PRESSURE

Today I was stewing on some of the pressures I feel pretty regularly as a pastor- in purely a random list I started typing....

• be funny
• be young at heart
• be athletic and physically fit
  
• be a great communicator
• be organized
• be on facebook
• be on myspace
• be a pop-culture wiz
• be aware of all things youtube
  
• be a travel agent
• be a graphic artist
• be a web designer
• be a great writer
• be photographic memory man with student's faces and names
  
• be a janitor
• be ultimately responsible for the ministry
• be caring
• be loving
• be available to those in need
• be trustworthy
• be a visionary
• be a corrector
• be devoted to prayer
• be memorizing scripture
• be reading my Bible
  
• be fasting
• be a videographer
• be a seminary student
• be a learner
• be a booking agent
• be great with money
• be creative
• be informed about politics
• be aware of the big news in the world
• be a blog updater
• be a listener
• be healthy
• be ready to eat pizza and junk food so I can hang out with students
  
• be on campus
• be relational and know the lives of my leaders
• be a small group leader
• be connected with my students
• be involved in our network
• be willing to say yes
  
• be willing to say no
• be a friend
• be a mentor
• be raising up lots of other mentors
• be a dad to the dadless
• be wise
  
• be a pastor
• be a forgiver
• be thinking about the future
• be reading lots and lots of current books
• be writing blog posts about what I'm reading
• be at every youth conference in the country
• be up on what the "emerging church" says
• be up on what Luther and Ignatius and Spurgeon and Calvin and....
• be up on what such and such a church is doing
  
• be watching survivor, american idol, and the office
• be aware of the latest and greatest on mtv
• be a surfer
• be mad skilled at all things xbox and such
• be a movie goer
  
• be texting my students
• be e-mailing
• be sending snail mail encouragement notes
• be thinking of others
  
• be a listener of podcast teaching
  
• be a member of a pastor team
• be a counselor for pastoral drop in needs in the office
  
• be caring for creation
• be playing some band on my ipod no one else has ever heard of but makes me cool
• be a family man
• be a manager
• be a leader
• be a pleaser of God
• be a pleaser of people
  
• be.......

Um... yeah. Obviously some of this is healthy and some not so much. Some comes naturally. Some I suck at quite naturally too. On a good day this list makes me give up and lean on Jesus and just be me and rest in God alone. On a bad day, it beats me up, makes me feel like a loser, and makes me want to quit under the weight of feeling like an utter failure.