Are We Setting Up Pastors and Church Leaders To Fail? Part III

[00:00:19] Hello and welcome to Become A Competent Biblical Counselor. I'm Dr. Dave Jones.

[00:00:25] And today is the part three of our series on Are We Setting Up Pastors and Church Leaders To Fail?

[00:00:33] And this topic will be who decides what the pastor or church leader is supposed to do.

[00:00:41] 80% of pastors said they'd choose ministry as a career if they had it to do all over again.

[00:00:50] 87% of pastors say a strong sense of God's call is why they chose ministry as a career.

[00:00:58] Churchgoers expect their pastor to juggle an average of 16 major tasks.

[00:01:04] Pastors who work fewer than 50 hours a week are 35% more likely to be terminated.

[00:01:10] 31% of pastors indicated that conflict management was lacking in their seminary or Bible college training.

[00:01:20] 87% of Protestant churches have full-time paid pastors.

[00:01:25] Two-thirds of pastors reported that their congregation experienced a conflict during the past two years.

[00:01:32] More than 20% of those were significant enough that members left the congregation.

[00:01:39] So having read that information from H.B. London's book, Pastors at Greater Risk,

[00:01:45] who actually sets the agenda for the pastor and other church leaders in the church?

[00:01:52] Most ministers have too many bosses and wear too many hats.

[00:01:57] In many cases, congregations expect their pastors to do whatever task anyone dreams up.

[00:02:04] After all, no one knows exactly what a pastor's real job is.

[00:02:10] This may be the primary reason many churches stand still and are stagnant.

[00:02:15] The pastors are overwhelmed with trivia and have no time left for what matters most.

[00:02:21] One pastor wrote in his journal that if I wanted to drive a manager in business community up the wall,

[00:02:28] I'd make him responsible for the success of an organization but give him no authority.

[00:02:33] I'd provide him with unclear goals, ones the organization didn't completely agree to,

[00:02:40] of an ill-defined nature, apply a body of knowledge, having few absolutes,

[00:02:47] and staff his organization with only volunteers, who donated just a few hours a week at the most.

[00:02:54] I'd expect him to work 10 to 12 hours per day and have his work evaluated by a committee of 300 to 500 amateurs.

[00:03:03] I'd call him a pastor and make him accountable to God.

[00:03:08] While many pastors seem willing to settle for efforts to balance expectations,

[00:03:13] others insist they no longer want the job they're educated to do.

[00:03:19] And a few comments from people all over the country that are in this profession include the following.

[00:03:27] In missions, pastor writes,

[00:03:29] With respect to salary, it's almost as if the church members resent paying our salary

[00:03:35] because it competes with things they would like to have for our church.

[00:03:39] Only through months of waiting on God have we stayed in ministry at all.

[00:03:44] A minister's wife writes about the strain on a pastor's marriage.

[00:03:49] Unrealistic expectations from our church members pull my husband and me away from each other

[00:03:55] and many times hinder our walk with God.

[00:03:59] And how about this comment concerning a ministry received but nothing given?

[00:04:03] A flip side of expectation of a congregation's willingness to take ministry but give nothing in return.

[00:04:09] Such a situation was described by a pastor from the South Central United States.

[00:04:14] He says,

[00:04:16] It seems that so many of our members are more willing to have ministries so long as someone else does the job.

[00:04:24] And how about burnout?

[00:04:25] A pastor's wife from California writes,

[00:04:28] We wear so many hats.

[00:04:30] From our family, we provide preaching, directing the choir, pianists, special music, Sunday school teachers, bookkeeper, women's ministries, and many more.

[00:04:43] Burnout from sheer physical exhaustion is just around the corner most of the time.

[00:04:50] An insightful pastor from Hawaii talks about manipulation.

[00:04:52] He says,

[00:04:53] I felt manipulated and guilty when a non-member who came for spiritual counseling threatened suicide.

[00:05:00] She intruded on our family time, called at all hours of the night, and made outrageous time demands at the study.

[00:05:08] She assumed she had a right to do this, and I allowed it because I didn't know what else to do.

[00:05:14] A pastor who serves seven rural churches wrote about many things needing for the churches to prosper.

[00:05:20] He says,

[00:05:21] The pastor needs to do too many things well in order for the church to prosper, including administration, biblical scholarship, counseling, youth work, and pastoral calling.

[00:05:33] The results are either a dysfunctional family life or divorce at home.

[00:05:38] A pastor's wife from the Northwest commented about outreach dissatisfactions.

[00:05:43] She says,

[00:05:45] Our high-energy outreach efforts tend to generate little response, and our leaders blame my husband because the church doesn't grow.

[00:05:53] A pastor from the Northeast, with respect to self-imposed expectations, he says,

[00:05:59] Pastors need to set boundaries.

[00:06:00] The pastor and the people need to realize that the pastor can't solve all their problems.

[00:06:06] Without good boundaries, we take blame when things go wrong, even when we had no responsibility in the matter.

[00:06:13] A pastor's wife from Maine says,

[00:06:15] Counseling misfired.

