I'm entering my 4th year now as a pastor and have been reflecting on how my time in the ministry has changed me. I came out of seminary with lots of really strong opinions and impassioned ideals. I wasn't shy about expressing them. In fact, I saw it as a sort of prophetic duty to declare loudly what I really believed what was wrong with the world and how it ought to be fixed. But somewhere along the line I have mellowed.
And I think it is love and concern for others that has done it. I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back, but I found out very quickly that as a pastor if you want to try to maintain good relationships with a wide variety of very different people, then you simply have to be more mellow about some things. For example, I have the organizer for the Obama campaign on the near Eastside in my congregation. I also have folks who are lifelong Republicans and probably would situate themselves in the Tea Party. Now I have political opinions. Anyone who knows me knows that. But I have had to shelve those opinions quite often in order to build relationships with a very wide variety of incredibly different people.
In some ways this annoys me. I don't want to become a cookie-cutter pastor who always speaks in empty, inoffensive banalities like the words you find on the inside of a Hallmark card. Changing my speech patterns and modes of self-expression hasn't come easily. It often makes me feel like I've had to sacrifice a part of who I am. Before pastoring I'd always been rather extreme and idealistic -- anything but moderate. I was the one to ask the questions in class that got everyone's blood boiling and I enjoyed it immensely. (It kept me awake. There's nothing as terrifying as boredom.) But now I play a very different role. My role is that of the unifier, the bridge between radically different groups of people. I am the friend to them all although they are not always friends with one another.
All in all, I think it's probably good that I've mellowed a bit. I'm not the one to poke the fire and stir up the flames any longer (or at least not nearly as much as I once was). But I have come to love people. I have learned what it is to shepherd a flock. Educated and uneducated, black and white, rich and poor, friendly and mean, believers and unbelievers, straight and gay, the selfless and the selfish... I've learned to love them all and do my best not to judge them. And that has made me a better, more mellow person. Or maybe not better... just different.
There's a fine line between mellowed and jaded. Perhaps some days I am more jaded. My ideals have faded like a t-shirt that's been through the wash too many times. I've been confronted with the harsh realities of urban life and ministry. But this too is probably all part of the journey. Maybe someday I will once again be a loud-mouthed zealot who polarizes people. But for now I'm Greg the Compromiser. And I can live with that.
