The Hardest Part of Ministry

I am an ordained pastor, serving a rural congregation. I lead worship and preach most Sundays. I sit at hospital beds. I conduct weddings and funerals and baptisms. I talk with people who are struggling with their faith. I lead meetings and help the community discover its vision. I celebrate with people, I rejoice with people.

When people talk to me about what I do, they often focus on those aspects that deal with death. Most Americans don't spend a lot of time around death - our culture has largely sanitized the experience of death. Because of this unfamiliarity, most people assume that dealing with death is the hardest thing about being a pastor. It's not. 

The hardest part of being a pastor is saying no. 

Not just saying no when asked by someone to do some task, but saying no to yourself and limiting the amount of work that you do. The work of ministry is not a finite task. At the end of the day when I go home, I can't point to some finished product and say, "That's what I did today." There is always more to be done in ministry. 

There is always more to be done. No matter how much you have done in a given day or week or month: 

• You can always spend more time visiting with people who are sick and homebound.
• You can always spend more time talking with people who are grieving or hurting. 
• You can always spend more time at community events. 
• You can always spend more time reading, studying, and praying. 
• You can always put yourself in charge of one more project or program. 
• You can always spend more time crafting and sharpening your preaching and worship leadership skills. 

Short of the return of our Lord Jesus, there will always be more for those in ministry to do - some task will always be left unfinished when you stop working for the day. 

There is a great satisfaction that comes with knowing that tasks have been finished, knowing that everything is complete. And for most people, it is uncomfortable to know that things are unfinished. But that is precisely the nature of ministry - unfinished. 

But while the tasks of ministry aren't finite, those of us in ministry most certainly are! 

There comes a point when we have to stop. At some point, even if we could spend more time visiting, or reading, or teaching, or planning, we have to go home and be done for the day. We come to the point where we have to say, to ourselves or to others, "No, I can't do that." 

As pastors, we do this work because we think it is important. We are passionate about the Gospel, and we care about the people whom we serve. And this makes it hard to say "No." This passion for our work is precisely what makes it hard to say that there is not time for another program or project or meeting. 

Unfortunately for many in ministry, the first thing to go is self-care: being rested, spending time with family, caring for our own souls. Next to go is often the work behind the scenes: the hard work of keeping oneself prepared for ministry -- reading, attending learning events, all the things pastors and others in ministry do to make us better preachers, counselors, leaders, and pastors. 

And this is how burnout happens. 

In ministry it often feels like the solution is to work more. The voice in our head says that if only I could work for a couple more hours, then the ministry of the congregation I serve would be more effective. But the opposite is true. An overworked pastor - one who does not set limits - becomes more and more ineffective at the work to which we are called. 

This is the reality of living in this in-between time; when the work of the kingdom has begun but the kingdom has not yet come. No matter how much we do, the work of the kingdom will remain unfinished - and there is only one who can finish it. 

If you are a ministry professional, learn this lesson well: Say no. Set limits. Learn to live in that place where there is more that could be done, and some tasks are unfinished.

And if you have a pastor or other minister who you care about, encourage them to say no - encourage them to care for themselves, to set limits, and continue to make time to study and learn. 

Image: Antique Clock Face by Chris Willis (licensed Creative Commons-attribution)

What do you do, Pastor?

In a group of Lutheran clergy, the topic of "What does the pastor do?" recently came up. We all agreed that there are many things that pastors do that might surprise the members of the churches we serve. What follows is an edited list from that discussion. This list could easily be significantly larger. Call it a glimpse into pastoral ministry. (Many thanks to the ELCA Clergy group on Facebook!) 

Listen to you, your spouse, your child, your co-worker, neighbor, Aunt Betty, grandpa, and whoever else might need to talk. With no judgement, and no insurance paperwork to fill out.

Cook for visitors to the house, and for congregational meals.

Stop by the church at 10:00 pm and turn off the lights that someone missed earlier.

Share in the most sacred and profound moments of life.

Make coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

Sit in the hospital and hold a loved one’s hand  as he or she dies. Be a shoulder for family members to cry on as they grieve.

Just by being present, lower the average age of the congregation.

Water the newly planted tree given in memory of Great-Aunt Myrtle.

Take out the trash.

Attend sporting events, concerts, and other school activities for youth of the church.

Gain weight eating at every congregational meal and event.

Model the love of Jesus, even when you are in a really bad mood.

Help local police, firefighters, and EMTs keep their faith in the face of horrible tragedies.

