The other day, in a moment of happy coincidence, I found myself in the glad company of two older preachers, and the three of us spent a few minutes together, laughing and talking and encouraging each other. It was wonderful. And once again a thought occurred to me that I say rarely but live constantly: I love preachers.
I love to be with preachers, I love to hear them talk, I love to hear them talk about what they do, I love laughing at their stories. I treasure their advice (well, most of it, anyway), I’m grateful when I can benefit from their experience, and I’m glad when there is something I can do to lift their spirits. I love to serve them, to bring them glasses of water, to stand up straight when they talk to me, and to say “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!” when they ask me questions. I love hearing of their triumphs in the Lord’s work, and my heart breaks to hear of their heartaches through years of dealing with people and churches.
No offense, but this is sort of a private club. I really believe it is a rare person who truly understands the joys and heartaches of being a preacher, who is not a preacher themselves.
When we get together, whether it is two or three preachers in a restaurant, or 1500 of us at a conference, we all know what we all go through, and we understand each other. We know that nobody’s going to say, “Well, shoot! You only work one day a week, and only for an hour on that day!” We know that nobody’s going to look at us like a pesky salesman, or avert their eyes and duck when they see us coming, or descend upon us like a storm cloud because the piano was moved from the place where dear Aunt Maudey, God rest her soul, put it right after she got off the ark.
We look in each others eye and we know. And we talk together, and pray together, and cry together, and laugh together, and shake each other’s hands, and hug each other’s necks, and then square our shoulders, and take out our Bibles, and go back and try desperately to preach God’s Word to the Big Mac, consumer-boomer, hurried, empty generation we live in.
You say, “Sounds like you’ve got a bad attitude!” Yeah. Sometimes. Frankly, we don’t do this for you guys. The only reason to keep doing this year in and year out is Jesus. We wouldn’t do this for anybody else but Him.
You say, “Sounds kind of uppity to me!” Tough noogies; I’m no going to let anybody take this away from me. Jesus called us, and frankly, sometimes we’re not real excited about it. But down deep we know what an incredible privilege it is to serve Him, as a preacher, on special assignment for 20, 30, 40, 50 years or so down here. It’s a privilege only a handful in the history of the world will ever know, with its own special heartbreaks, and its own special joys. How can it be put into words what it feels like when, every now and then, you become aware of God’s Spirit upon you, giving you liberty and freedom in thought, word, and gesture, as the words spill up from your soul and through your tongue and out to a congregation that is gripped for a few moments with a holy hush…and everybody there, including you, knows that we have heard from the living God…?
It brings tears to my eyes to write of it.
Oh, I know, not all sermons are like that. Probably most of ’em aren’t like that. And I know some of us preachers are overbearing, some of us are jerks, and sometimes we make mistakes. (Question: What are you going to do when you get to Heaven and discover that some of those overbearing, mistake-prone preachers who act like jerks…belong to Him?)
Enough. I love preachers. And, with all the heartache and misunderstanding, I love being a preacher. We wouldn’t do this for anybody else but Jesus…but we wouldn’t trade it for the world. Would we, guys?
(…And all the preachers said, “Amen”!)
-Soli Deo Gloria,
Pastor David