The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow: What Pastors Never Learn in Seminary

A few weeks ago I posted the following facebook status update: 

Exercising my vast pastoral skilz today which included: fixing the wifi, rolling out the garbage bins and unclogging a toilet.

The stories kept rolling in from folks who serve churches and have found great joy in the things that one does that not generally associate with being a pastor.  While one of the greatest gifts of pastoring is being part of people's lives during the most despairing as well as the most joyous times, most of our hours are filled with the day-to-day life of "running" a congregation. 

Some might say that the pastor should not have to fix plumbing, play taxi driver or manage tenants, and in the best of all worlds this may be true.  But . . . for many small churches from inner-city New York to rural Kansas to small town Oregon, the pastor must be a generalist, doing what is needed.  It is a calling to pastor a small church, pure and simple. Not everyone can do it, not everyone should do it, but when you discover the joy of this kind of ministry, despite all the crud one deals with, it feels right.  

This point of this post is not to debate the finer intricacies of the pastorate, but rather I would love to hear more stories.  I know that pastors over the years have found themselves doing things that they never expected nor were every trained to do.  

So . . . what are the strange, yet lovely things you have had to do because . . . well you were the pastor?

[Taken with permission from the blog of the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, originally posted Feb. 5, 2011. Follow Bruce on Twitter @breyeschow]