c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS and author of”Turn Toward the Wind.”)

UNDATED _ It was a late-night flight home and I was exhausted. I’d flown nearly 5,000 miles in 24 hours and couldn’t wait to sleep in my own bed. Just as I began to feel sorry for myself I heard a friendly voice and looked up to see my minister.

He greeted me with a smile and a kind word and I felt immediately comforted, just as I have so many times by his presence.

Then it occurred to me that this was Monday night and I had heard him preach the day before. After preaching two sermons on Sunday, he had boarded a plane and headed west to participate in a denominational meeting.

Now he, too, was going home so he could resume a week of counseling, visiting sick parishioners, officiating at weddings, and a number of other official and unofficial occasions requiring his presence.

I stopped feeling sorry for myself and began feeling thankful for the relative ease of my own life.

Oct. 12 marks Clergy Appreciation Day and I am still trying to think of something appropriately appreciative to send my minister.

But what do you get a guy who delivers a moving sermon every week, counsels the dying, blesses the newborn, runs a business, keeps parishioners’ secrets, maintains his own spiritual life, and is expected to do it all with a saintly attitude on a salary that is paltry by most standards?

Unfortunately, the world mostly hears about the clergy who go astray or spin out of control; the ones who build their own empires or fall into the very temptations they preach against.

But the vast majority of ministers, priests and rabbis are honest, hard-working, under-appreciated individuals who are expected to fill roles requiring diverse and nearly contradictory skills.

They are supposed to be sensitive and relational, while maintaining order and efficiency. They must be comfortable in front of a crowd and with individuals in need. They must present a good image, but not be egotistical. They must have control without being controlling.

Most of us would run for the hills from a job description like that, especially after seeing the salary attached to it.

But fortunately for us, most men and women who enter the ministry do so because they feel called by God. They sense a spiritual direction in their vocation while most of us consider work a way to make a living. And despite the bumps and bruises and long hours, many remain clergy because it isn’t a job to them.

That doesn’t mean, of course, they aren’t human. Clergy often suffer in silence, with no one to turn to when parishioners criticize them or long hours take them away from home too often. They receive plenty of notes when they preach a sermon that is too pointed, but few kudos for one that is well polished.

So even though Clergy Appreciation Day was probably christened by a greeting card company, it is a good way to remind all of us that we usually receive far more than we give back to our clergymen and women.

Now that I think about it, I may bake a cake for my minister, and send a plant, and sign him up for a fruit basket each month, and maybe he’d like a new pen. …

MJP END BOURKE