Not Just for Pastors Only

Sky McCracken is one of those people of whom I wonder, “Why haven’t our paths ever crossed in real life?!” He recently wrote what follows, and it’s with his graciously expressed permission that I share it with you here —

This remains the most frustrating part of my work. In 36 years, it hasn’t gotten any better.

“Study is work, often hard work, and just as often having no immediate fruit in terms of solution to a problem, counsel to a parishioner, or message for next Sunday.” – Fred Craddock, _Preaching_, p. 73 (Abingdon, 1985)

Fred (or Brenning as folks in West TN called him) wrote that short of 40 years ago. Nothing’s changed.

As he warned many of us in the classroom: “Some will see you studying and say why aren’t you visiting, and some will see you visiting and say why aren’t you studying. You still have to do it.”

The way to solve that is don’t study at the office, and go hide somewhere.

— That tension is real for pastors, but not just for us only.

Could it be that part of the problem is everybody thinks they know how to do our jobs better than we do?

As always, I would love to hear from you and hope to see you back here tomorrow.