The Appreciation We Are Really Missing (It's not what you think)

Preach the word. Be ready to do it whether it is convenient or inconvenient. Correct, confront, and encourage with patience and instruction. (2 Timothy 4:2, Common English Bible translation)

Ahh here we are, October. One of my favorite and least favorite months. I love that it turns cool and fall arrives, the crispness of the air and the aura of contemplative reflection that it inspires. I hate that it is Pastor Appreciation Month.

I have blogged before about how I feel about Pastor Appreciation Month, but to sum up let me say that it makes me focus on the wrong things. I don’t know a single pastor who goes into this work for the accolades, but this month has the effect of making us look for those things. And if there was ever a year when pastors are desperate for appreciation, whether that is right or wrong, it is this one, this 2020 one. Every single pastor I know has faced opposition this year: people leaving because we didn’t reopen the church fast enough, or people leaving because we reopened the church too fast. I am grateful that is the only pressure I have faced, and only in very small numbers, and otherwise am serving an incredibly generous and understanding congregation. Some of my colleagues, however, have churches calling to reduce their pay or stop paying them all together because, “All you do is sit around all day.” Hahahahahaha!  Trust me when I say that your pastor has never worked so hard in his or her life. It is just your pastor is working hard at things he or she has never been trained to do and that you never expected he or she would have to do. So yeah, pastors are not meeting people’s expectations this year. But what pastors are expected to do is not meeting our expectations this year either. It is not surprising at all that I have a colleague this year who walked away from the pulpit to become a school janitor. In Alaska.

But this week I was able to put my finger on the real appreciation that we have been missing, and it has been absent since March 13, 2020, when the world shut down. We are missing it because for a while church only took place on screen. And now we are missing it because when we came back, our people came back masked.

We are missing the reactions to our sermons.

Now let me qualify that. We are not dependent on those reactions being universally positive. In fact, sometimes we are actually hoping for quite the opposite on those days when the Spirit has moved us to deliver a hard message. What we are dependent on is there being a reaction. Any reaction. So when I say appreciation, I do not mean the casual, “Good sermon today, Pastor,” that we get as people head out the door (though if I am honest, those are really nice). No, appreciation here means that we want to see that something clicked with you, and that the Gospel that we have shared is transforming your life, helping to challenge and nurture and shape you into the disciple that Jesus is calling you to be. That’s what I mean when I say we are missing appreciation of our sermons.

I will also say that every single pastor I know understands deeply how transformative the Gospel can be. It changed all of our lives. It changed our lives to the point that we chose to follow God into this vocation God put before us.  None of us had to do that. All of us chose this life, and we can also unchoose it. But we do it because we desperately believe that Jesus can change people’s lives for the better. Preaching is the primary means we have of sharing how that transformation occurs.

But preaching is far more of a conversation than I think our parishioners recognize. First, the conversation begins as we walk alongside you in life. As we sit at your hospital bed, or as we join you in your home for dinner, or as we gather in fellowship or in mission with one another. But then the conversation continues as we look at your faces when we deliver God’s word. Whether it is expressions of joy or confusion or horror, we know how it is affecting you. Your expressions may, in fact, alter the sermon mid-delivery. See. Conversation.

Except there has been and continues to be little to no conversation.

First, those ways of walking beside you in life to get a temperature of what you as a people need have all been disrupted. So as we sit to write our sermons out, we are missing that key piece of even knowing what you need.  Then, when everything took place through screens, we were shouting into the wind. Maybe people were hearing it. Maybe they just turned on YouTube and talked through the whole service, or muted the sermon and only watched the music, or maybe they were deeply moved and challenged by our words.  The point is, we don’t know.

And now that many of us are back face-to-face, let’s be honest, it is only half face to half face. I absolutely agree that masks are an important, critical measure in maintaining safety for our people. But let me tell you this: I don’t care how sparkly your eyes get, I can’t tell enough about your reaction without seeing half of your face. I can’t.

And after months of this reality, and many more months to come, it is taking the purpose out of preaching. And as the purpose for preaching disappears, it will be harder and harder and harder to sustain energy for any of this.

I hold on to the words from 2 Timothy. Preach whether it is convenient or inconvenient. It is inconvenient to preach right now. It takes hours and hours and hours of work, between the study and preparation of the sermon to the filming and additional live delivery that is taking place now. And it is inconvenient because I have no idea if it is making one iota of difference in people’s lives. No idea.

But to all you people in the pews, or chairs, or couches, you can help. If you are online, take the time to comment. A “Good sermon” comment is fine, but an even better one comes when you name specifically what comforted or challenged you.  A follow up email or phone call to talk about it, even better. And for those of you who are in person, and I know this is going to make my mainliners uncomfortable, maybe for a little while take a tip from our more charismatic cousins. Clap and shout “Amen!”  Or “Preach!” Or anything really. Anything so we know the Gospel is making a difference. Any difference.

Thank us. Cry with us. Question us. Argue with us. Anything so we know what we said mattered!

As an undergraduate, I spent a summer in France and found myself getting more and more depressed. I couldn’t figure out why. I mean here I was, living a summer in a French coastal town, spending every day at the beach which was amazing for this landlocked Oklahoma/Arkansas girl. And I just got sadder and sadder and sadder. When I came home I read a book that told me French people don’t smile. It is culturally viewed as a waste of emotion. You laugh with joy, but you don’t just smile at someone walking down the street. I realized then that this girl from the Southern part of the United States was dependent on reactions on the bottom half of people’s faces to feel connection. Y’all, the same challenge is translating here, except for your pastors the stakes are so much higher than friendliness. The stakes are purpose in what we are doing. And as more and more of us feel a lack of purpose, more and more of us will leave to become janitors. So please, for Pastor Appreciation Month (and for the months that follow), skip the greeting cards. Instead, let us know that our words make the difference. Because that may make the difference in whether we stay, or whether we go.

Photo by Tyler Callahan on Unsplash