You are a nice kind person, I’m sure, so you won’t want to do this. But if you aren’t, let me tell you an almost sure way to make your pastor or vicar look shifty and feel guilty.
Ask him a question. Not ‘How much of your last four sermons did you get from the internet?’ or even ‘How many non-Christian friends do you have?’ or ‘What is your Five Year Strategy for the church?’ (though those might achieve the desired effect). Try this: ‘How often do you work on your day off?’
Eight days a week
Ministers’ wives sometimes say that they find it difficult when their friends talk to them about their husband’s work and say things like this: ‘So he just works one day a week then?! What does he do for the rest of the time?’ What makes that such an irksome question is that the wives know their husbands would probably work eight days a week if they could. Church ministry is a drug. Addictive, adrenalin inducing, compulsive. The work is never done. Doctors talk about on-call rotas of one in four or one in three. Pastors may get called out much less often. But they are generally on call one in one.
