Finding Fullness in the Empty
By Rev. Jarena Hooper
“You can’t pour from an empty cup” but you can preach from an empty sanctuary! This is what preachers from all across the world have realized in the 11 months that have come to be known as “the time of the pandemic.” During the pandemic, we have experienced too great of loss to number. From family members to church members and financial security to food security, we have started a new year with the same type of losses. This is horrendous! Honestly and frankly, it is downright hard. However, this is not the only hard season pastors have faced.
Pastors are faced with a loss of energy, esteem, love, relationship, trust, and happiness. These losses happen every Sunday morning inside of the very church building that is now empty. As a pastor, I must confess that I realized—after a few weeks with a bare minimum team within the sanctuary during worship—that I was actually emptier than the sanctuary.
Year after year of preaching while pastoring and pastoring while preaching empties the human body—no matter how spiritual one might be. Some colleagues have the benefit of serving in a space where paid sabbaticals or month-long vacations serve to refill the pastor. That is not the case for the majority of pastors. So, let us use this space to safely admit we were empty before the sanctuary was!
This is a hard truth to unpack. How did you and I get so empty? Church families can be the source of love, acceptance, and joy. For pastors, they can also be the source of criticism, misunderstanding, and complaints. When the pastor is faced with those factors within the same space where they are pouring out, it creates an emptiness. The organist not playing enough hymns or the choir not being robed is not a mountain, it is a molehill. These and other molehills dig out of the pastor the love, acceptance, and joy that we are supposed to find within our church families. Remember, the pastor is a part of the family.
Somehow, the empty sanctuary has created a small family unit within the extended church family. The worship and audio-visual team have the same goal as the pastor—to offer a virtual space of worship with excellence to the extended family. So, even though the sanctuary is empty, it is full! It is full of unity, love, and sincere worship that is not concerned with personality but praise. It is no longer concerned with traditions but the transcendence of the Holy Spirit across the worldwide web into the home sanctuaries of the worshippers. Suddenly, the pastor has found fullness in the empty.
The challenge is when we all get together, can it be a day of rejoicing? When we all get together, can the extended family put aside the poking of holes into the pastor to ensure the pastor leaves full with the rest of the family?
