Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Pain in the Parsonage

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

This is a trustworthy saying:  “If someone aspires to be a church leader, he desires an honorable position.”  So a church leader must be a man whose life is above reproach.  He must be faithful to his wife.  He must exercise self-control, live wisely, and have a good reputation.  He must enjoy having guests in his home, and he must be able to teach.  He must not be a heavy drinker or be violent.  He must be gentle, not quarrelsome, and not love money.  He must manage his own family well, having children who respect and obey him.  For if a man cannot manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?  A church leader must not be a new believer, because he might become proud, and the devil would cause him to fall.  Also, people outside the church must speak well of him so that he will not be disgraced and fall into the devil’s trap.  1 Timothy 3:1-7(NLT)

I’m not the only pastor who takes a deep breath when he reads this passage.  It’s a formidable list of qualifications; who, besides Jesus, lives up to this?  I think the one that troubles most preachers greatly is that sticky one about managing his household.  I was going to write a book once entitled Pain in the Parsonage, but decided I’d wait a while on that like Pastor Bruce McIver who wrote the series on Stories I Couldn’t Tell While I Was a Pastor.  Some things are better if you sleep on them and put a little distance between reality and revelation.
One painful memory from my youth is about Dave[ii], who was the son of my pastor when I was just a boy.  This preacher’s kid was just a baby when Pastor Olson and the family hit town.  He was much younger than me, so I didn’t hang out with him.  Dave’s Dad was a great pastor; he hung out with the youth mostly, and the church grew like wildfire.  It seemed overnight the little sanctuary was overflowing.  By the time I graduated high school the congregation had built a brand-new building and parsonage.  But the pressure on Dave was building.
Dave was a sensitive young man and the occasional criticism that came with the job of being a pastor surfaced.  Dave’s Dad, usually congratulated for everything good that happened, was now being vilified for not pleasing everyone.  Some of the older members assumed he should have been visiting them, rather than taking the youth group on a camping trip or playing softball at the children’s day.
When Dave’s high school days came to an end, the open door was too appealing, and Dave left home, hitchhiking to California for a vastly different life than his small-town upbringing.  Pastor Olson took Paul’s letter to Timothy at face value, judging that he had not managed his own family well, so he was disqualified from serving as pastor.  He resigned his position and took up carpenter’s tools to earn a living.  But all the while Dave was in the far country, Mr. and Mrs. Olson kept praying for their son.
One night the phone rang; it was Dave.  He’d had enough of the good life that really wasn’t very good; Dave was somewhere in the Midwest, hitch-hiking towards home.  He needed to know if it was alright to come all the way.  Dave and my former pastor cried together and prayed together on the phone and made plans for the reunion.  Their prayers had been answered.
But, somewhere on the long road home, something happened, and the phone rang again.  This time it was the police; Dave’s body had been found in a ditch beside the highway.  He’d been beaten, robbed and left for dead.  Dave, the blond haired, blue-eyed twenty-something sensitive son of a preacher never made it home…at least to his earthly father’s embrace.
I never heard whether they found out exactly what happened, or whether Dave’s murderer was held accountable.  It’s just a fact of life that sometimes there is no such thing as closure; it is only faith that God holds all things in His trustworthy hands, and Dave, having given his life to his Redeemer, did make it to his eternal home with Jesus. 
For now, that is enough.
For You Today
You may have never lived in a parsonage, but you have dealt with pain.  For followers of Jesus Christ, it is our chief blessing that we do not have to shoulder it alone!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:  via Pixabay.com
[ii] This true story is based on my recollections and a recorded program of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family

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