On Being Human

One the one hand, pastors have to get used to the authority invested in the office they hold. The one who stands in Christ’s stead and by His command has been given authority to speak His Word of comfort, grace, and forgiveness, as well as His word of repentance, admonition, and condemnation. It takes some time to grow into those shoes, especially when it is no longer abstract, but most concrete with real people in real situations. I’m not sure you ever become comfortable with that authority, but you do become more aware of it and accustomed to it.

On the other hand, despite that authority, they remain humans. Here I do not mean that we are to recognize ourselves as sinners. I do not mean that we are not to hold ourselves above and better than those we serve. What I mean is that just because we are pastors, and we are invested in this authority, does not mean that we aren’t to engage our people as people. In other words we are not just men with authority. We are men with authority.

Often we can fall into thinking that the people we serve only want to hear from us biblical truths. They do want that. But they also want to engage you as a man, a person. They are actually interested in you as a person. They want to know about you. What you enjoy. What you dislike, etc. That means they want to know about how vacation went when you get back from it. They want to know what you do in your free time. They want to know about the conference you attended and the meeting you went to.

Now they might never ask you about it. They might think, I’m being nosey, and he’s my pastor, so I should just stick to the Bible stuff. But they do want to know. They’re interested in you as a man, a man who just so happens to be invested with Christ’s authority to forgiven sins on earth.

So what do you do when they don’t ask? You share it with them anyway. You give them permission to ask about these things, to get to know you as a man, yes, a man invested with authority, but a man nonetheless. You tell them about your vacation. You tell them about the conference, and thank them for helping to pay the bill. Tell them the highlights, not the play-by-play (they don’t care as much about it as you do).

And the nice part about this is twofold: First, they begin to share things with you, things from their own life, things that help you serve them. They tell you about who they are and what they like and what they dislike. They tell you about where they went on vacation and what they do with their freetime. And this opens up opportunities to serve them better.

And second, it actually, and somewhat counterintuitively, inculcates greater respect for the authority you have. It demonstrates your gravitas. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that you need to get chummy, that you need to be their friend. I’m just saying that you need to be human, you need to be a real flesh-and-blood man. Because Christ gave His authority to men on earth. Be human.