A World of Expectations

We are born into a world of expectations. People expect us to think and behave certain ways because of who they think we are. There are expectations based on our culture, our gender, our social status, financial status, educational level, age, occupation and religion. When we try to break out of these expectations and discover who we really are we can cause great distress for others.

Recently, in front of a large group I was asked what I disliked the most about being a pastor. My response? That I’m always a pastor wherever I go. People treat me differently because I am a pastor. Some treat me with more respect than they show other people and some treat me with less. Usually the only time people treat me like a regular person is when they don’t know I’m a pastor.

When I first started my life as an ordained pastor I tried to live up to all of the expectations. I dressed like a pastor, wearing shirts with clerical collars on Sundays and other official occasions like weddings and funerals or when I would visit homebound members. I was careful to not have a beer in public or to swear when something went terribly wrong. I worked hard to keep my emotions in check and appear to be in control at all times. As a brand new pastor I also made every effort to convince people that I knew everything there was to know about faith and theology.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I didn’t want to live like this, nor could I. People where getting to know Pastor Kevin but not me. Then one day I realized that God didn’t call Pastor Kevin to ministry but that God wanted Kevin. If God was okay with who I was and called me to ministry then it would be okay to be me and in ministry.

That’s when things started getting a lot harder.

It turns out that people don’t want their pastors to be ordinary people. They want their pastors to be shining examples of virtuous living and paragons of faith. And furthermore, they will go to great lengths to make sure you live up to those unrealistic expectations or they will make your life miserable.

One Sunday morning I was preaching a sermon about spiritual gifts teaching about the gift of Mercy. A person with the gift of Mercy has the ability to recognize when someone is hurting and is able to empathize with the hurting person and find ways to comfort them. Many people have this ability, including people who aren’t religious. As an example I told a story about another pastor I knew who was able to look out over her congregation during worship and identify those who were suffering. She would then quietly say something to them after the service or would be sure to call them the following week. I, on the other hand, do not have the gift of mercy. I tend to be oblivious to the signs and the depth of people’s pain. I shared that I was a envious of this other pastor’s ability but I believed that there were people in our own congregation who had that gift and God was calling them to use their gifts.

The following week I met an elderly woman who had been caring for her disabled husband for years as he continued to decline. By and large she seemed to be a rather timid person but on this particular day she attacked me with the tenacity of a mother tiger protecting her cubs.

“Don’t you ever say that you don’t have the gift of mercy,” she said,  wagging her finger at me. “Pastors are caregivers and if they aren’t then who can be? I don’t want to hear you talk like that ever again.”

At first I thought that she was afraid that I was being too hard on myself. As I tried to assure her that it was okay and that I had been given other spiritual gifts she interrupted.

“No! Don’t say that,” she pleaded. “You are a wonderful caregiver and have been great to my husband and me.”

That’s when I started to realize that she had to believe something that was not true about me in order to allow me to serve her. She couldn’t bear to think that she was getting less than the best care in the world.  It was the wrong time to correct her false image of me. But playing along meant that I wasn’t free to be the flawed person I am. It meant I couldn’t live in the truth of who I was.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident. I, and other pastors I know, are constantly bombarded with expectations to be someone or something we are not. Fighting those expectations takes energy that we would rather put into helping people. So too often, we take the path of least resistance and put up a façade and play along with the expectations until we either begin to believe them ourselves or until we are burned out. Either way it leads to a bad end.

Pastors aren’t the only ones caught up in a world of expectations. The only way out is to be honest with ourselves and live with integrity and openness until those who try to make us into something we are not face the issues within themselves that cause them to mold us in their image.