MOVED BY LOVE & FEAR
An interview with Robert Hudnut
Jim Berkley and Marshall Shelley
April 1, 1987
Pastors often face emotions in others: the grief of a widow, the turbulence of a teenager, or the wrath of a powerful board member. But what about pastors' own emotions-anxiety about the congregational meeting, love for God, frustration over unmet goals? How should these emotions be handled? Can pastors allow them to show? If so, how? And to whom?
LEADERSHIP editors Jim Berkley and Marshall Shelley posed these questions to Robert Hudnut, who represents the third generation in a family line of pastors (and recently his daughter became the fourth). He graduated from Princeton University, and Union Theological Seminary in New York. Following pastorates in New York and Minnesota, he was called to Winnetka Presbyterian Church in suburban Chicago, where he has served for eleven years.
In his most recent book, This People, This Parish (Zondervan) Bob radiates love for the people and the work of his parish, and LEADERSHIP found he also can speak candidly about the fears and anxieties of the pastorate, the emotions most pastors find more difficult.
How do people expect you as a pastor to handle your emotions?
First they expect the pastor to be "the big leader up there on Sunday morning"-in charge, with all the answers. There will always be some of that since we labor under the authority of God. The pastor preaching the Word of God finds that expectation to be "in control."
On the other hand, I am in this church because about an hour or two into my initial interview, some of the committee were in tears, and we found ourselves embracing. With that kind of open acceptance of a pastor, I knew this would be a terrific place to minister.
What caused that open emotion?
We were talking about a trauma the church had been through, and I was sharing ...
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