Fish Bowl

One of the things they never tell you about vocational ministry is living in the “fish bowl”. That means that your entire life is open for everybody to see AND discuss. Doesn’t matter how big or small the church is but the bigger the church the more discussions. You choice of movies, schools, sports teams, how you behave watching a ballgame, what kind of swimsuits your kids wear, all of it is up for discussion.

Now that wouldn’t be bad if all they did was talk. No big deal, you can handle being the topic of Sunday lunch conversation. The problem is in every church there are enough petty, self-righteous hypocrites that will try to get your butt fired if they don’t agree with your choices. Not what the Bible says is the standard but what is their personal preference.

Every pastor says they don’t care what people think, I’m going to follow the bible. 99% of pastors who say that are lying. Not to hide anything but because they’ve got kids to feed, houses to pay for and college educations to save for. Church work is a calling but it’s also a job.

I’ve got two personal examples:

One is about a friend of mine who pastored a very large church on the west coast. His salary was $250,000 per year. Yep, you read that right, a quarter of a million dollars per year. One day a church member came up to him and said “Pastor, you don’t get it. Every Sunday you’re on “American Idol” and this church is full of Simons” My friend dealt with the pressure very badly and is now out of church work. The fish bowl got to him.

If you would have asked him before his crash if he cared what people thought of him he would have said “Nope, I’m live by God’s standard not mans.” Guess what? He would have lied to you. He did care and there was a very pragmatic side of him that had to care. Church work was his livelyhood.

Story number 2. A staff member begins playing in restaurants that also had bars as a way to meet unchurched people. He didn’t drink while he played, he just played music. He had not violated the terms of his employment in any way but because a bunch of hypocrites got their non-bible knowing panties in a wad, he was banished from the stage. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he probably was about to be out of a job so he left very quickly.

There were no biblical prohibitions broken in either story just life in the fish bowl.

I spent the last 11 years of my life having to consider what “they”, that small group of vocal people in the church would think about everything I did. What if they saw me going into this movie? What if they saw me drinking a beer? What if they saw my kids wearing that ? Part of me wanted to say I only cared about what God said but the truth was I HAD to think about how it was perceived because it was my job and I knew that I was only one bad personnel team meeting away from being on the street.

Now that I’ve been on the outside for a few months I am finally developing a “it only matters what God thinks” attitude about life. It’s not coming easily but every time I choose to follow God instead of what “they” think, I feel a little more free. And that’s a good thing.