[00:06:17] My husband is not a bad pastor just because a couple he's working with went ahead with their divorce.

[00:06:24] A new minister from the Southwest says,

[00:06:26] Comments about his expectation or theirs.

[00:06:30] He says,

[00:06:49] How about this comment from a youth pastor in San Francisco?

[00:06:53] I am my own pusher and worst critic.

[00:06:56] I need to learn to walk with God intimately, invest in my family, and still work hard in ministry.

[00:07:04] I don't know how to find a balance.

[00:07:06] Can you help me?

[00:07:08] How about this problem that a pastor from Michigan is having with respect to abusing his priorities?

[00:07:13] He says,

[00:07:13] I abuse priorities and blame it on the church.

[00:07:16] It's easy to allow ministry demands to make me reschedule family responsibilities.

[00:07:23] Unfortunately, years have slipped by before I recognized this error.

[00:07:28] But now I must face the truth that the church would be happy for me to put my family at a higher priority.

[00:07:35] Since I can, why don't I?

[00:07:38] And finally, consider a portion of this letter in which a pastor recaps three crippling backlashes

[00:07:44] that flow from unbalanced, unrealistic, and unmet expectations.

[00:07:49] He writes,

[00:07:50] Unrealistic expectations in a church are like a downward spiral and they harm everyone.

[00:07:57] First, the people become passive and dependent,

[00:08:00] believing their pastor's education is what qualifies him to minister.

[00:08:04] They conclude from this erroneous premise that they are unable to minister.

[00:08:10] The responsibility for ministry, therefore, falls completely on the pastor.

[00:08:14] The second step is to see the pastor as a professional who gets paid for ministering.

[00:08:21] So they reason, why should we do his job?

[00:08:24] They falsely reason that the responsibility for ministry falls totally on the pastor.

[00:08:30] And third, a destructive attitude springs from their passivity and dependence.

[00:08:36] Passive, dependent individuals often become demanding people

[00:08:40] who heap increasing loads of responsibility for ministry on the pastor.

[00:08:46] So everyone has definite opinions about what the pastor should do.

[00:08:51] Many people even think God gives them a right to tell the pastor what they expect

[00:08:56] and to make sure he does it.

[00:08:59] Unfortunately, some churches pass many unworthy or impossible expectations

[00:09:05] from one generation to the next without much thought or evaluation.

[00:09:11] Whether real or assumed,

[00:09:13] expectations choke the vitality out of a pastor's spirit.

[00:09:16] Then what others think or what they want

[00:09:20] tortures him with worst-case scenarios of what might happen.

[00:09:24] These occupational hazards extend into every dimension of a pastor's life, including his home.

[00:09:31] For example, pastors often think the community and church expect their families to be perfect.

[00:09:38] This bafflement shows in the comment from a pastor when he says,

[00:09:43] Our church has the stereotypical belief that pastor's kids are going to be the worst or the best.

[00:09:50] Others don't measure up either way.

[00:09:52] The pastor's wife summarizes this strain when she says,

[00:09:55] It seems everyone wants to have a piece of us and of our time.

[00:09:59] It's smothering us.

[00:10:01] And another pastor observes,

[00:10:03] My wife struggles to be seen as herself and not as the last pastor's wife.

[00:10:10] So is this what God intended for ministry?

[00:10:13] The answer is a resounding no.

[00:10:16] Rather, all this agitation about expectation is a contradiction of the faith they preach.

[00:10:24] One pastor opens windows of grace for others while criticizing himself.

[00:10:28] He says,

[00:10:29] To a great extent, I am a victim of expectations, my own and others.

[00:10:34] Many of us who preach grace as a way of life do not practice it in relationship to our ministerial tasks.

[00:10:42] We're more eager to please the people than we are to rest in the fact that God wants to use us the way we are.

[00:10:50] We preach grace, but we practice a theology of works.

[00:10:55] So, Counselor, that's what the church and pastors are like.

[00:11:01] That's the culture that exists in so many churches.

[00:11:05] And I refer to these pastors and their families as the silent sufferers.

[00:11:11] These people have no one to turn to.

[00:11:14] They feel the way they feel.

[00:11:16] I hope we've given you the little bit of an inclination of what the climate is in our churches and in the homes of our pastor's family and what's inside the heads of our pastors.

[00:11:28] For being a silent sufferer, there's no one to turn to.

[00:11:31] You're just by yourself, suffering by yourself.

[00:11:34] So, I would encourage you as much as I possibly can as counselors to not sit back and wait for somebody to come to you.

[00:11:44] Be active.

[00:11:46] Be motivated to go to them.

[00:11:48] Specifically, the leaders and the pastors and the associate pastors of your church.

[00:11:53] Let them know that you understand the struggles that they have and you want to be a part of helping them relieve some of that stressful anxiety and expectations that they feel in their own lives.

[00:12:07] I hope this helps you, gives you a new understanding of what's really going on.

[00:12:11] Thanks for listening and be blessed.