On Holidays
Holidays are hard. Unless you come from a pastor’s family, I am not sure there is any way to really be prepared for how hard the holidays are for a pastor. I know I wasn’t.
This is not to whine, but it must be brought out into the open. If you do not deal well with the special challenges of “pastoring” through the holidays, you and yours will be miserable during what are otherwise some great times of the year.
Holidays call for extra work. You may have noticed this on Thanksgiving Eve about 3:00 p.m. You were steeling yourself in final preparation for the evening service, beginning to think ahead to Sunday’s Bible class and sermon as well, and it occurred to you that this was the time that your folks began to relax for a long Thanksgiving weekend. Not only did you not get a long Thanksgiving weekend, but you ended up with more to do than in a normal week with less time to do it.
I am afraid you better get used to this. Christmas and New Year’s Eve are even more this way. Easter even with all the victory is no better.
Holidays carry high expectations. People expect your best during the holidays. The pews are packed. People look forward to the holidays and expect warmth, wisdom and whimsy in their worship. Bring your A game. Plus you see some of the people you only see a couple times a year. If you are going to make an impact, now is the time!
Holidays hold tired themes. Admittedly the themes for the holidays are big ones: thankfulness, incarnation, New Year, naming of Jesus, his baptism, transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and so on. Yet, because they are the same every year, they can become stale and tired—at least in the preacher’s mind. What can you say about Christmas in your 20th year that you did not say in your 2nd? And what can you say to a faithful follower of Jesus Easter after Easter after Easter. “He is Risen! He is risen (yawn) indeed?”
Holidays are hard on your family. Just when your family wants to spend time with you in celebration and relaxation, you are preoccupied or pooped. The time that they are least interested in sharing you is the time that you are most in demand by the congregation. Expect emergency calls—holiday stresses come to fruition in families already frayed, and your phone will ring, “Pastor, you have to help me, I don’t know where to turn.”
Holiday commitments impact your extended family too. They may want to get together for Christmas Day, just like they have for years, and you are unavailable until the 26th or 27th. That 10 day get-away holiday vacation you took as a family growing up? Forget about it!
How to Handle the Holidays? Keep the following in mind as you navigate through the holidays toward significance:
- Plan Ahead: The date of the holiday is no surprise. You know months in advance exactly when it is! Plan ahead and get done what you can before the crush of the holiday itself.
- Read and Think: It takes work to keep your preaching and teaching fresh. Make sure you read new things and think from different angles about whatever holiday is in your crosshairs.
- Create Trade Offs: Try to figure out trade offs that you can make with your family. Very early on we found that Santa could come a day early for a pastor’s family. A little later we took the kids to a motel with games and a pool the weekend after New Year’s when I could be FULLY there. Negotiate out what works for your family.
- Accept the Short Stick: It is yours, not your family’s. It is yours, not your congregation’s. God called YOU to be the pastor. If you have to get up early or stay up late, do it. Figure out ways that you can get the work done with as little additional impact on your family as you can. When you feel like whining, don’t. You need to be a big boy.
- Pray with Thanksgiving: Ask God to guide all of your preaching and teaching. Thank him for the privilege of being his spokesman during such important, albeit busy, times. Thank him for your family, and pray for his wisdom in balancing family and congregational duties.
- Special Note: Holidays include celebrations with family and members. Never ever enter the chancel or pulpit when you have been drinking any alcohol.
Through it all keep in mind what Paul writes in Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything though him who gives me strength.”
And celebrate! God is good, and it’s the Holidays!
1 thought on “On Holidays”
Comments are closed.
This is a useful overview filled with “sanctified common sense” as Roland Fink once said. It should be shared with new pastors and seminarian families as an orientation.