R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Louis McBurney
No one escapes the grip of personal insecurity. It's part and parcel of life after the Fall. The problem comes when our personal insecurities significantly affect our behavior.
— Louis McBurney Over twenty years ago, I pulled out of mainstream psychiatry to start a counseling retreat for pastors. I still attend psychiatry seminars, and invariably someone will ask, "What do you do?" When I attempt to describe my present calling, I receive a puzzled look. Then an awkward silence. "Mmm," the person says. "How nice." Other psychiatrists' respect shouldn't matter to me. But it does. I yearn for the approval of my peers. Intellectually I know my self-worth is established by God through what Christ did on the cross, that I've been created and redeemed by him. Yet it's difficult resting in God's unconditional love while holding down a job many people I admire don't respect. In working with pastors, I've learned this is a common feeling among them. There are lots of reasons for this. The social fragmenting of our culture has heightened their insecurity. More and more I hear pastors say, "I don't feel trained to cope with the things that confront me daily." These things include the complications of blended families, sexual abuse, and marital breakup. It's hard to feel good about what you do when you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing. Furthermore, the media portray the average pastor as a balding fiftysomething with a reversed collar and a paunch; sometimes the reverend is benignly kind; sometimes he's a hypocrite, but in any case, he's hopelessly out of touch with the "real world." Nor do pastors get an emotional boost by comparing their work to other jobs requiring comparable education and having similar demands. Salaries seem ...
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