In my latest nonscientific Twitter survey, I asked the following question of pastors and church staff: What is your biggest challenge in ministry?
Here are the top 12 responses with representative quotes.
I’ve taken the liberty to expand most of the quotes from their abbreviated form in Twitter.
1. Apathy and internal focus.
“I have been in ministry for over 20 years, and I’ve never seen church members more apathetic and internally focused.”
2. Staff issues.
“I inherited staff from the previous pastor. It’s not a good match, but I don’t have the credibility to do anything about it.”
3. Leading and keeping volunteers.
“It’s a full-time job itself.”
4. General time constraints.
“I end every week wondering why I got so little done.”
5. Getting buy-in from members.
“I spend half my time developing a consensus from members about decisions from the mundane to the critical.”