Rush to the emergency room in the middle of the night when there is a tragic accident, whether or not it involves a member of the congregation.

Write a pile of letters of recommendation.

Write birthday cards and thank you notes. Lots and lots of thank you notes and birthday cards.

Keep up with all the news and how it impacts the community: read newspapers, blogs, magazines, and more.

Dream about the future of the congregation: What is possible for us? Where is God leading us?

Know who is in the hospital . Even when no one tells you.

Celebrate with families in times of joy.

Unlock the church doors at 8:00 am so flowers can be delivered for the afternoon wedding.

Visit with people in Nursing Homes and hospitals, knowing at times that you are the only visitor they will see.

Call Child Protective Services.

Visit the people that no one else wants to spend time with in the county jail.

Find the dead mouse in the church, hoping the smell is gone by Sunday.

Keep up with the latest in theology: Read biblical commentaries, journals, works of fiction, blogs, and monographs.

Learn how to change gears, going from mourning at a deathbed to rejoicing with newlyweds in the same day.

Unclog toilets!

Tend the headaches created by the previous pastor; create headaches for the next pastor.

Supervise interns and even have the nerve not to unconditionally recommend them.

Make jokes to reassure the bride and groom who just saw their unity candle go out right after they lit it.

Creatively figure out how to celebrate the major holidays with your family – knowing that you will have to preside at worship and then be on call.

Know that emergencies are drawn to holidays like moths to a flame. Chances are good that someone will die/have an accident/have a family emergency on Christmas, or New Year, or Easter, or the 4^th of July.

Fold chairs. Move tables.

Choose hymns for worship – Hymns that are contemporary, but not new; hymns that everyone knows but that aren’t the same hymns we always sing.

Learn to receive compliments well from loving and supportive members. Learn to shrug off unwarranted criticism from thoughtless members.

Help people to see (and then use!) the gift that God has given to them.

Answer the phone when emergencies happen at 3:00am, and still be cheery and ready for worship at 8am.

Listen. And then listen. And then listen some more.

Help people to laugh when they need to – Even if it is at you.

Let people cry when they need to – Even if you cry with them.

Separate the trash from the recycling. Make runs to the recycling center. 

Study the Bible. Read the Bible. Pray the Bible.

Paperwork! Write reports to Council, write reports to the synod, write proposals for committees, reports to the congregation …

Hear Confession  - sometimes formally and ritually, sometimes informally over coffee or a beer.

Lead worship music and hymns. Even if you aren’t particularly comfortable doing so.

Prepare for the unexpected.

Go to an endless stream of meetings: some that are life-giving and mission focused, some that are really boring and pointless.

Prepare 10-25 minutes of new sermon material for every Sunday, every funeral, every wedding. Rehearse said material, so that you sound like you know what you’re talking about.

Encourage and empower the members to minister to one another.

Communicate: through newsletters, bulletins, facebook, telephone, email, face to face visits, twitter, and any other means possible.

Be the “Tech person” – update software and repair the church’s computers.

Bury strangers, family members, and dearly beloved friends. Same with weddings. Same with baptisms.

Teach. About theology, about church life, about social issues, about liturgy and worship, about other denominations and religions.

Connect with wonderful colleagues to learn from one another, encourage one another, and to hold one another accountable.

Participate in the ministry we share as denomination and a synod.

Identify members who are doing amazing ministry without you. Support them and get of their way.

Plan and teach Confirmation the confirmation program.

Every so often, re-read the Lutheran Confessions to remind yourself what you are all about.

Find a time and place to worship when you are not leading the worship service.

Figure out what inter-personal and systematic issues are holding back the mission of the congregation, and help the leaders of the congregation to name them and deal with them.

Sunday morning: Look in the eye of  the member of the congregation who made you (or your spouse) cry with their thoughtless (or intentional) meanness, and  proclaim: “In obedience to the command of Christ, I forgive you all your sins.”

Keep up with the membership rolls, attendance and communion records.

Fold bulletins.

Respond graciously to interruptions in the “normal” (ha!) work day.

Visit with members in their homes.

Help those who come knocking on the church door looking for assistance.

Learn what needs an immediate response. Learn what can wait until later.

Discard the day’s plan in order to respond to emergencies.

Even though you work nights and weekends, make sure there is plenty of time with family and loved ones. 

Love the people. Love the people. Love the people.

What did we miss? 

