Work, Work, Work

One of the things you sign up for when you enter the ranks of professional clergy is that you are forever and permanently going to be a part of the working/middle class.  That's if you're lucky.  Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar to the side, pastoral ministry is not the path to fame and fortune, in fact I think defining what Mega-church pastors do as pastoral ministry is like referring to Walmart as "a family owned retail chain," it may be (sort of) accurate, but it also mocks the truth.
Pastoral ministry in a medium sized church (200-400 members) will put you in a position to own a home, a couple of modest vehicles and live with all or most of the modern amenities.  It is by no means a life of privation, but you probably aren't going to get the vacation homes, or the grown up "toys," you most likely are going to always have one or two "big" ideas (big meaning a cost of >$2000) that aren't going to get done right away (right now that is getting our fireplace fixed), and you're probably also going to have some sort of debt which must be managed. You will read articles upon articles by savvy financial types who give you all sorts of clever advice about "wealth management" and sort of sadly shake your head, knowing that you're probably not doing what you should in the long term, but you're doing the best you can.
Rather than bumming out about this, I understand that it is a place of solidarity with the vast majority of my fellow Americans.  I'm not going to get into talking about specific politicians today, but rather about an idea that I have heard put forth by far too many of them, Red and Blue alike.  That idea is that hard work leads to inevitable success, and by success they mean wealth, and in the scheme of the American dream getting rich is akin to the promised land.  When I hear a politician laud this dream to his or her adoring supporters, it makes me want to smash whatever is nearest to me.  It makes me increasingly angry because it is a false dream, it is an empty hope, and many of the false prophets of prosperity have a hand in rigging the system to keep it that way.
I have done a few different sorts of work in my day.  I have worked in retail, I have worked in production as a machine operator, I have worked in a skilled trade, I have been a Salsa Cowboy (creative marketing), I have worked in a scientific and regulatory consulting company, I have worked in a mail room and a library, as a painter and as a cleaner, and I have been a pastor of churches of varied sizes and cultural locations.  All of those jobs had their own challenges, and their own rewards, and the key to each one of them, if you do them well, is hard work.
You might notice a common thread among those jobs (most of which were part time/summer type employment), is that they are jobs that don't lead to getting rich, no matter how hard you work or how good you are at them.
I am in a boat (but more like a rowboat than a yacht) with school teachers and public servants, with carpenters, electricians, plumbers.  I am educated (Master's degree), and I work at doing my job to the best of my ability, and I'm never going to get rich. I understand this, and I have chosen to pursue a vocation that, by nature is not about just making money. And of course there is always the truth that life is not fair, I get it, but please don't try to sell me the mythology that millionaires and billionaires deserve what they have.  They do not. Nobody "deserves" that much of the pie, no matter what they do.  A CEO in an office may work hard, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that they don't work any harder in a day than a stone mason or a welder.  A TV news anchor may get up at 2:00 AM and go to work in the dark, but so do bakers and delivery drivers. Oh and certainly let's not forget the fact that we pay people hundreds of millions of dollars to hit things with sticks and act out the silliest of melodramas.
Most of the world works hard, but not everyone gets rich. As Bill Maher said, "If hard work equaled success, this country would be run by Mexicans with leaf blowers."  One of the interesting observations that you can make by watching Downton Abbey is to see the way that class differences used to function in England at the end of the Victorian Era. The servants did all the work and the nobles made all the decisions.  In that era both classes seemed to accept that it was the way of things, and it was only the advance of "modern" thinking that started people questioning whether or not it was right.
And certainly, management is a necessary function as well. Knowledge and expertise are skills to be put to work, as is being able to manage and lead people, putting together a plan and a team.  Yes, these things are valuable and people should be able to make a living doing those things too.  My question is, do they deserve to make three times what the person who teaches their children to read makes for managing a classroom of first graders and teaching them the ABC's?  I think not.  Should doctors get paid well for their knowledge and their healing skills? Certainly but why do they get to drive a Mercedes Benz to work when the nurses who execute their orders and clean up all the blood and mess can barely afford a second hand Toyota?
These are the faces of income inequality in this country.  Don't believe that poor people are poor because they're lazy, it's a vicious lie.  Don't believe that rich people are virtuous, it's a dangerous assumption.  And both lies you will run into rather frequently in the so called "discourse" that is taking place in our nation right now.
I believe in vocation.  I believe in finding a place where your ability meets the needs of your community, and I believe the best of all possible worlds is a world where everyone is free to follow that model, rather than following the money.  It's an ideal to be sure, but as such it seems a much better benchmark to follow than "greed is good," or "show me the money."