stupid smile on my face

Go ahead ask me why I have a stupid grin on my face!

Caring too much

What is the job of a pastor? Is it to be a moral voice in a world of sin? Are they to manage a church so that people have something to come to on Sundays? Are they to placate the masses so government has a reliable source of stability? Are they supposed to listen to people in their dark times?

I have been thinking a lot about what my job means. I know I am not really evangelist. Meaning my major goal in life is not to make new converts. My desire is to help Christians be better Christians. I want people to grow closer to God, not just acknowledge God exists. But I wonder what metrics I am judged by. I wonder what metrics I use on myself. I find I have placed myself in an impossible situation. I am supposed to be efficient, produce something. The youth in the church should be baptized. They should come more often maybe. But what does that matter? I want the youth to know when they face something hard God is there for them. if they need to talk to someone, I am there for them. That is not something I can measure.

My time ends up in a weird balance. I work at making lessons and sermons. I outline, exegesis, and research for lessons. I give them a clear order then apply illustrations that support the main idea. I produce a lesson that can be measured as good or bad.

I try to be open to the lives of the youth I work with. I have a side that cannot be measured. I want to be like coach or fan and cheer the people of my church on. I want to encourage the youth. I suppose I could sum it up and say I care. How can I measure caring? Do I use the amount of time I care? Can I even measure that?

I feel stretched, I want to have good marks on the metrics, and I want to be open. So I am trying to live into standards I cannot measure or really understand. I don’t know for sure how much or little an impact I am having. And that is the problem I just do not know how ‘efficient’ I am in any of the worlds I work in. I could be on a crash course of burnout but I have no clue what else I can do.

Why is it so hard to keep Sabbath?

I try to force myself to take one day where I do not work. It makes sense if there should be a day for God. Sunday cannot be a Sabbath for me because that is my big day. The day that stresses me out the most and I cannot relax. Saturday will not work because I am putting the finishing touches on what happens for Sunday. So my work week is from Saturday-Thursday. The hard part is that I could work on Friday. I enjoy my work. Yesterday I spent hours just reading the bible, reading commentaries, and preparing for family camp. And it was totally fun and interesting to me. I love IMing youth, planning ahead, and doing my work.

So I have to spend my Sabbath not thinking about this week’s lesson. I need to ignore the desire to take care of errands. If my life is so busy with work I may start to ignore the reason for my work. Forgetting God would not be cool, but I know it is a possibility.

So today I am trying to not work. That means I have surfed the internet, listened to music, and read some fiction. Now I am writing a blog entry. I could play some video games but I am not really feeling it right now. I don’t just want to sit and watch tv. It is interesting how to prevent burnout, God wants us to not do work. I probably am better for taking a Sabbath but sometimes it is hard.

so everything got fixed

turns out my job is safe for a year and all the other stuff will be taken care of by other people. when i heard that i go so much relief. i had to call the many people who were worried about me and let them know the good news.