Are Your Expectations Too High? Probably.

It’s a unique call that we have — as pastors — one that necessitates our interest, and even interjection, into some of the most intimate details of other people’s lives.

A large part of our work centers around the spiritual development of other people — those we have been called to serve — and helping them to know how they can better work with God in the growing and maturing of their faith.

When this happens — when our students step into ownership of their faith and begin to take responsibility for intentionally pursuing Christ and living out their beliefs and convictions — it feels like we have front-row seats in the playing-out of a miracle! The transformation of someone’s heart, mind and soul — right before our very eyes. God’s work unfolding before us.

It’s a humbling privilege to say the least.

But it would seem that this kind of life transformation happens far less often than I would hope — which often leaves me feeling frustrated with students who appear far less interested in growing spiritually. I want them to want Christ as much as I want it for them — and when they don’t, I struggle.

Can you relate?

I don’t think it’s wrong to have high hopes for our students, but when our hopes become expectations — and we impose our expectations upon them — I believe we cross a line that is not ours to cross!

These words from Eugene Peterson have recently helped me to better understand this:

I was in the process of coming to terms with my congregation, just as they were: their less-than-developed emotional life, their lack of intellectual curiosity, their complacent acceptance of a world of consumption and diversion, their seemingly peripheral interest in God. I wasn’t giving up on them. I didn’t intend to leave them where I found them. By now I was prepared to enter a long process of growth in which they would discover for themselves the freshness of the Spirit giving vitality to the way they loved and worked and laughed and played. And I was finding areas of common ground that made us fellow pilgrims, comrades in arms in recognizing unexpected shards of beauty in worship and scripture and one another. I was learning to not impose my expectations of what I hoped for them but rather let them reveal to me, as they were able, who they were. I was becoming a pastor who wasn’t in a hurry.

So much depth and truth packed into this one paragraph.

What jumps out to me:

I wasn’t giving up on them.

I was prepared to enter a long process of growth in which they would discover…

I was finding areas of common ground that made us fellow pilgrims…

I was learning not to impose my expectations of what I hoped for them…

I was becoming a pastor who wasn’t in a hurry.

I’ve got a long way to go — no doubt.

I’m thankful (and proof) that God calls and uses imperfect people.

I’m trying to learn to hope for the best, be prepared for something less, and remember that I am simply a tool that God wants to use in His relationships with other people.

This really isn’t about me — but God’s relationship with others.

So here’s my question today:

• Where do you find yourself in this process of learning to live in the tension of hopes and expectations as a pastor to college students?

And for more posts inspired by Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor, see:

• Every Step An Arrival
• Helping Students Identify a Call to Pastor
• Pastoring in North America
• Local and Personally Present
• A Story Among Stories
• The Americanization of Congregation