Beatitudes for Clergy for a New Year

Post Author: Kate Mackereth Fulton

This piece, originally written for Clergy Appreciation Month (October), also serves here as a blessing for clergy approaching a new year and moving through the brief season between Advent and Lent.

Blessed are you who are showered with gifts and cards and gratitude this holy season, for your worth is known far and wide.

Blessed are you whose people greet Pastoral Appreciation Month with a deafening silence, and yet you care for them; for your persistent, relentless love reflects God’s love for us.

Blessed are you who are burned out on ministry or the church; for your charred flesh, too, is sacred, and your wounds shall be healed.

Blessed are you who are shut out of the places you are called to serve due to the systematic oppression of sexism, racism, ableism, or homophobia; for the powers shall be confronted, and the principalities disrupted.

Blessed are you who serve in episcopal or judicatory leadership, for you will endure if you share your burdens.

Blessed are you who suffer physically, emotionally, and spiritually in the midst of your service; for God watches tenderly over you in the sleepless hours of the night.

Blessed are you who wait for a call or a ministerial appointment, for the wreath awarded for righteousness awaits you.

Blessed are you who serve God’s people beyond the local church, for you follow the Holy Spirit wherever She leads.

Blessed are you who serve as chaplains, for you notice and name the Spirit at work in the world.

Blessed are you who got up this morning dreading going to work, for Christ suffers with you.

Blessed are you who cling to hope by your fingernails, for God is your refuge and shield.

Kate Mackereth Fulton has spent her ministry career seeking to bring those at the margins into the center of communities of faith and learning the power of vulnerability in all aspects of spiritual life. Her vocational focus is accompanying journeys of crisis and transformation. She is a contributor to Speaking Truth: Women Raising Their Voices In Prayer (Abingdon Press, 2020) and is a proud double alumna of Wesley Theological Seminary (M.A, M.Div).