest

of your life other than pastoral ministry, do that.

Do that thing. Yeah.

I've heard that in several versions or ways. Right, if there is anything else, choose that.

We went on to talk about, we went on to have a conversation in class,

about those time periods where we enter into,

a desire to be a pastor for really rose-tinted reasons.

Really rose-tinted reasons.

Your example, I wanna just do theology and philosophy and I wanna preach on Sundays

and I wanna be well-regarded as a scholar and a teacher.

And a lot of it is to have influence.

And that's not necessarily a purely negative thing. We all wanna have influence,

Leadership is influence, right?

We'd be able to lead people to Jesus, influence people towards relationship with Jesus.

But sometimes that pull towards influence,

can be a pull towards our own sense of pride.

Well, if you've grown up in the church, like if you were a kid who was raised in the church,

particularly within the last several decades, like who are the people that your parents,

everybody looks up to?

Pastors, pastors with the podcasts, the TV programs, the books.

Well, there is still, and I still experience this even now in 2023,

although the culture has shifted significantly in the last 50 years, the last 100 years.

That there still is a somewhat of a culture, over cultural respect for the office of clergy.

People that would treat other people or other professions or just generally walk around with an air of disrespect.

To anyone, would treat clergy as like a, you know, oh, I will, which we talked about this

in kind of like one of our first episodes, like people who call us pastor.

Rather than Cameron or Luke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the way it always plays out for me is if I encounter someone who's maybe

a little bit rougher around the edges and then they find out I'm a pastor and they're like, oh, I'm sorry,

I was just cursing, sorry, pastor.

Like, you know, like, um, there is like, uh, I can't remember exactly what it was

called and I know it's out there.

Say update it somewhat regularly. It's like a prestige index or something like that.

It ranks vocations and professions by their perceived prestige.

And usually somewhere up in the couple top is pastors.

Um, I know over the last couple of decades, uh, with the continued scandals

of the church and things like that, that pastors have kind of dropped on that index a little bit. But depending on your, your,

area and where you're at, like, no, that exists, like pastors still have a bit of a prestige to them as just for the fact of

inhabiting the office.

So it's got me interested here. Okay, so let's see. This is I I just googled occupational prestige index.

Clergy's on the list, but it's lower than you might think, maybe.

Yeah, I think that's a newer trend. Right. I think that's a newer trend.

But we're in a fairly conservative area.

Yeah. And so I think that people, even if they're not in the church,

maybe grew up in the church or have a respect for pastors who show up and do a funeral

and are present in the community.

We're in a smaller town, city, and so pastors can have a bigger impact here

than maybe they do in other sets, more suburban or large city centers.

Well, I think what my professor was saying and where the conversation led was not a discouragement

of people to respond to a call to ministry, but it was an attempt to give us a little

bit of an eyes wide open perspective on the difficulty of being in ministry.

It is not just prestige, and it is not just philosophy and theology and teaching, that that it is.

We have our grounding and our identity and our calling from the Lord, but that we work with people.

And that people are, I am a difficult person.

You are a difficult person. They are difficult people. People are difficult.

And so, it creates a really significant stress.

A lot of times. And John Wesley had this famous saying. He was like, unless God has raised you up

for this very task, you will be worn out by the schemes of men and devils.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, it's like unless there is a, like, I can do no other thing, there is no other

thing that God has created me to do or that I want to do. Then, like, if we're not really,

really, really connected to the reality or truth that God has called me and raised me up for this

very purpose, for this very calling, for this very task, then the reality of ministry, the attack of

the enemy, the schemes of devils and men will invariably just wear you out.

You end up either quitting or doing something extraordinarily stupid, some type of thing

that disqualifies you from ministry or you.

You know, just kind of live in perpetual misery and and agony, you know, you can become a,

Embittered. Yeah, you can become the victim right and become embittered. Yep,

and No, that's not all of that is to say,

that Ministry is not just walking on Legos and bare feet.

You know, it's beautiful and it's sacred.

And we have a front row seat to the extraordinary brokenness of humanity,

but we also have a front row seat to the redemption that God offers through Jesus.

And people turning their lives over to Jesus and surrendering to him and walking by faith

and experiencing growth, and life, and hope, and eternity.

We get to be with people on some of their happiest days when they're getting married.

We get to be with people on some of their most sad days when they're, you know, burying a loved one,

or their marriage is falling apart, or they're dealing with addiction once again,

or they're struggling under the weight of mental illness.

And all of those things, both the joys and the sorrows of life,

they kind of get carried by pastors.

And it becomes, it can become a really heavy burden even if you are good at Sabbath,

and even if you are called and even if you're healthy yourself.

I think the pat answer would be like, well, you're obviously not resting in the Lord,

you're not experiencing Sabbath, or maybe you're not called if things are so difficult.

Or maybe you're not emotionally healthy yourself.

