If you ever go to church and you have the chance to talk to the pastor after the service you should choose your words carefully. A good pastor doesn’t preach for compliments. What I mean is that at the end of the day they are preaching to please God and not people. At the same time pastors are humans and the words that are said to them after the service can weigh on them.
It’s like this…for at least a week the pastor studies, prays, writes, and prays some more for this one talk. For me I write out my entire talk word for word. I often write at least one rough draft that gets completely rewritten before Sunday. An average talk for me is six to eight pages that I memorize. For at least a week the pastor has lived with this message inside of them. When the message is finally delivered it’s birthed in front of an audience. What took hours to prepare can be torn down in 30 seconds.
To be continued…
I empathize as a speaker and as a cook. Cooking is more than a chore for me; I grew up winning prizes in 4-H for my confections. I come from a heritage of good cooks, but besides being rewarding, putting together a meal or even a specific dish is lots of work. Like feeding the flock as a preacher, I often spend a lot of time planning the menu, shopping for ingredients, sometimes going to more than one store for what I want–braving WalMart to find the right item at the right price. Then, comes the real preparation of putting it all together in just the right time to clear the mess and serve guests. I don’t expect everyone to love everything I make, but yeah, the effort, creativity, and expense of it all deserve respect and consideration if not praise. I’m fortunate that most things I serve are praised at work and at home, and my husband is easy to please. However, it does sink my boat when what I prepare does not bring pleasure.
When I was like 12, our pastor’s wife spoke. After the sermon I was trying to be nice and said something cliche like,”Thank you, that was very touching.” She responded with, “Which part had the biggest impact on you?” I was all, “ahhh, the part where ahhh.” I had nothing, I probably wasn’t paying attention at all. I felt very dumb. I should have just kept my mouth shut.
“That was a nice speech.” That’s my favorite. It’s like something so meaningful, and life-altering, and intense can be summed up with “Nice speech.” Ouch. Teenagers mean well. I think I would prefer “Nice try.” At least I could laugh about that one.
I try to pass along to the pastor or speaker comments when then their words touched me in some way or when they were particularly moving. Other times I say good job or thank you to recognize the time and energy and effort.
empty comments are not that great. if you can not remember one thing that was impacting…hmmm… i think the biggest encouragement is seeing the change in someones life…watching them grow..if you really want to encourage your pastor, put to play in your life what we is talking about. a card every once in a while helps too…lol.