This season of the year is demanding for pastors. For clarity, I have no illusions that my vocation is any more stressful than that of the local plumber, accountant or telemarketer. We all have pressure points that drive us to the ragged edge of emotional health. For the plumber, it might be after an overnight freeze that results in bursting pipes all over town. For the CPA, the months of March and April seem to be the annual crunch time. For pastors, the gravity surrounding the Christmas holiday (and Easter too, for that matter) is weightier than other times of the year. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a consistent weight to our preaching as we faithfully walk through the book of Nehemiah or the gospels, but there is an internal pressure in December that says, “This Christmas sermon or series or month of services better be amazing.”
It’s the externals of performance and the internals of personal value joining forces to push us over the edge of emotional and spiritual shipwreck.
PERFORMANCE AND PRESSURE
External performance in the local church takes this precious, 2000 year old story of baby Jesus and demands that, in fear of losing more market share, we jump the shark and add a little pizzazz to the sagging storyline. We listen to some of the more boisterous preachers who have somehow found a new, profoundly creative way to communicate this truth and we mimic what they do. I applaud these hyper-creatives. Seriously. No judgment on going to enormous lengths to be imaginative so that the masses might at least look up for a second from their devices and be impacted by good news of great joy. More power to them, I say. The problem with the pressure of external performance is we settle into one of two extremes. We, the pastors, become producers and directors of religio-tainment. Every new season is the pressure to outdo what we did the year before. The careful handling of Scripture and prayerful moments are pushed aside for spiritual ratings and laser lights. Opposite of this posture is pastoral fatalism—essentially giving up on reaching those far from God and instead, spending time building higher walls to keep the savages out. A fatalistic pastor might say something like, “The message of Jesus is powerful enough on its own. No need for me to engage. If people want to hear about the incarnation, I’m not stopping them!”
Internal pressure also squeezes hard on the hearts of pastors. This internal pressure can often be defined as personal value predicated on church attendance. Numbers and noses and butts in the seats are often the deciding factors on whether we like ourselves or not on Monday mornings. This dangerous normalizing of consumer Christianity is exacerbated during this season of merry and cheer. We know what the data suggests: if there is ever a time that people will have any inkling or interest in the things of Christ, it will be during the season in which we celebrate Jesus putting on the stink of humanity and breaking into our timeline. Pastors feel this pressure because Christmas is the Black Friday of our business. We prepare for everyone to come out to celebrate the baby born in Bethlehem, and when the masses don’t show, our hearts fade. We know it’s not OK to tie our worth to the behavior and response of others, but we still do it.
This Christmas I’m suggesting something for me and my pastoral counterparts. Let’s embrace the mystery of the incarnation this season. God, Creator of the universe, became a helpless baby; born to a single teenager in a village where nobody wanted to live; moved with his family in haste because he had an immediate price on his head; sent to a people that would eventually kill him. Mystery.
Christmas has never really made sense. Why would it start making sense now?
Pastors, let’s settle into the mysterious reality: Christ’s coming is profoundly simple and simply mind-bending at the very same time. It also requires care and creativity. The people that are coming to hear about Jesus deserve more than a simple dusting off of last year’s sermonette. Do justice to this amazing message of grace. And let’s cheer when our worship spaces are full and overflowing, and also when they are sparse and intimate. We can only control what we do. Leaving the results up to God’s Spirit is not only a good idea, it is the central tenant of God’s grace. So at the end of the season we can know our value is securely grounded in the cross of Christ, His finished work, and ferocious love for us. Our performance gets trumped every year by his performance. His coming and going and soon to be coming again keeps our hearts pure before our Emmanuel.
O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
In ancient times did’st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