Those things may be true. Yeah, they can be. Yeah, but I know,

there's not a thing that anyone could do to convince me that I'm not called to be a pastor.

Like I am called to pastor people, to move people closer to a relationship with Jesus

that he can transform their lives.

That's who I am. I believe that's what I've been created to do and to be.

Yes, that takes many forms, like many forms of ministry, but there's nothing that anyone could do

to make me believe or to convince me that

that's not my calling, even in the midst of the calling being extraordinarily difficult sometimes,

which is, I think, why there's been,

like, there's a stick-to-it-iveness.

Yeah. Because, like, what am I gonna go do? go friggin sort.

Twisted two by fours at Home Depot for a living like I don't know. No, no This is who I am. This is what God's created me to do,

But it's freaking hard. Yeah well Yeah, there is something.

It's one of those and like I don't want to pretend that there are not other,

professions and vocations that are difficult and require Oh Oh.

Significant things. Yeah, of course. This just happens to be the one that we're in.

We are in and we're talking. Right.

But I had a friend who put it this way, and I'm sure he was probably quoting someone,

but I don't know who, but it has always kind of stuck with me.

And he said something about like, the congregation doesn't need what you know or what you can

do as much as they just need your holiness.

And I was like, yeah, that's a little bit of like, because I worked in a grocery store,

I've done work as a contractor, not a contractor, a carpenter, not very good carpenter, but I tried.

I'll pass tomorrow to you. Just like Jesus. Just like Jesus.

But, like, that was, you know, those were hard jobs with their own things, but one of

the things that they didn't require is they didn't require the amount of emotional and.

Personal energy that it required for me to say, hi, welcome to shopping center.

I help you find anything today?" versus the task of not just writing something that is interesting.

On a week-to-week basis, but writing something that is from the Lord. From the Lord, yeah.

And in stewarding my heart in such a way as that I am close with the Lord,

and I'm drawing other people closer to him, where I'm at least pointing the way,

and then being available to have, you know, you know, anywhere from just little

quick side conversations on a Sunday to hour-long plus conversations with people

in the week about like what they're struggling with, their opinions about what I should be doing, like anything, right? Like that requires so much more

out of me then and it doesn't just require what I know it doesn't just require like expertise it requires me to be someone in a certain sense and that

That is...

That's different, you know, and I think, you know, you can't always.

Name it. Like it's not always easy for some people to put their finger on it sometimes when

they are interacting with someone who's leading out of a place of general authenticity and,

out of cell, out of like a place in which they are, have been and where they're at versus just

leading out of like charisma or skill or you know but like people can tell the

difference if you if you learn if you pay attention you can see the difference

between someone who's operating out of one place and not the other yeah well

and if you can't see it right away you will eventually you will eventually see

Yeah, because there is charisma and personality like we will, like our, it will rise, it will

rise to the level of our character.

And so when, if we're abiding in Christ and remaining connected with Christ, right?

If the righteousness of Jesus is truly our own righteousness and that's what we're operating

out of, then we're operating from a place of his strength within us.

But if we're operating from a place of just like, I'm good at the skills that it requires,

then we'll quickly run aground.

Things will quickly quickly run aground on the reality of human frailty and will

be exposed for what they are and that's a sad and sometimes sobering truth but

it's true you know it is very true so. I was there was a book that I read,

Crucifixion of Ministry I do not remember who wrote it off the top of my but that's the title of it, The Crucifixion of Ministry, and he had a

a paradigm that I have to remind myself of.

And this conversation is reminding me of it again. He, he, he didn't love, you know, he kind of makes,

he has this point and he kind of talks about like the fact that like,

we need to as pastors somewhat die to our conception of ministry.

Oh, absolutely. And to ourselves.

And he said, he's like, his personal preference was not to be called or referred to as a pastor.

What was to be referred to as a preacher. And it's not for the reason that I think a lot of

people like being called preacher, not because he was necessarily fixated on the act of preaching,

as we think, on a Sunday morning, where someone gets up, opens the Bible, and, you know,

talks, and everyone pays attention. But more that he was like, no, we are preachers first and

primarily is because we're not the ones doing the work. We're the ones proclaiming what Christ is

doing. So his whole conception was that Christ's ministry never stopped. He imparted it and is.

Continuing to do it through his church. And we, if we have any sort of conception that it's our

ministry, and that we're the ones who are going to do the ministry here, we've missed the train.

And that it's Christ, and that we should primarily be proclaimers of what it is

that Christ is doing. I'm not calling you to faith, Christ is calling you to faith.

I'm not walking with you through this pain and difficult circumstance, Christ

is walking through you with this difficult circumstance. That's a very rough summary of his book and his concept, but I have to be reminded of

that because my default is to just do it myself.

Yeah, to show up, to bring yourself to the party.

Yeah.

Yeah, bring yourself to the work. Right. Where?

Really, my job is to show up and to look around and notice what Christ is doing. Yeah.

