The third volume of Clergy Tales–Tails is now available on Kindle on Amazon. You can, and I hope you will go to amzn.to/13VO446 and see this and the other volumes in this series. In August I intend to publish the fourth volume, which will focus on humor and its role in clergy life. All of this is part of my campaign to “build respect for clergy one story at a time.”
My hope in both this series, and my mystery novel, A Star and a Tear, which I hope to release in early September, is to expand people’s awareness of this complex mosaic to which as clergy we have been called. While we are not better, wiser, more generous or courageous than others, and frequently less so, still we have sensed a call from a God to bring a spiritual perspective to life around us. As the stories suggest, there is no single pattern to what ministry entails, but it is all anchored in that mysterious call to “go to a land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) and we are on that journey.
In this third volume of Clergy Tales—Tails, I have deliberately chosen stories that exemplify the types of emotional challenges that pastors encounter. Even at its most boring, there is something special about the ministry and frequently it is a full-time, hair-raising adventure that is anything but boring. To be called by God for the pastoral ministry is to hear a voice from beyond time and space. You are called to speak an often counterintuitive word to a world locked into their immediate moment.
High octane experiences, both negative and positive, frequently tumble on top of each other in the ministry. They are interspersed with many mundane, even tedious demands of the profession that take their toll in a different form. There is a particular danger of moving from an adrenaline-pumping event in one moment to a mind-numbing meeting that solves nothing the next moment. Mix that with listening to how someone has taken offense at something you did or the heart-breaking experience of watching a friend’s marriage disintegrate, or the pain of strangers who have come to you in desperate need for help and you have a sense of the daily encounters in the ministry
It is an awesome calling and it is a story that deserves to be told. That is the clergy tale. It is also a story in which the clergy are very vulnerable to pressures, both internal and external, that can both tempt and bruise. That is the clergy tail. However, despite the very human nature of both church and clergy, there is the possibility of the awesome that happens when God wags the tale.
I look forward to hearing from you about these tales and how God is unfolding your life as well.
