Home Pastors Articles for Pastors The Ministry Roller Coaster: 6 Tips to Stay On the Ride

The Ministry Roller Coaster: 6 Tips to Stay On the Ride

If you don’t navigate these issues well, here’s what can happen as a result:

  • You begin to resent the church you serve.
  • Your family begins to have mixed emotions about your church.
  • You stop trusting people.
  • Your personal time with God becomes clouded, and even dies for a season.
  • You dream of getting out of ministry.
  • You build up an anger you’re not sure how to get rid of.

If you want strategies to deal with this, keep reading. You can overcome it! I’ve learned to cope with all of this.

But in the mean time, how have you found this to be true? What have you seen people struggle with emotionally in ministry.

You probably think the only way to get off the emotional roller coaster of ministry is to quit.

It’s not.

In fact, I don’t recommend it.

You don’t have to abandon your calling, even though we live in an age where many do. It’s so tragic because there is a way to survive, and even thrive.

Believe it or not, there is a way to stay in ministry and not engage all of the emotional twists and turns that leave so many leaders wrung out.

Knowing the reason why ministry is emotional is half the battle, but the other half is about practices you follow to stay healthy.

So, what are those practices? What should you do to stay emotionally balanced and healthy?

Here are six that helped me:

1. Understand the perfect storm of work/faith/community.

Church world is the only place I know of where what you believe is what you do, and the people you serve are also your friends. You need to understand this. I wrote about how unusual and important this is in my last post on it so I won’t go into more detail here.

But seriously, if you keep this in mind, it will save you a thousand times over. Here’s why: Understanding why something is emotionally confusing is the first step toward untangling the confusion. When you turn on the lights, you don’t have to stumble over the same furniture in the room again and again, like you did when it was dark. So take time to understand how confusing ministry is and why.

2. Find friends who aren’t in your church or organization.

Be friends with the people you live with and serve. But find some friends you can talk to about anything.

You don’t need many—even two or three is plenty, but they can be invaluable.

If you only have friends ‘inside’ the church, there’s always a dual relationship. You either don’t disclose enough because you worry about being fired or inappropriate, or you overdisclose and you put a strain on the friendship because you are also that person’s leader.

A spouse or unchurched friend isn’t the right person for talking through every problem with either. Your spouse wasn’t designed to bear the full weight of your frustrations every time you’re frustrated. And your unchurched friends probably aren’t the right people to confide all your frustrations in either. Because this is the church you’d like to invite them to.

So develop some friendships in which you can talk honestly. It’s healthy. An easy choice is to find a peer (pastor or key volunteer) in another church or community.

3. Don’t base tomorrow’s decisions on today’s emotions.

This one is so simple, but so often missed. Don’t make decisions when you’re angry. Just don’t. Go to bed. Pray about it. Call a friend. Wake up in the morning and then make the decision. Or wait a week.

Don’t make the decision Until. You. Calm. Down.

You’ll thank yourself later.