I have this list of people that I’d love to meet and talk to someday. My list of these people is long and ever-changing, but I’ve gotten a chance to meet some of the people on my list over the years. Mostly these meetings always come up when I’ve least expected it. And usually, because I’m not expecting these meetings to happen, I don’t really know what to say. Now I keep a list of 20-30 questions on me that I’d like to ask any of these people just in case I get the opportunity to meet them.

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time with one of these people and run through some of my list of questions. It was probably annoying to that person, but it was awesome for me. One of my questions is “what is the most important thing that every person who is new to doing what you do, need to know?” In this case, it was a pastor. Since our conversation was not based on the pretext of me writing about it later, I’m not going to name this person, but they deserve credit for this. So here’s the question exactly as I asked it, then his response (paraphrased and hopefully not butchered too badly by me).

Question: What should every new or young pastor know about being a pastor?

Answer: The importance of relational priorities. Everyone [in church circles] talks about the order of priorities in relationships: God first, wife and family second, church third, work fourth etc. But I don’t know how often we live it. The best way to evaluate the priority of your relationships is to see what roles you are dispensable in and where you are indispensable. We are indispensable as the husband to our wives and the father to our children. We are indispensable in our relationship with God because only we can be who He called us to be and only we can be the child that He asks us to be. We are completely replaceable in our jobs. There is always someone more skilled that could do a better job than we are doing at our work. We are replaceable in many of the activities where we invest our time. When our time begins to become consumed with the activities where we are dispensable it’s time to make some adjustments. Balance in life is important, but we could all stand to invest more time in our indispensable roles.

This was a great reminder of something I thought I knew, but I know I can get off track in this area. Good stuff!