When A Pastor Mourns

I spoke yesterday morning at Severn River Church, and I learned something that I had never experienced before. When a pastor mourns, the church mourns. I don't think I learned that in my studies, but I learned it yesterday.

I can't tell you how reassuring it was to worship yesterday with people that I love. Lifting my voice and hands with them, praying and being prayed for, being embraced, and all that SRC was yesterday was a great blessing. But it just seemed like our "get up and go" had "got up and went". That was, I'm sure, a byproduct of my own demeanor. I hope I wasn't too much of a downer for everyone else.

Generally speaking, being a pastor is a pretty good gig. I get to be with people. I get to serve God full-time and get paid for it. I get to learn new things. And I get to preach. You see, I was created to preach. I love it. I will speak whenever, and wherever. Love it, love it, love it.

But when you get a week like last week, and you're in the small church situation like I am with no associate pastor to hand off the message, and you end up with events that stack up unexpectedly into the weekend, and... (just kidding that was way too many conjunctions).

I had to preach. I had a choice. I could go ahead with a message about stewardship of money that was planned, or I could share my life and hopefully show an example of how to deal with tragedies. I decided to be transparent, and hopefully, through the pain I was dealing with, help someone else in their pain.

I acknowledged from the start that I could have gone one of two ways, either cover it up and not really address it, or emotionally vomit all over the people. It was my intention to do neither, but somewhere in the middle to find a solid middle ground; openly transparent, but respectively didactic. I'm not sure how it turned out actually. If you'd like to judge you can listen here.

I see many people who struggle through painful situations and they call me in to help and counsel. I thought perhaps the best way going forward was to use my life as an example to show others. These are the things I do when I hurt. These are the things you should do as well.

I hope that my life will serve as a good example. Like Paul told the Thessalonians, "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us."

--Ben