duck walk

I went to a pastors’ meeting yesterday. What do a bunch of pastors talk about? One thing we talk about is how pressured we feel. One pastor shared how he was a journalist for 11 years and never felt the kind of pressure that he feels now to be at the top of his game all the time. Another shared his financial pressures. I sort of got the ball rolling when I shared how I’d felt very down on Monday, right after the weekend retreat.

It seems odd that I’d feel depressed after what had been a great retreat. But I’m going to share something that very few people know: on the surface everything was going great, but behind the scenes we were improvising and re-designing like crazy. Dave Evans mentioned that it was like a duck: on the surface things seem fine but under the water we’re paddling like crazy.

The question we kept asking ourselves was: how is this retreat fitting into the big picture of what God is doing at Grace? I felt like I was in a constant tension of both needing to have all the answers while also being spontaneously available to whatever God wanted to do. Sure, we could just let the Spirit lead but we needed to come up with a plan, too.

So by the end of the retreat I was exhausted. We had just finished a wonderful time of learning to rest in what God was doing among us, and I was tired. It just didn’t make sense. And I spent the whole day on Monday feeling tired and pretty unmotivated.

I told this to my prayer partner on Tuesday morning and it was refreshing to let go of that tension and be prayed for. I shared about this at the pastors’ meeting and was encouraged to hear that everyone else felt exactly the same way. We all realized that we wanted to ‘get it right’, to be the world’s greatest pastor (or at least the pastor of the big church nearby), and it was hard to faithfully walk the path God’s given each of us. We can talk about a lot of great ideas, but those may not be ideas that God’s designed us to implement and we end up like a bunch of exhausted ducks lying by the road in danger of becoming pastoral road kill.

So what’s the answer? I wish I knew, then I’d write a book and go on a lecture tour. What’s more important is that I’m slowly learning, that I’m gaining new skills in both God-sight and church leadership. I’m sure there will be more times when I’m exhausted, but I’m glad for those that come alongside and share my burden and help me get back on my feet to continue what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction”.