Five Ways to Care for Your Pastor During Holy Week

Chocolate is always a good tip 🙂

birch & raven's avatarbirch & raven

Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week for those of us in the (non-Orthodox) Christian world. Today we remember Jesus’ pageantry as he rode into Jerusalem, and from here we re-tell the stories of a last meal and new commandment, betrayal, denial, and commitment, as we journey to the cross, the tomb, and Easter. It is a holy week indeed.

It is also a generally extremely busy and often stressful week for pastors, perhaps more than any other in the liturgical year. However, people often overlook this, which just adds to the stress. (My theory is that unlike Advent/Christmas, the wider society is not aware of or involved in preparing for Easter other than getting baskets ready and hiding eggs, so people simply forget–even those that go to church!).

So, as we head into Holy Week 2015, here are five suggestions for ways to care for the pastors…

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Preoccupied

Thoughts on busy messiness and messy busy-ness

shellieaseltine's avatarBetter Together

You should see my kitchen table. That’s right. I’m saying you *should be able* to see my kitchen table — yet it is buried beneath piles of clutter that unashamedly proclaim the reality of my preoccupied life.

Unpaid bills, school forms requiring my signature, ingredients for this week’s dessert baking, adventures, half-eaten lollipops, broken crayons, Cheerios, crushed cheezits, AA batteries & LEGO pieces aplenty decorate my kitchen table. There are muddy sneakers by the door with muddy footprints on the floor [that I just swept last night] — evidence of the boys’ muddy-puddle-jumping after preschool this morning.

AND I am a multi-tasking, type-A, to-do-list-lovin’ Mama who highly values being “productive.” I’ll quickly confess I love that oh-so-fleeting feeling of satisfaction —triumphantly crossing an item off that ever-pressing, never-ending to-do-list.

Sigh. How wonderful. Truly. I love those moments.

And yet — Motherhood — being a mama “in-the-trenches” — often feels like…

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#holy time

Yes,

Easter tends to be more crazy than Christmas

1st of all pastors tend to run double whatever number of services they run Christmastime during Holy Week: I’m at the bare minimum of 3 (4 if you count Palm Sunday)

Plus, usually, my kids are off that same week, so I get to gesticulate around that and the fact its a superbusy time of year.

Plus, people volunteer to do things less–Christmas is just more of a pitch in holiday. How many people really want to help out with the Good Friday Service (altho we do a service of the nails that is poignant and beautiful)

Its a crazy week for me I have two parishoners in the hospital/recovery, plus the other 4 homebound who I would like to see during this Holy Time, plus a session meeting to make certain things are in place, plus an all day Persbytery meeting (which they always schedule the week before Holy Week, which always leaves me scratching my head), plus whatever other office-y stuff I need to do.

Then there is real life. The things that happen that make you a pastor, the things that aren’t on the calendar.

My colleague Sarah Ross said “In minstry, I don’t really plan a schedule so much as I just plan to be interrupted.”

Nadia Bolz-Weber once had an intern who shadowed her. At the end he said ” it was “oh my gosh..you’re A PERSON for a living!””

So, interruptions and being a person are my goals for the next two weeks…God sanctifies them and makes them holy

and…for my #fairytale friends #Cinderella thoughts by Malinda Lo

http://www.malindalo.com/2015/03/ash-in-korean-and-other-thoughts-on-cinderella/

ash-korean-edition-525x525

“Did you notice that the illustration of the girl on the cover looks Asian? The moment I noticed that, I had to sit down. You see, in my imagination, the main character looks Asian. That’s not clear in the book, and I’ve written before about why it’s OK if you (the reader) didn’t get that from the text. To me, though, Ash looks Asian, and I’ve never seen that represented in an illustration before this Korean cover. It was astonishing. I felt like crying.”

A Sermon on Judas, Jesus-love, Marriage Equality, and Faithful LGBTQ Presbys

Inhale the Holy Spirit, Exhale Love

reverendfem's avatarReverend Fem

“A Love We Can Grasp”

**Originally preached at the Jazz service at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago on March 22, 2015. This sermon is part of a Lenten series called “Were You There?” which follows particular characters that Jesus encounters on his way to the cross. 

Matthew 26: 14-16, 47-50

Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What will you give me if I betray him to you?’ They paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.

While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.’ At once…

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I will be your #God, You will be #my People–this is my promise to you

Sermon Snippet: The Presbyterians of the United States have been almost embarassingly blessed in the past, so to feel anything but hope now would be…foolish (Tom Are) So the promise that we need to know, the one that we have trouble with, but the promise that God continues to make through Abraham, Moses and in Christ, the promise that is sealed into each of us at our baptism, the one that is so hard to believe when religion and worship changes. God’s simple promise is this no matter what: I will be your God, and you will be my people. Isaiah 42: 5-7. 2 Cor 2:15 & 3:18