By Amy Butler
When young pastors ask me for advice on self-care (insert uproarious laughter here) I always say that one very important part of survival in the trenches of ministry is getting a life. Outside the church.
While one of the true gifts of being a pastor is the special esteem people often afford you (often without any effort on your part and occasionally — let’s be honest — in spite of some efforts on your part), sometimes “being the pastor” all the time can get a little, well, exhausting.
So I’ve found that it helps, a lot, to have a few little corners of your life where you’re not the pastor and, in fact, where people sometimes don’t even know what you do for a living. These vary from pastor to pastor, of course, but they can be places where you are somebody’s mom — or just another member of the club — or, say, one of several struggling, back-row participants in the 6 a.m. spinning class.
I do always recommend this kind of thing for pastors who ask me, and I try my best to follow my own advice, so I’m still thinking about a curiously startling experience I had just a few weeks ago when I was busy doing just that.
For several years now I’ve belonged to a book club whose members are totally unrelated to church. Our success at reading and discussing books is debatable; mostly we just get together as an excuse to go out to our favorite Thai restaurant on a regular basis. These gatherings, generally about four or six times a year, are attended mostly by people I see no other time than around that table. We all like each other and have a great time whenever we get together — but each of our lives is very busy, so our relationships don’t go much deeper than these occasional meetings of the “Thai Book Club,” as it has come to be called.
So I was a little bit surprised a few weeks ago to receive an e-mail from one of my fellow book-club members asking if we could chat on the telephone (we don’t even have each other’s telephone numbers; it’s that casual).
The minute she called and I answered I could hear the tears in her voice. She jumped right in to tell me about a really, really difficult situation going on in her life and then to ask for my help. At the end of our rather long conversation, she asked me to please, please pray for her, and then said she was so grateful she had a pastor to call when she needed one.
After I hung up the telephone and even still a few weeks later, I felt a little baffled. It wasn’t that my book-club friend didn’t know I worked as a pastor, it was just that the basis of our relationship is more Margaret Atwood and panang gai than life-shattering crises or questions of faith.
My bafflement has led me to think a little more about all of this and to realize that, no matter what efforts I make to insulate parts of my life from the rigors of my job, there will never be a day when that separation is full and complete. Why? Because my job has a personal component to it that many jobs do not have. That is, at the very core of why I do my job is the motivation of my faith, part of me that is woven into the very core of who I am and who I desperately hope to become with the help of God’s transforming grace.
And whether I am in the pulpit pontificating on John 3:16 or sitting around a table arguing over who gets the last spring roll, my identity as a follower of Jesus should never — will never — be separate from who I am.
I thought about the words of I Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” And I thought: I don’t know why I was surprised at all to get that telephone call. In fact, wherever I go and whatever I do, I hope I always get telephone calls like that. And I hope I am always ready to give an answer for any hope anyone ever notices in me.
For that lesson, for the church of Jesus Christ, and for very delicious Thai food with good friends, I am giving thanks today. Amen!