"Nobody cares how much you know...

...until they know how much you care." Now there's a fantastic piece of advice for clergy everywhere. And maybe not just clergy either. Here are a few more words of wisdom about being a pastor, compliments of John Esau: "Ten Things I didn't learn in seminary"

When I was fresh out of seminary myself (Harvard, no less), I thought I knew an awful lot about "doing ministry," but I still had an awful lot to learn about "being" a minister. Now, after more than a quarter-century (and half a lifetime) in this line of work, it's hard for me to imagine not being a minister -- or even whether it is possible for me to stop being a minister, whether or not I am actively doing ministry at the moment. And the wisdom represented by these timeless little aphorisms seems so much more important than all the history and theology and even scripture I studied academically as a seminarian. Not that academic knowledge isn't important (and valuable) too. But without this other, it's an external knowing, rather than a knowing of the soul. Or to put it another way, no matter how much book learning we may possess (and trust me, I possess a lot), we all still learn our vocation "on the job" -- and it is only after this baptism by fire that the things we learn from books begin to make sense.

Yes, ministry is a political vocation...and like politics, all ministry is local. Our people want us to succeed, but we will never fully live up to their expectations...or even, quite frankly, our own. And so we need to learn how to get out of our own way, and let the spirit work through us. Because it's not ABOUT us. Ministry will demand everything we have to give it if we let it, and yet it will also fulfill us and renew us in ways that are hard to imagine without having experienced it firsthand. And at the end of the day, there's always tomorrow...and even when we close our own eyes to open them no more, someone will be there to "Salute the Arriving Moment." And that is part of what makes ministry both a privilege and a gift...a vocation to be embraced in humility and gratitude and devotion....