Rollercoaster Ministry

Pulled from my archives from four years ago.

Just last week, I was making the 45 minute drive from Prairie Hill to the hospital in Bryan, Texas. It was a hot, dry day in Central Texas. The sun was out in full force, and the fields along the road had recently been harvested, leaving thick dust to blow across the road. I was briefly in the hospital, making a couple of visits, and walked out to my car to find a different world. On the drive home, my windshield wipers could barely keep up as I drove at half the speed limit, and the dust had become mud in the small lakes that had formed on the roadway. In an instant, everything had changed from one extreme to the other - with very little warning and very little time to adjust.

Life in the ministry is often like that, requiring quick gear shifts from one extreme to the other.

It is one of the facts of ministry that pastors invest themselves emotionally and spiritually in the lives and events of those to whom they minister. They rejoice when they are with those who are rejoicing, and they are mourn with those who mourn. In fact, it is probably this sort of emotional and spiritual investment that often leads to clergy burn-out.

What they do not teach in seminary is how to make the sorts of emotional and spiritual u-turns that ministry often requires. That day at the hospital, I went from the oncology unit to the neo-natal unit. Four weeks ago I went from a funeral to the birth of my daughter. More times than I care to count I have gone from a baptismal celebration to a death-bed; or from painful marriage counseling to joyful pre-marital counseling.

People have often asked me why pastors often talk about our work as being so exhausting, and why we are so intentional about taking time off. True enough, life in the ministry is rarely physically exhausting (although of course there are exceptions). Yet riding the roller coaster of emotional and spiritual demands can easily drain a pastor. It is tiring to go from being fully emotionally and spiritually invested with a family who is mourning, to being fully emotionally and spiritually invested with persons during the joys of life.

I don't really know that this is something that can be taught: you either learn to ride the roller coaster, or you don't. For those pastors who do not learn to make those sorts of u-turns while being fully invested in the lives of their parishioners, burn-out or disengagement from the lives of the congregation members is not far behind.

But for those pastors who do learn it, there is no roller coaster that is more fun or rewarding.

(Roller coaster image by wikipedia user Tinned Elk, Creative Commons 2.0)

I would love to connect with you on Twitter and continue the conversation there! 

Thank You

Given all the new people reading this little blog of mine, I feel like I should say something witty and clever. Now that you're here, I should have something witty and ironic for you to read ... something to follow up my "Crappy Pastors" post from earlier this week.

But I don't.

What I have to say is thank you. Thank you for reading these little rants of mine. Thank you for being people who care about your pastors. Pastors, thank you for taking care of one another.

"Get Rid of Your Crappy Pastor" came out of a particular frustration. Over the last few months, I have watched multiple pastor-friends get used and abused by congregations. It was made known that significant portions of the congregation no longer wanted them to serve as pastor, and their lives were made miserable. I have more than one pastor-friend who has been so miserable that they just quit - before having a new congregation lined up to work in.

So I wrote "Crappy Pastors." And it hit a nerve. I have watched it spread over the last two days. For the first day, 600 people an hour were reading my blog. That's right, in one hour more people looked at my blog than are members of the congregation I serve ... In the last week, I have had almost as many pageloads as there are people in Brenham, Texas. I am humbled.

Since writing this post, I had friends from around the country contact me saying, "I want to be a crappy pastor, so people will get rid of me like that!"

Shhh ... Here's the secret: We're all crappy pastors. Yup. I'm a crappy pastor. I regularly fail, let people down, say the wrong thing, forget important things, and hurt people's feelings. I am a crappy pastor. Pastors: go ahead and admit it. Trust me, it is freeing to face up to and be honest about our shortcomings.

And any pastor who can't make that admission is a crappy pastor because they are not aware of their shortcomings. We are all crappy pastors. The perfect pastor is like the Sasquatch: We've all heard of them, but no one has actually seen one.

We are all crappy pastors, because we are all sinful, imperfect, and flawed. We need the love, encouragement, and prayers of our colleagues and the congregations we serve.

And the congregations we serve? Yup, you guessed. They're crappy, too. Filled with sinful, imperfect, and flawed people who need the love, encouragement, and prayers of one another and the pastors who serve them.

The good news? Our God is head over heels in love with flawed, imperfect people. We are just God's type!

So thank you. Thank you for being people who love imperfect, crappy pastors. And thank you for being pastors who love imperfect, crappy people. And thank you for reading. One of these days another one of my posts might just be clever and strike a nerve.

