Becoming Friends With Your Pastor
Most of our blogging friends are pastors. A few are wonderful church members (or in our case, church partners). I’m writing this post for church members. Pastors, you might want to link to it so you can help your church members have insight into your world and know how to minister to you. I’m hoping many of you will add more insight to this subject.
I’ll break this post into PART A and post PART B tomorrow.
(Note: all pastors won’t agree with me. I’m guessing most will at most points.)
PART A
If you want to become friends with your pastor, here are some suggestions:
- Don’t be pushy. Pushy people come across as needy. We minister to needy people all day. We crave friendships not more counseling appointments.
- Don’t tell us “God told you” we’re going to be friends. He may have, but that doesn’t work on us. Tons of people have told us that before. Friendship for us needs to happen over time, not be born because of something God told you but not us.
- Coming to a stranger’s house for dinner isn’t the high point of our lives. (You know a lot about us. We don’t know as much about you.) We work a lot of nights. Our kids are busy. Finding a babysitter is hard. Bringing our kids to your house often puts stress on us. A night at home is often more meaningful than a dinner at your house. (Some pastors will disagree with me and be very blessed by these dinners. Most aren’t.)
- My wife doesn’t want to send our kids to your house just because you want to baby sit them. You are probably an incredible person, but we don’t know about your neighbors or your kids’ friends or your uncle that might come by. There are too many weird people for us to send our kids to your house without knowing more.
- We are grateful for “gift cards.” Many pastors don’t have the financial margin to take their families out. Gift cards mean a lot.
- We love talking to you about things besides church and the Bible. We have other interests like you.
- We love your notes of appreciation. They mean more than you know. You have a way of sending them when we really need them. Thank you!
(Eight more suggestions are coming tomorrow…)
