Difficulties

Thom Rainer believes part of his calling as President of Lifeway Resources is to encourage pastors. He often blogs about issues that pastors face, and he typically “nails it” and I think that’s why so much of what he writes speaks to me. Today his post asked “What specific part of being a pastor is the most difficult for you? Here are my five tough challenges for pastors.” Here are the 5 things Rainer, who has pastored 4 churches of varying sizes, says present challenges to most pastors. The first five points are his but the comments are mine. I’ve added a few of my own “difficulties I face” at the end.

1. Responding graciously to someone right before you preach. I’ve often told the folks I pastor that I typically am not available before worship begins. I learned the hard way that the devil will use hallway conversations to get me “fired up” and on more than one occasion I found myself then preaching “in the flesh”. So knowing this tendency of mine I avoid conversations before worship begins as a safeguard to keeping my attitude right and staying in the Spirit.

2. Knowing what do with a staff member who is not making a vital contribution to the church. This is one of the toughest aspects of pastoring a multi-staff church, especially if your temperament leans toward conflict avoidance. Some pastors I’m sure have abused the power of the pastorate by letting staff members “go” when there was really no justification. As a result churches tend to make it very difficult for a pastor to deal with an unproductive or disloyal staff member. Unfortunately, the end result is that when the pastor can’t “take it anymore” he moves to a different ministry setting and the church ends up keeping the unproductive staff member. It ends up being a loss for everyone. The pastor leaves maybe before his work there was over. The church loses on many fronts. And the unproductive staff member loses because without accountability, there is no motivation to improve.

3. Loving a person in the church when that person is your critic. I know I want to be Christ-like and love people the way the Lord loves me … without conditions. These “critics” typically either throw stones anonymously so as to not have to take ownership of their comments. And the problem, at least for me, is that whether anonymous or not, criticism of the pastor often wounds the pastor’s family. This is the reason it’s hard to love those who are critics.

4. Preparing more than one quality sermon a week. For 19 years I prepared what I hoped were 3 quality sermons a week. The last year I have given over the Wednesday evening service to another staff member which has made it somewhat easier to prepare messages. But there’s the constant tension of making sure your sermons are constantly improving.

5. Doing the funeral of a person who was not a Christian. There have been times families wanted me to preach their loved one into heaven. I will often ask family members if their loved one was a Christian and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “I don’t know”. But the amazing thing is the number of times they don’t know because they never asked or shared the gospel.

6. Balancing the tension of being “available” to everyone and being “available” to no one. When I am available to everyone, those are the times my availability to God suffers. So some pastor friends allow the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction and they are available to no one. Thank God for great ministry assistants that protect their pastors time.

7. Knowing when to be “real” and to whom to be “real”. Most pastors know the heartache of being burned by a trusted friend. Jesus was burned by Judas. I’m not saying that all who at some point turn on their pastor / friend are “judases” … just that it is difficult knowing when someone can take my being real with them. We pastors often try, many times because of the high expectations for the office, try and maintain a pretense of spirituality. Unfortunately that keeps most friendships shallow and pastors dealing with the frustration of loneliness.

I’m sure this list crosses over to the laity as well. I’d love to hear what issues / frustrations you deal with on a regular basis. There is something cathartic about being able to put them down and take ownership of these feelings. Thanks for reading my blog.