From a blogger at a pastors’ conference this week:

‘The opening plenary featured Brian McLaren, who talked about the challenges of pastoral ministry and what has been helpful to him as he’s faced criticism and difficult times. It was a well-done presentation of universalizing some of his personal experiences and applying them to the audience here. After all, some of the folks here may well have been some of those very critics. But all pastors face criticism and unfair attacks and can identify. (McLaren mentioned that his friend Bart Campolo told him something like, “The next time you get a hate e-mail, forward it on to me so that you’re not the only one who has to feel the pain of it.”)

McLaren also said that we need to be friends to ourselves, because so many of us are our own worst critics and treat ourselves worse than we would treat our own friends or enemies.’