I lead a congregation, but I have never sought a ‘title’. My unction to serve God is not rooted in vain glory, but I am pushed from within, sometimes against my will, much like Elijah in our portion this week.
I love God. I am grateful for His Son, Yeshua, and I truly desire other people to know Him, but I am not gifted with ‘evangelism’. I am gifted with ‘teaching’, however, and teaching His Word is the passion of my life. That fits more into the ‘role’ of a ‘shepherd’, since ‘study’ in Hebrew is למד , where that first letter, lamed, is named after that word, ‘lamad’, ‘to study’, and is a shepherd’s staff: ל. In order for someone to teach, they must first ‘study’. The Apostles were ‘talmidim’/תלמדים or ‘studiers of The Word of Messiah’, and their first job was to teach [See Acts 2]. The word ‘shepherd’ in Hebrew became ‘pastor’ in English. But, I ask people simply to call me “Daniel”. I seek no glory for myself, nor to lord anything over anyone else. Apart from doing what God has called and anointed me to do, I seek only fellowship.
This week’s portion in the Haftarah, the ‘Prophets’ section of the “OT”, is from 1 Kings. In it, Elijah runs from Jezebel. He is all alone. Jezebel is the queen of the northern kingdom of Israel. She is a priestess of a pagan religion, and she led the whole of the kingdom into mixture religion, where she made Israel’s prophets into prophets of Ba’al and Ishtar [Lord and Easter in English], a rudimentary, pagan trinity. In this sense, she represents the ‘faith’ of the kingdom. And she wants Elijah dead, and has told him so. This is the very spirit of Anti-Messiah, because Elijah is the ‘anointed prophet of God’, where anointed is “mashakh”, the root word of “Messiah”.
She knows the power of Elijah’s anointing, and she opposes it. She wants him dead. Elijah fears for his life and runs. He ends up in the region known as “Be’er Sheva”, or “The Well of the Oath”, or, “The Well of Seven”. He left his servant/ministerial aid by the well, and went further into the wilderness, alone. He felt alone. He had a ministerial companion, someone that served God with him, but he ‘felt’ alone.
People who do not serve God in a ministerial capacity simply cannot understand that. People who do not hold a place of responsibility in God’s Kingdom that involves others’ souls will never know that plight.
Elijah ‘felt’ so alone, he wanted to die. He . He needed to hear the ‘comfort’ of the ‘still, small voice,’ but he thought he needed the majestic, the thrilling, the power that he was seeing in the great wind, the shaking earth, and the blazing fire. God ‘sent’ those phenomena, but He wasn’t ‘in’ them. Elijah heard the still, small voice, but had to come out of the cave with his face wrapped in his prayer garment in order to ‘hear’ what God said. “?מַה לְּךָ פֹה אֵלִיָּהוּ” “What is there for you here, Eliyahu?” In other words, ‘what are you doing in this cave in the wilderness’, or ‘what are you looking for’?
He tells God that he is all alone, and they only want to kill him. God tells him to get back to work: go anoint two kings, meaning he himself is going to replace the leadership that is seeking to end his life. Then, go and anoint Elisha as a prophet ‘under you’.
God put him back to work, and gave him a friend.
Elijah was God’s shepherd for Israel in that time. The king was not doing his job; he was controlled by his wife, who had corrupted the faith of Israel without his saying a word. Elijah had demonstrated the power of God to them, trying to ‘shepherd’ Israel back to service to God Most High, and not their new ‘mixture’ religion of syncretism. He felt alone, cried out to God, and then found out that there was one guy who was going to become his confidant, for the rest of his life, and that there was a remnant of 7,000 in Israel who had not bowed the knee to ‘Ba’al’, nor kissed ‘Ba’al’ [meaning, they were not ‘intimate’ in spiritual adultery with Ba’al].
Elijah and Elishah served God together for the next three to five years. We don’t ‘see’ Elishah again until it is time for Elijah to leave by way of chariot. But, when we do see him, we see a loving loyalty that kept Elijah from ever again feeling utterly alone in serving God.
And serving God in a shepherding capacity is indeed the loneliest job. I don’t think it is a coincidence that just yesterday I read this article that is cited throughout, and linked at the bottom. And, in one way, it is the ‘still small voice’ that I needed to hear, that I am not ‘alone’ in the sensation of lacking ‘friends’, but that other people who do what I do experience the same thing, in the thousands. I am reminded that Elijah once found 50 of those 7,000 in a cave himself. But, again, most people will dismiss my sentiment as emotional weakness, or paranoia, or my own personality quirks that make me intolerable.
I do get it. I am an odd duck. I have never fit in anywhere. I have the rarest ‘natural’ personality according to Myers Briggs and other personality profile systems. If you read the profile, you see that, as less than 2% of the world’s population, I often already ‘feel’ isolated, because of how different I am as a person. I tend to want only a few very intimate relationships, which most men don’t. And since I live my life wholly by God’s Word, and wear the ‘mantle’ of ministry, that makes me even more odd. I suspect that many true ministers have the same profile, though. Myers Briggs would suggest it to us as vocational counsel. But, add to that the fact that my form of ministry is so utterly unique, [wearing a physical mantle like Elijah did [tallit]] and considered wayward by most ‘pastors’ and most believers in general, including many Messianic people, and I become even the rarest of rarities. Add still that people do not understand my personality anyway, and the false judgements and accusations fly, especially among those who profess to believe. Is it any wonder that at times I feel like Elijah, and like Moses did? [Moses got to the same place.]