Get Rid of Your Crappy Pastor!

(This post has attracted a lot of attention since first published. Thank you. Please check out my follow up post as well.)

I simply cannot count the number of complaints that I get to hear about other pastors. I've responded to such complaints many ways over the years. The simply smile and nod, without actually agreeing -- or conversely, the serious head shake. I've advised the individuals to go and talk to their pastor about their complaint. I've even tried to convince the complainer that their pastor really is pretty good.

But enough of that. I know what most of these complainers want ... They want to get rid of their crappy pastor. The sooner the better. And so, without further ado, six steps to get rid of your crappy pastor and get a better pastor in your congregation.

1) Pray for your crappy pastor. I know, you really don't want to pray for your pastor right now, but give it a try. Pray for your pastor's preaching, for your pastor's life, even for the pastor's family. Prayer was one of those things that Jesus was kind of big on, so go ahead and give it a try.

2) Make sure your crappy pastor takes a day off. Really, you don't want your pastor doing all those things that annoy you any more than absolutely necessary. Make sure everyone knows when the pastor's day off is, and that doesn't call on that day. If there is a congregational event, or an emergency, or a wedding, or a funeral on the normal day off, let it be known that your pastor will be taking another day off to make up the time off.

3) Insist that your crappy pastor take every week of vacation in the contract. Many pastors leave unclaimed vacation days every year. Let's face it - you don't really want your pastor around anyway, so encourage him or her to take all of the allowed vacation. And make it easy decision for your crappy pastor to leave town! Line up volunteers to take care of all the work around the congregation so the pastor doesn't have to work extra hard before leaving and when coming home. Offer up your vacation home, or a gift card for a plane ticket out of town. Make sure everyone comes to worship, so the pastor doesn't feel guilty about leaving for a Sunday.

4) Continuing Education Events. Speaking of getting your crappy pastor out of town, by contract your pastor probably has continuing education time. Make sure that your pastor is attending lots of events with exciting speakers, great preachers, and innovative thinkers (you know, just so your pastor can see the ways in which he or she doesn't measure up). While you're at it, go ahead and increase the continuing education budget - make sure there is no barrier to your pastor getting away from your congregation and to these events.

5) Take over the tasks with which your pastor struggles. We all know that pastors should be good at everything in the parish - from administration to preaching, from visitation with the elderly to youth events. Chances are, your crappy pastor has some places where there are struggles. Hire an administrative assistant. Get the parents and other volunteers to coordinate and host the youth events. Get a group of volunteers together to visit with homebound members. There are all sorts of ways to make sure that your crappy pastor doesn't mess up these tasks that he or she is already struggling with.

6) Encourage your pastor to spend more time in prayer and reading. Now that you have freed up your pastor from all those tasks that were the worst trouble points, there is all sorts of extra time. You don't want him or her to jump right back into those tasks and mess them up, do you? Encourage them to go and read, or spend time with other local pastors, or spend more time intentionally in prayer.

There you go! It's foolproof!

If you do these six simple things, I guarantee you will get rid of your crappy pastor. Get your congregational leaders on board with this plan. Recruit the key people in the congregation to help you with it.

Pray for your pastor, make sure your crappy pastor takes all of the allotted vacation and days off, send your pastor to amazing continuing education events, recruit volunteers (or hire other staff) to fill in your pastor's weaknesses, and make sure your pastor is spending time praying, reading, and dreaming.

Yup, that's it. Do those things, and I guarantee you will stop complaining about your crappy pastor. You will hear better sermons. People will feel more ministered to. Exciting ideas will start to come from your council meetings.

And all these things without having to go through the search process and hire a new pastor!

Take these six steps, and watch your crappy pastor become the sort of pastor you have always wanted.  

The Truth

Chances are if you have talked to me - or to any pastor - in the last two weeks, I have complained. I have probably complained about how busy and stressful Holy Week is for those who work in the church. And that's true. It is stressful. Four unique liturgies in one week. Four or five different sermons. Organizing all the details. Recruiting volunteers. The added pressure of knowing that, come Easter morning, we will preach to the largest crowd that we get all year. It is stressful.

But I'll let you in on a secret: We love it. For all the stress and headache and exhaustion, I love Holy Week. I love the experience of these liturgies - they are so very powerful. I love the chance to preach on these holy days. I love watching it all fall into place. I love being a part of helping people experience the drama of salvation.

There it is. I love Holy Week.

Now where's my coffee ...