After nearly six years on the job I'm just now realizing something: being a pastor is not a safe vocation. It is toxic, slowly introducing spiritual poisons over time that have to be drained before they reach critical levels and result in real spiritual and mental sickness. This is why pastors die spiritually and then quit. We are constantly exposed to spiritual attack, and to the worst in people. It's kind of like being a doctor...no one needs a doctor until he or she is sick, right? People don't really need their pastor until they *need* him or her, and by then they are usually *very* sick...much sicker than they really have to be. At that point people tend to expect and ask for the miraculous, which is not in itself a bad thing. It gets bad when they expect their pastor to deliver it though. After all, this is what they pay us for, right? We water hoses connected to the divine fire hydrant of power. That's not how God usually works, of course. This is not to say that He doesn't deliver the miraculous (God, that is); it's that He usually does that over time and through processes so that He gets what He wants: real, permanent, deep change. People generally have no patience for that. Christianity has become a brand choice in many ways. If Pepsi doesn't deliver, it's on to Coke.
This is not a safe job. It's not even a white-collar job. It's thoroughly blue-collar. Pastors quit because they lose hope and become cynical, which is an easy thing to do. That's the default mode, as a matter of fact. One has to apply effort and expend energy to move away from that, which is what spiritual disciplines are all about.
Hazardous duty pay for pastors? Anyone?
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