A Pastor's Joke

Lent is normally not known for levity. Nor, admittedly, is this blog.

The day after Ash Wednesday is therefore a rather unlikely date for me to slip a joke into my musings about the crying need for criminal justice reform. But there's a pastor joke I've been meaning to tell, and today I realized that now is the opportune time.

First, let me sketch my bona fides:

• I'm a preacher's kid who's now married to one. So I really do love pastors. :)
• At worship last night, I accepted the imposition of ashes, and am committed to observing Lent as a season of reflection and repentance.
• As a source for confronting the man in the mirror, last night I retrieved Kierkegaard's For Self-Examination from my father's bookshelf, and it sits next to me now as I type.

Still, even in a serious time of spiritual preparation, humor is a healing balm. And so, without further ado, I present a joke I heard from Pastor Duane Paetznick, who in turn heard it from his father-in-law, also a longtime pastor.

Q: Why do pastors get paid?

A: They get paid to be good.

Q: What about parishioners, then?

A: They are good for nothing.

[Herein ensues laughter, if the joke was told right.]

The point is that pastors, though called by God for a specific ministry, are ordinary people just like the rest of us. Ordinary people, equipping other ordinary people to do extraordinary things.