A Volley from the Canon, Number 107 Job Number One

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 107

Unsolicited Advice (and Worth Every Penny of Your Subscription to This Remarkable Service)

“Job Number One”

We clergy spend a lot of time in study, training, and preparation for the job of clergying, whatever that may entail. Three years in seminary is just a warm-up to the many and varied tasks we get involved in. Yet nobody ever clued me in on (after “knowing Jesus”) the most important element—I had to figure it out all by myself (well, partly, perhaps by observing some expert practitioners). I think it is time someone just said it out loud.

Yes, it is important that we know how to preach and teach, to inspire and to motivate. It matters that we can run an efficient and productive meeting, negotiate with terrorists, comfort the afflicted, and tactfully afflict the comfortable. We have to plan, recruit, delegate, monitor, implement, analyze, evaluate, revise, and through it all be prayerful, collegial, and non-anxious. It helps to know something about the Bible, Christian theology and ethics, liturgy, and counseling. We can either be perfect in all of those things, and more, OR—we can practice just one special gift or charism instead, the most important talent of all.

We can love our people. Just love them, sincerely and honestly. That is the most important pastoral skill anyone can ever have, to give the gift of simple enjoyment of the company of other people. Quite frankly, it makes up for many shortcomings in some of those other departments. (It “cover many sins.”) And quite frankly, if we don’t have it, all those other skills are useless to us. If you ask me (and I know you haven’t), there is only one reason to accept the call of a congregation to come live among them and be their rector (or deacon, missioner, or bishop): we fell in love.

We can have law, or we can have grace. Which do we choose?




Donald K. Vinson (The Rev. Canon)
Canon for Congregational Vitality
Diocese of West Virginia
P. O. Box 5400
Charleston, WV 25361
304 541-9963