I had a lot of different pastors during my first thirty years of life, and for the most part it wasn’t me who was doing the moving around. I suspect it was at least partly because the communities of faith of which I was a part at the time were some of the larger in our denomination, and they were located in an urban area. There were as many as eight within the Memphis city limits alone and thus in close proximity to the denomination’s business headquarters. In an area that had a particularly dense population of ordained Cumberland ministers, perhaps some amount of “churn” was inevitable. Whatever the reason, when I stopped recently to remember all the ministers who served the congregations of which I was a part during those years, the final tally was a bit eye-opening—at least for me.

Ten or twelve different men, as I recall—all men, of course—served as either pastor or associate pastor of those churches. That averages out to a new face roughly every three years or so. The reality, of course, is that there were a few stretches when pairs of ministers served together as pastor and associate pastor, but still, that seemed to me a fair amount of turnover when compared to a lot of churches (my own father pastored the same church for over 40 years).

On the surface, there’s nothing particularly unusual about a pastor leaving his or her position. It happens fairly often in the Cumberland church, and most of the times the reasons are somewhat benign. A minister accepts a call to a small, struggling congregation, helps them to find ways of renewal and growth, and decides her skills in that endeavor are no longer needed. There are other small, struggling congregations who need her more. Who wouldn’t be willing to leave even a job we love if we felt called to an opportunity where our particular skills and interests were of more use?

A minister may accept a call to a church as a single person, get married and begin a family while at the church, and then find that the compensation the church is able to pay won’t allow him to support his family. Another pastor may feel that the best way to care for an ailing loved one is to leave the pulpit to focus full-time on that loved one’s care. And then, sometimes a person who has been in the pastoral ministry for most of his or her life simply decides it’s time to enjoy a well-deserved retirement with his or her spouse, children, and grandchildren. Pastors are human beings as well, and family relationships are no less important to them than to the rest of us.

But sometimes… well, sometimes pastors are forced to leave, and not always in the most loving way. Pastors sometimes leave a church because the congregation—or certain members of the congregation—have created an environment that is so unpleasant in one way or another that he or she sees no other choice. Such was the case with at least a couple of the pastors of my youth and young adulthood. They were men who had been called to a pastorate and arrived with great expectations, only to discover later that the call they had answered had strings attached…

It is not unreasonable, I think, to compare the relationship between a pastor and her congregation to a marriage in some ways. Personalities, cultural backgrounds, interests, shared goals and dreams, likes and dislikes—all are areas where a degree of compatibility, or even similarity, between the two parties is necessary to ensure a healthy relationship. Equally important is the willingness of each party to accept the inevitable flaws and shortcomings of the other, and mutually to accept responsibility for nurturing the relationship toward reconciliation, healing, and growth when conflicts arise.

Perhaps the analogy breaks down a bit, however, when we consider the primary reason we call someone—anyone—to become our pastor. Jesus’s image of a shepherd and his flock has become so ubiquitous in our thinking that I think we risk missing one of the most important characteristics of that relationship: that of the pastor as our leader. Our pastor—our shepherd—is the person who, by virtue of special training and gifts is ordained to lead us (which implies teaching us), gently but firmly, toward green pastures and still waters. We owe this person, who has spent considerable time preparing for his or her role in helping us to become the people God created us to be, our trust.

The church of my childhood was a church ministering in turbulent times. The struggle of black citizens for basic human rights and a quagmire of war in Southeast Asia challenged our beliefs and values. At least a couple of our pastors at the time attempted to lead us to a more enlightened, biblical understanding of justice and peace. But it was not the message that some in our congregation wanted to hear. Those pastors quickly felt an absence of appreciation at best, and worse, eventual outright hostility. They were forced to leave, in essence, because of their attempts to help us become more like the persons God called us to be.

It is not our pastor’s job to make us feel good about our lifestyle, or our political views, or the way we have decided to engage in human relationships. As I see it, God does not call them to parrot our prejudices or to validate our fears or our self-centered ideas about what constitutes compassion and justice. God calls pastors to speak truth in love to persons—congregations—who are (or should be) open to the possibilities of transformed lives, even when that truth is difficult for them to hear.

As I see it, appreciating our pastors involves far more than a few thoughtful gifts and a nice reception, as nice and appropriate as those things are. Pastor appreciation also involves a willingness on our part to be made to feel uncomfortable from time to time—to be confronted with the ways that our lives fall short of who God wants us to be and challenged to change. Called to lead us where we sometimes do not want to go, to be the persons we do not want to be, to love those we do not wish to love, to give up comforts we so dearly love, and to bear our burdens with us, often for far less than a living wage, pastors have one of the more difficult jobs I can imagine. And I appreciate them for it.