When I became a student pastor I had no idea what I
was getting into.
The first thing that happened after we moved into the tiny parsonage was that Johnny Johnson
died.
As pastors, we spend a great deal of time sharing in the
ongoing lives and adventures of our congregants and community members. We are
also called, literally, to come to love and suffer with them when
disappointments, disasters or deaths occur.
She is foggy, struggling to find the old gifts of conversation. But she knows me, I think. I
tell her all of the reassuring things that pastors say in such a
setting. "The Creator who has watched over you all of the days of your
life is now holding you in those sacred hands." She smiles and
struggles to respond with words I barely understand.
This issue features a topic in which I have a personal interest—the megachurch (see Wanted: Megapastors), though I deplore the term and try never to use it.
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