I’ve engaged recently with a suggestion that pastors do not really have jobs. I’m going to engage further this week with another person who has argued that pastors are paid to enjoy leisure time.
However something struck me which I want to focus on first. A lot of the argument seems to assume that pastors don’t work because work is about having to be productive and that means having to show results every day.
Now there are three things to say about this. First, if “productive” is thought if in terms of showing daily efficient output then perhaps that’s not what is expected if pastors. However, if productive is a word that applies not just to the factory operative but also the farmer, then it’s about being fruitful and yes, a pastor is meant to be fruitful.
secondly, we may agree that a pastor isn’t meant to demonstrate day on day results. However, that’s something we’ve realised to be true if many jobs. You don’t get the best out of doctors or teachers by micro managing them. Nor incidentally do you get the best out of farmers that way. A farmer’s productivity isn’t seen until you see the produce, the fruit.
Thirdly, if a pastor is meant to have space and time to think about things, to pursue what intrigues them and not worry about immediate outcomes, then do too the teacher. Can. Pastor take time to read a book of the Bible that they are not about to preach on? Of course. But doesn’t it also benefit the English teacher to read that Dickens’ novel that may never be on the syllabus?
It seems that people are reacting against a specific image of work, work that exhibits the worst aspects of our fallen world. What then if the alternative to bad work is not leisure but good, healthy, enjoyable work. Now there will be some element if sweat and toil in the now and not yet but what if the original intent of joyful, worshipful work is meant to start to break into this now and not yet world?
What if one of the pastor’s duties is to model exactly what it means to enjoy our work as we see it as part of our
Faithroots 