Maybe It’s Time to Let Your Pastor Go
Infidelity, addiction, burnout. We hear the sad stories far too often. Faithful pastors grow weary under the weight of expectations from their congregations and the condemning voices of “you are never enough” from their own consciences.
Having pastored in multiple cities and various size churches, I get it. My first call as a pastor into the local church was to a small mission church. About thirty people had been gathering for several years but were not yet organized with a full-time pastor or elders. I spent eight years in that community and we grew to about eighty members. We trained elders, organized, built a building, and met faithfully in weekly worship. I was a solo pastor. It was a relatively small town. Because of the size of the congregation I had the bandwidth to get involved in the community. I started a pub run, hosted concerts, implemented a music festival, and served on the farmers’ market board. That involvement made me a better pastor and was a life-giving source of encouragement.
My second call was to a larger community and a church that was pushing three hundred attendees and multiple staff. What I quickly learned was that the internal struggles were so great that outward facing personal ministry would need to be put on the back burner. After eight years, I was tired, depressed, discouraged and ready to call ministry done forever. So I did . . . at least, for a short time. After counseling, rest, and wise counsel from others, I realized I was burned out, not from ministry, but from ministry that did not play to my strengths as a pastor.
When the second church called me to be their pastor, I think that a large part of what they saw in me was my desire for community outreach through involvement. The reality was that love was sucked out of me through what felt like the corporate church. Meetings, committees, staff oversight, training . . . all of these were helpful to gathered Christians, but I felt like a pot roast in a slow cooker being torn apart over the long haul. My love for community involvement took a backseat and it about killed me and, I believe, about killed the church.
I suspect most would-be pastors enter seminary because their relationship with Jesus compels them to want to proclaim the good news to all people. I certainly had visions of going to the lost and winsomely loving them into the kingdom of God. I also suspect that, after graduation, most pastors get sucked into the vortex of either starting churches by re-gathering Christians, or pastoring churches that started as re-gathered Christians. Soon they find themselves wondering when their love for people and zeal for ministry deserted them.
May I suggest that we need to let our pastors go? We need to let our pastors go out into their parishes to be with the people in their communities for no other reason than to enjoy people and to listen to them. Maybe “letting them go” is too understated. We need to actively encourage and make the space for our pastors to be in the community. We need to expect them to be with people who don’t believe in Jesus. We need not to see them in the office all day. I suspect that this simple act will transform their ministry, their sermons, and their evangelism. In return, the church will receive the blessing of a pastor experiencing the joy of their calling.