I have been hanging out with 60 or so Pastors for the last three days as we have been here at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center for our annual “Prayer Summit”. It is a great time of fellowship with lots of sharing, eating together and praying for one another. As we share with each other and pray for one another each year there is always a number of guys who are very discouraged, weary, burnt out, and looking for some answers. For the most part Pastors are a great bunch of people. Most work 60 plus hours a week at unpredictable hours that regularly interferes with normal family life. They do that for below normal income level often working a second job to support their families. They pray faithfully for their people, counseling them, doing weddings, funerals, visiting in the hospitals, studying hard each week to teach the Bible so that people can have an eternal relationship with God, administrating church programs and ministries, and all day long carrying a lot of concern for those struggling in life for a multitude of reasons. Then after all that they receive a regular dose of critism, gossip, and slander mostly because they represent God and people are often upset with God because life is hard. It shouldn’t be that way. God has forgiven each of us of everything bad we have ever done and we should be able to do that for each other, especially for our Pastors. The key to that actually happening is people praying for each other. I have a relatively easy time at JBC, and the reason is that there are so many people who pray for me, for each other and for unity and love to abound in our church. Each year when I come to this “Prayer Summit” and this is the 28th in a row, I am impressed and encouraged by the growing devotion to prayer on the part of Pastors, and I recommit to being devoted to prayer myself.