So, when I read this article, and then shortly thereafter read this week’s haftarah portion, I was compelled to try to explain to anyone who would maybe endeavor to understand that I, when I have advocated for myself, I have felt the judgment and condemnation, and even blame for being in that position and feeling that way. But now, I know I am not out of my mind. People who live their life serving others in this capacity are dangerously alone, the world over. But, as I said, for me, I cannot do what the article suggests, as ‘pastors’, 99% of them, consider me a heretic. [the article suggests near the end making friends with other pastors].
It starts with a ‘study’ that apparently looked pretty intently at the phenomenon that most pastors feel alone and friendless.
“The Lilly Endowment invested $84 million over 10 years to study and support the practices that allow Christian pastors in America to sustain excellence over the years. They funded 63 projects across 25 different denominations and traditions. Each organization made a similar discovery: relationships with peers are the key factor to pastoral longevity.”
Pastors need real, intimate, vulnerable friendships, if they are going to last in ministry.
That is eighty four million dollars and ten years to figure out what I have struggled with for twenty five years: being kept at arms length because I am ‘that guy’.
Yet pastoral isolation is common. Sometimes it’s self-isolation, either out of a fear of being known or a fear of being hurt again by those he considers friends. More often, though, it’s a public isolation, caring for and befriending many, with very few friends to care for him. A pastor can seem like he’s known by many — he reveals a bit of himself each week to hundreds or thousands — while he’s really known by few. Revelations of himself during sermons are often like revelations over social media: Controlled vulnerability that keeps people at a distance either through over- or under-sharing.
That is an important paragraph. I only just recently decided for self isolation for fear of being hurt again by those considered as friends. People today are already desensitized to intimate male bonding because of our society. The relationships we see in the Bible between Moses and Joshua, David and Jonathan, Yeshua and John, Paul and Timothy or Silas, would all be suspect in today’s minds. I can’t count how many times my intent in friendship has been disparaged by perverted accusations. Imagine John leaning on Yeshua’s ‘bosom’, holding his head to his chest, for hours, in a public place today, what accusations about the two of them would fly.
I can’t say how many times people have told me, “I don’t call you because you’re so busy, and you probably get called all the time.” The exact opposite is true. Everyone that might think to be my friend thinks that, and so my phone gets spider webs, as does email, social media, and every avenue. Anything that begins or supports friendship is dry as a bone.
I mostly teach from the Bimah, so I don’t reveal a whole lot of myself on Shabbat, but sometimes I do share personal anecdotes. But, the sensation is there that I am some ‘other’ class of person, either good or bad, so there is greater disassociation for that for me as well. People get to know the person in the chair [I teach in a seated position these days], but the rest of what they think they know about me is their filling in the holes with their own assumptions. Given that I look like “Sam the American Eagle” most of the time, people assume I have no humor nor compassion or empathy all the time. People do not bother to get to know me, especially men.
The article continues:
It’s tough to blame them. Pastoral work can be dehumanizing. People know … you for the work you do — the sermons you preach, the care you give, the prayers you pray, the visionary leadership you provide — more than who you really are. ….. appreciation can be a fickle thing.
I do know that people appreciate what I do. They say it all the time; and they show it. We have a good congregation right now. And we are taking steps to preserve it. But friendship is very evasive, even still.
In Psalm 25:16, David asks God to be near him, for he is “lonely and afflicted.” David models the right response to feeling lonely: a longing for intimate relationships. That longing is not a sign of selfishness or weakness. It’s simply an acknowledgement that you are human. God never intended for any of us to live in isolation. God doesn’t live in isolation; ….. Created in his image, we are made for relationships, with him and with others. That’s true of all of us, including pastors.
Made for Relationship
If a pastor doesn’t have a relationship with God that is continually growing in intimacy, he will demand more from his relationships with others than they are capable of giving him. Therefore, a pastor must constantly work to deepen the intimacy in his relationship with God.
That is exactly what I have been doing. And I’m happy to say that I am better off now than ever I have been since I began ministering full time while raising a family, managing a career, building a congregation [now 2] and continuing education for 25 years.
But God didn’t create us to live only in relationship with him. He created us to also live in community with others. That larger community is found in the local church, which the pastor leads. And this leadership can often seem isolating; it’s really tough to be both a friend and a leader. This leaves the pastor with a relational need — a relational need that is too great for a wife to carry by herself.
A pastor needs his wife as his friend, but not his only friend. She often feels isolated and alone, carrying ministry secrets and her husband’s secret doubts and struggles, ones that are not disqualifying sins, but also are not things that should be shared indiscriminately.
A pastor also needs more than ministry partners or co-workers. They are helpful. They can provide companionship. But you can have a lot of co-workers and still be lonely. Friends don’t just partner on projects; they partner in life.
These are things that people in a congregation need to endeavor to understand. I have stopped advocating for myself, because no matter how I put it, it is never heard. People simply do not want to understand this phenomenon, and very advanced students of the psychology of it had to spend $84 million dollars, and all they did was point out the obvious. There is no earthly solution.
Article cited: “Pastors Need Friends Too” article