Your Pastor’s Easter Hangover

Ever wonder what your pastor feels the week after Easter? It happens every year to pastors: the Easter Hangover. It’s the fog and haze of leaving it all out on the field Easter Sunday and then still having to go back to work the next week. Pastors work hard for Easter. It’s their ‘Superbowl.’ When all is said and done, they’re wiped out. Here’s how their next day typically goes:

8:00 am – Extra big pot of coffee. The pastor walks around an empty church building that looks like a Mardi Gras parade just went through it. The place is trashed.

9:00 am – Your pastor still hasn’t quite woken up yet. The pastor talks with the other staff, but keeps intentionally directing the conversation back the large crowds yesterday, in an attempt to bask in the glory of Easter Sunday a little while longer.

10:00 am – Now the pastor has moved onto church gossip with the secretary. “I saw the Smiths back yesterday.” The pastor is convinced that his witty illustrations from the day before will bring those wayward souls back next week.

11:00 am – The offering numbers came in from Easter Sunday. The pastor now entertains visions of grandeur, imagining a life where Easter attendance and Easter giving happen every week.

12:00 pm – The pastor goes to lunch planning the next building campaign for his church.

2:00 pm – After a two hour lunch (if he deserves an extra long lunch, today is the day), the pastor comes back to encounter his first complaint: Sister Mary thought there were too many people yesterday. She couldn’t get her normal pew. She demands a callback.

3:00 pm – The pastor learns that his bump in attendance numbers were mostly out-of-town guests who came in visiting family. None of them will be back next week.

4:00 pm – A creeping dread begins to settle in when the pastor realizes that next Sunday is coming up and he has no idea what he’s going to talk about.

5:00 pm – Only 364 more days until next Easter.

obviously this is partially tongue-in-cheek, but I won’t tell you which parts 🙂