The challenge of church leadership

The other day Scot McKnight posed an interesting question on his blog. He asked:

"What was the biggest change of perspective from the time you were anticipating and reading about pastoring in seminary (if you went that route) and to, say, 2-3 years after you had been pastoring?"

It's funny, because I had actually been thinking about this (kind of). I had been thinking about how so many people seem to know exactly what churches, and church leaders, and pastors ought to be doing, and they write and write and talk about it.... And, you know, I would love to be able to read all the latest books, attend all the cool conferences, blog all kinds of interesting thoughts, study the Bible for hours and hours, map out my theological position on every little thing, but..... I just don't have time. And I'm glad there are people who can do these things, but there are just too many people involved and too many things that need done for me (as a small church pastor) to be able to do all that.

Anyway, I thought this comment left on Scot's blog pretty much summed it up. Erik said:

The biggest change for me is that the ideas and theology have faces, names, and a story to which I must now attend, rather than just making sure my theology is properly stated. Its messier, with probably the same amount of questions, just less easy answers.

Yep. And I don't know that that's a bad thing.