The other day I was thinking about the importance of a pastor having waxy skin, so that criticism, the attacks of the evil one and the "tyranny of the urgent" can simply roll off, like beads of rainwater on a waterproof jacket. The more I thought about it, however, the image of a turtle surfaced.
1. A pastor needs a tough shell. This probably goes without saying. Pastors are often ego-driven people and we need to set up appropriate checks on that ego to keep both high criticism and high praise in their proper place (see this blog post from Michael Hyatt on this very subject). St. John Chrysostom writes that preachers should learn to disdain both praise and criticism equally. Pastors need a tough shell, to avoid the assaults of the evil one through their own ego.
2. A pastor needs soft skin too. Turtles have tough, protective shells, but turtles also have soft skin--at least skin that is vulnerable. So too with pastors. To me this is an incarnational issue. If the Son of God took upon Himself the fullness of our humanity, we are called to embrace our humanity as well: the pain and the tears, the joy and the elation.
3. A pastor needs to move slowly. This maxim is probably frustration for both pastors and the people they are called to serve and lead. We live in a world in which a text or email message can be around the world in an instant and a book can be downloaded to a portable reading device in under a minute. However, there is a virtue it moving forward slowly and patiently. And, as financial guru Dave Ramsey is fond of saying, "Whenever I read the story, the tortoise wins the race every time."
4. A pastor can move swiftly in the water. Once, when I was doing disaster relief work in the Caribbean, I had the chance to snorkel among sea turtles. I was amazed at how fast they move in the water. So too, pastors can move quickly when they are surrounded by the grace of baptism, and with a congregation of people who deeply embrace that they are all called to be priests in these same life-giving waters.
What do you think about this metaphor? What other images come to mind?
