“Prioritizing enough space for your soul—to live and lead from a quiet mind,” said Luke Simmons, a pastor in Mesa, Arizona.
“Sabbath,” said user Marcus Zillman.
Some of the respondents mentioned their own shortcomings, with one saying, “My own hardness of heart.”
“Besides the big ones that have been listed here,” said John Wayne McMann, a pastor in Conroe, Texas, “helping people (and myself) die to self. The protection of comforts and preferences over surrendered life to Jesus and others is exhausting.”
“I have a hard heart towards boomers,” admitted user Josh Barrett. “That generation has created a lot of issues for the church as a whole, the nation, the business marketplace, election focus, financial markets, divorce rates, broken homes, poor parenting, etc.”
“Leading younger staff and their expectations,” said Mark Ryan, who is Church Growth Project Lead for Elim Pentecostal Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Other responses included “finding the desire/motivation to stay in,” “unspoken expectations from people who have tunnel vision,” “understanding the multiple ways people view the Bible,” “therapy taking the place for repentance from sin,” “people leaving who you’ve invested much into,” and “all of it…..but if I need to narrow it down, I would say it’s finances, culture wars, politics.”
A woman named Wynn Moore commented, “As the wife of a pastor I say YES to it all and it overflows.”
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“I started writing several things but realized that for my current season there’s not a single ‘most challenging aspect’ but many things that come and go, a sort of drip, drip, drip,” said Richard Heyduck, a pastor in Texarkana, Texas.
“I’d love to hear your answer,” Michigan Pastor Tyler Sauer told Villodas. “First thing that comes to mind for me is a lack of awareness (me included at times) of how…everything is forming us into great Christlikeness or away from it.”
