A busy pastor may as well be an adulterous pastor.
A busy pastor is an unfaithful pastor.
A busy pastor is not quiet and still before God and God’s Word.
A busy pastor is always moving the conversation along, interrupting stories and changing topics in order to motivate the church to accomplish some task in Jesus’ name.
A busy pastor is an inattentive pastor. Out of tune with the quiet and subtle movements of God just beneath the surface of anxious church members. He only wants to fix. Never journey with.
A busy pastor obsesses over programs and events, over and against actual people.
A busy pastor uses words like scalability and multiplication, dehumanizing and oversimplifying the personal multifaceted nuanced God-bathed stories from the church.
A busy pastor has no time to pursue one lost sheep. He counts his losses. 99 is better than 1.
A busy pastor outsources discipleship. Hire someone else to do it while I work on my sermon, says the busy pastor. Soon enough, if successful, he outsources the sermon itself.
A busy pastor has no time for emotional awareness or self examination. There’s too much to do. His charisma and ability to build consensus has got him this far. So why not double down? It’s easier and faster. Prayerfully examining his ambition anger and anxiety is unnecessary and inefficient.
A busy pastor has no leisure time. He breaks the fifth commandment. Or uses it as an excuse to turn to his vices. Never to worship, and spend long hours enjoying the Scriptures.
A busy pastor is no different than the worshippers of mammon.
A busy pastor is really good at growing a church with a shallow culture of discipleship and prayer.
Of course. A slothful pastor is worse.
But a pastor who prays. A pastor who spends time with God. Wrestling with scripture. Singing songs of intimate vulnerable surrender. Inviting God to search the heart for hidden sin. A pastor who visits parishioners in their workplaces and homes. A pastor who is well differentiated from the bureaucratic evaluations of effectiveness without detaching from the connection and tradition of the church. A pastor who knows the names and stories of those on the other side of a sermon. A pastor who is happy. A pastor who is willing to fail. A pastor whose life of holiness is done in quiet without any signaling of how multicultural or socially aware they are. A pastor who is comfortable with the imperfections and the workings of grace within a complex congregation. A pastor who apologizes and admits fault. A pastor who believes in a living God.
Such a pastor cannot be formed within the context of a busy ambitious congregation whose imagination of success is a depersonalizing idolatry of critical mass.
There are wonderful pastors in all contexts and all manner of church sizes. But busyness is not a virtue for pastors or Christians. A prerequisite to spiritual maturity is leisure. A habitual stoppage of work for the purpose of worship and recentering. Praise be to the non anxious God who creates the rhythm of seasons and commands us to Sabbath.
Blessings to all you pastors. May our lives be prophetic witness to a better way of existence. May the Kingdom we serve be distinct from the kingdoms of this earth.