"I need you to do a funeral for my cat."
Yes, that is a request made to a pastor by a church member. And here's the stranger reality. I have heard from dozens of pastors who have had this very request.
I assume the cats in question were dead.
Though I have heard hundreds of strange and unreasonable requests made to pastors, five of them are common. In fact, most pastors will encounter all five of these requests in the course of their ministries.
- Ask certain people to leave the church. The common theme is the request to get people who are not like us to leave the church. A church member asked one pastor to have a separate church service in the trailer park for "those people coming to our church." Yes, really.
- Accept a gift with unreasonable expectations. The most recent was the offer of a $10,000 gift if the church signed a document agreeing to keep fresh flowers on his grave in perpetuity. I assume he meant the request to be posthumous.
- Do a pet funeral. A recent example was the request to do the funeral of a turtle. Can we really know if the turtle is dead? I guess our olfactory senses will confirm its death.
- Travel out of town to minister to a distant relative. I lead a pastors forum called Church Answers and get a lot of great input and questions. One pastor in the forum asked me about a request a church member made for him to visit a cousin in the hospital. But the surgery was minor and outpatient. The one-way distance was 225 miles. And the cousin was active in a church in her hometown. The church member left the church because the pastor declined.
- Leave the church. Many pastors are asked to leave the church for the most outlandish reasons. I remember the first time a church member asked me to leave the church. She said, "God told her" I was supposed to leave because I was bringing too many unbelievers and new Christians to the church. And then she said the cringe-worthy words, "They are just not like us."
Keep in mind, these five unreasonable requests are common. These are not the outliers. In fact, they are so common that I am now suggesting seminaries add a course for every one of them (tongue in cheek, of course).
You just have to love pastors. Their lives are often stressful, but never boring. 
Thom S. Rainer is the president of LifeWay Christian Resources.
This article originally appeared at thomrainer.com.
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