“You are just not an easy person to like”.  Ever had that said to you?  I have, by a female leader in a church where I was the pastor’s wife.  Really?  Yup!  This is mild compared to the kinds of things the organized church has dished out to us over 30 plus years.

Paul faced this kind of stuff too, after his Damascus road experience (remember he was radically opposed to Jesus the Messiah, God struck him blind, Saul repented, God changed his name to Paul and then he went out selflessly and taught about Jesus everywhere – no matter the consequences.  Paul was not an easy person to like either I am sure.

Wish I had thought about it this way back when this was said to me.

Full time ministry is a tricky business.  As a young Pastor you are zealous to answer the call of God to serve local congregations.  Unfortunately, local congregations are often also zealous to bring their Pastor “in line” with what he and his family should be doing while serving their church.  Time and time again, I have personally experienced, and have heard other clergy families experiences, of the spiritual and emotional pain inflicted upon them while attempting to do what they were hired to do – lead a group of Christians to better follow the Messiah.The organized church often has had this said about it “Christians are one of the only groups that shoots its’ own wounded”. And we wonder why Christianity is on the decline….

Because I have so much time on my hands, our Saturday project was to clean out our bedroom walk in closet.  I found a journal where I had written about a particularly difficult time in our ministry and came across the above quote as well as the evidence of the anguish it had caused in my life. This occurred over 20 years ago during a time where Pastoral compensation was the topic of discussion and it was beyond the power brokers in this church to attempt to comprehend that the pastor should make equal pay with an uneducated, hourly paid member of the church.  No problem that the church required  years of education (7) to become  their Pastor – lol! I spent hours, days, weeks wrestling with this situation.  I learned a great deal about myself during this time.  I had always been resilient – but this was testing my strength and my belief in who I was as a person. My hurting husband, who loves me for reasons I will never know, encouraged me, sometimes by the minute, reminding me that God makes no mistakes when creating His children and that I was who I was supposed to be at that moment.

While I hated this time in my life, because of the pain inflicted on me and my family, I also knew then (just didn’t really want to admit it) as I do now, that the time spent in self examination was valuable to me then as well as each day that I moved forward in my life. In no uncertain terms, I knew and know “who” I am as well as “whose” I am.  No Mean Girls Club had the right to make me feel less of a child of God.  I know without a doubt that while my ministry is not always “likeable” it is what God has called me to and I am pretty clear about what that ministry continues to be.

On the eve of our ministry to the local church (we serve a small group of dear folks and recognize that we will stay a small group until we eventually conclude our service) I have found people who not only like me but love me  They are desirous of all the weird gifts that we have going on in our body – everyone is loved for who and whose they are – no arguments! It is a beautiful gift to be apart of a group like that – we all know we need God, we need each other and we need a refuge from the world and its “meanness”.

So thanks Paul for being an example to me – even though I missed it 23 years ago -sometimes it is the right thing to be “not an easy person to like”.
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