And point that out to people. Right. Right.

Do you think what we're experiencing is like, burnout is kind of like the scary term? Yeah.

Do you think, like, do you think it's just a rough week?

Or do you think that there's any like, like, because I've, you know, I've, I've listened

to a lot of people talk about burnout and I don't always, I don't think those

Those conversations have always been super helpful.

And I'm not entirely sure if I've ever really experienced like what would be true burnout.

I think I've experienced some like pretty down and difficult and exhausting times and places where I've kind of gotten

to the end of my rope, but I don't know that that was, that was more personal growth and personal crisis,

than it felt like burnout.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think it's burnout.

I don't know if it was John Mark Comer that I heard say that the way that he would describe

burnout is a type of experience that just like your fairly normal rhythmic Sabbath practice,

does not touch.

Yes, that was that was Tacoma. Yeah that it just doesn't he like Okay, you're burnt out when?

The normal practice of Sabbath is not addressing the place that you're at. Mm-hmm.

And I Don't feel There I don't feel there. Yeah, maybe I don't know. Maybe I'm in on the edge of it

maybe we're on the edge of it, maybe. I don't think so, though. My hope is that even after

a few days here of rest, that there'll be a much different.

Heart space, head space, physical space that I'm in on Sunday morning.

Now, that's not to say that, you know, like, you know, because I'm going to be leaving

the office today with a sermon not completed, you know, I'm going to be reengaging the

work of ministry at some point in the next two days to finish that.

So that kind of always, you know, like if I don't have my sermon done by the time I

leave on a Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, then it really looms in my soul until the

period is put at the end of that sentence.

It's very difficult to actually like rest.

So I don't know, we'll see what the weekend brings, you know, hoping for some believing

for some rest that I can't produce on my own, but that the Lord meets with me and brings,

into my life.

Because having another week like this is not, you know, back to back or whatever it will

not be, would not be good.

Wouldn't be good for me. No. No.

Well, and I do think, like, at least for myself, I think for you, is I think we've been doing

personal work and we've been doing, like, ministry work long enough to know that just

Just because we have a tough week where we feel like we're just slogging it out.

Does not mean that we've, we've done it enough to have the perspective to know that next week might

very well be very different. Like I've had enough, I've had enough down days to know that down days

pass. And I've had enough good days to know that good days pass too. Like I just, like I.

Sometimes if I'm having a particularly rough day, I just, you know what, it's time for me to go to

go to bed because I just need to start the day over. I need to start fresh.

Like I will, and sometimes it's a bit of a battle, but I think I've gotten to a place where I can,

sometimes, for the most part, I don't usually have a hard time falling asleep.

And that's because I usually know that if I were, if I can just fall asleep and wake up rested,

that my opinion and perspective and feelings about whatever it is I'm stressing about

will be different in the morning.

I'm very tired, I'm very tied to my physical rest. If I am not physically rested,

I just know that I am not thinking and seeing things clearly,

and so I know that about myself.

But I guess all that to say, and just to share with anyone listening,

is like, we're not panicking.

No, no, it's not, it's not, you know, like sending the troops, we need help.

It's just that, hey, this week was hard.

And ministry is hard. and you probably had a hard week too.

Yeah. I know, like, you know, my wife is a stay-at-home mom. Her job was really hard this week,

for several different reasons, you know. We're not the only ones that have hard weeks. Everyone

does. Right. And I think we're just reflecting on how, what are the particularities of difficult

weeks when you're in ministry because there's not always a whole lot of

understanding of like of that like oh your week couldn't possibly be bad you're a pastor you know you work in a church sometimes the work can feel a

little invisible because it's it is it's one of those it's one of those jobs

it's really hard to like, okay, so what does a pastor do, Cameron? Right? Like.

That's a really hard question to answer. Cause are you asking, cause am I asking for your hourly,

itemized task list, which looks really random at times, you know, mine does. Or am I asking like,

what is it is that you're trying to accomplish? Like, like it can be a really difficult question

and ask that, answer that.

Yeah, right.

So if you're out there and you're listening and you've had a difficult week, we're with you.

And we pray God's best for you

and maybe that you get some rest here in the next few days and be able to see things a little bit more clearly

and feel his peace and his presence with you and allow him the space that he desires for you,

He desires for you so that you can receive the gift of rest from him.

That's what I want to do. That's what I want. Yep.

Yeah, just some, I don't know, there's like a lack of like, for me, rest is not just like sitting still, it's a lack of striving to some degree of just being willing to like, I don't have that figured out yet. But I'm going to trust that's being okay right now.

Yeah, yeah, I like that,

Like that. Okay. All right. Well if you have any,

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So you can text those into our mailbag 7 1 6 2 0 1 0 5 0 7 That is 716-201-0507 and we'll have some mailbag episodes coming up.

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Thanks for listening to the Uncut Podcast. We'll see you next time.