#657. Seeing your pastor in the wild.

You probably shouldn’t have a list of “favorite pastors,” but I do, and Pete Wilson is on it.

He’s one of the pastors of Cross Point Church in Nashville and is perhaps the nicest person I have ever met. In addition, he’s also one of the funniest and recently told me a story I wanted to share with you.

One Sunday night, Pete was headed back to church to preach the 6:00 service. On his way there he stopped at Blockbuster to rent a movie. As he walked through the door, the guy behind the counter recognized him and told him how much he loved Cross Point. They chatted for a minute and then Pete walked down an aisle. Twenty feet into the store and another shopper stopped him to talk about church. Turns out that guy went to Cross Point as well. It seemed as if everyone in that Blockbuster attended Pete’s church.

After a few minutes of conversation, Pete made it to the wall of New Releases. Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder, and heard a woman say, “Excuse me.” Believing that this was perhaps another member of Cross Point church, Pete turned, gave the woman a warm side hug and said, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Looking a little startled, the woman, paused, raised the movie in her hand, and said, “I wanted to ask if you had seen this movie.”

She didn’t know Pete. She didn’t attend his church. She wanted a movie recommendation. What she got was a side hug.

I love that story, but I think it highlights a question we all have deep down:

What do we do when we see our pastors out in the wild?

How are we supposed to react? It’s kind of like the first time you see your second grade teacher at Applebee’s and you want to run up and ask, “Why aren’t you at school right now Miss Grondin? Isn’t that where you live? You’re going to put a rip in the fabric of time unless you get back to Cox Street Elementary School immediately.”

And since those pastors in the wild moments can be so awkward I came up with 4 things you can do when you see your pastor outside of church ….

1. Play stump the pastor.

Bring up a really specific, impossible to answer in a short period of time at a grocery store check out line theological question. Say, “By the way, do you mind explaining predestination vs. free will for me, here in the cereal aisle? I’ve only got a minute, so if you could keep it short that would be great.” Or reference a really old sermon they preached by saying, “Remember that time you preached from the Old Testament and you quoted that verse from Proverbs? What was that verse again? It would have been around 1998 or so.”

2. Ask “is this what you do all week?”

Regardless of the “this,” that question is going to be a little awkward. Whether they’re playing golf or renewing their driver’s license, what you are essentially saying is, “Oh, see here I thought you spent all week praying. But it appears that you’re kind of like me. I suppose you need to eat too and go to movies but, I was kind of hoping when you weren’t preaching you were locked in a hermetically sealed prayer closet. Hmmm.”

3. Say, “Is this where my tithe goes?”

This is especially fun to say if you see them out at dinner and they got the large bowl of queso appetizer with chips the color of Purple Rain. “Whoa, appetizers? I didn’t know the church was doing so well that the pastor was able to order apps? And I see you didn’t give the dessert menu back to the waiter yet so apparently you’re going to order some sort of delicious after dinner chocolate volcano treat as well? With my tithe? Interesting. Good to know. Might need to bump that back to 7%.”

4. Tell them they’re shorter than they look on stage.

No one ever gets tired of hearing that sentence. I’m not a pastor, but after speaking at a conference a few weeks ago someone came up to me and said, “I’d never heard of you before, when I came in you looked kind of short and like you’d maybe have one of those mousy, annoying voices that I can’t stand. But you didn’t. I really liked what you did.” You probably shouldn’t use that exact quote, but please know that the pulpit adds roughly 6 inches of height to any minister.

If those options seem too complicated or ridiculous you could always just do what I did when I saw pastor Matt Chandler at a restaurant a few weeks ago – stare. That’s all I did. I couldn’t naturally figure out a way to work myself into the conversation and actually say “hello” so I just hid behind a brick column and kind of giggled like a pre-teen seeing one of the Jonas Brothers. But again, I’m not all that cool.

How about you, have you ever seen your pastor in the wild?

p.s. this should be one of those posts where people who go to smaller churches say, “I play golf with the pastor three times a week, he’s like my best friend” and people who go to bigger churches will say, “I saw my pastor once at Home Depot but got nervous and hid behind a row of broom handles.”