5. Pastoring a church is so hard and so different from every other job.
I’ve written about this before, but among the things pastors should never say this is important: it’s time to stop whining about how hard you have it.
Publicly discussing the holy hangover, the emotional Monday morning effect that comes from preaching multiple times on Sunday, might earn you sympathy points with other pastors, but most regular church members think it’s silly. In their minds (and remember, perception feels like reality), you stood in front of people for an hour and talked—something they would love to do on a regular basis instead of working the night shift or meeting a sales quota.
Other pastors understand the spiritual battle and the emotionally draining reality of leading a church, but trying to convince your congregation of this will make you seem out of touch.
And in some ways, full-time pastors who set much of their own schedules, have work meetings over Starbucks or lunch, and speak to large groups of people for a living have things much better off than the salesman who has to meet a quota or the teacher who has to create lesson plans and IEPs.
