7. We spend more time discouraged than encouraged.
Occasionally, people say to me, “Must be awesome to get paid to study the Bible all day.” Every time they do, I think to myself, “Must be awesome to be able to give someone the finger on the 520 without people saying, ‘The pastor at Redemption Church flipped me off today during rush-hour.’”
I’m not fully sure why that is the comment that flashes across my mental dashboard, but I think part of it stems from what I perceive to be the tone of the comment.
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Rightly or wrongly, I infer they are saying, “Must be nice to have such a cush gig as a paid quiet-time.” In all honesty, it is pretty awesome to be paid study the Bible, but it’s a major downer when people:
- tell you—after two minutes of uninvestigated reflection—that your 30 hours of study and two collegiate degrees were wrong.
- tell you that they just couldn’t stay awake today during your sermon, but no offense. (How about I fall asleep at your kid’s graduation and we’ll call it even.)
- tell you how you should have also said…
- tell you how Pastor So-N-So says…
Aside from these particular examples of challenges pastors face, I find that for most pastors it generally feels like the boat is taking on water more than racing with the wind—regardless of size or rate of growth.
Lead pastors particularly suffer from this since much of their job is to focus on seeing things get better, which often translates into focusing on the broken, lacking or unfilled parts of the church more than enjoying what is right and working. Many of the most faithful and fruitful pastors in history have suffered deeply with anxiety and depression for the same reasons.
8. We worry about what you think.
Among the challenges pastors face, this is only natural: we’re human and we want to be liked. Therefore, when we know we’re going to do or say something people won’t like, we worry about it.
Now when I say that I don’t mean to infer that it causes us to avoid the hard things. There are some of my fellow pastors who avoid challenging topics or decisions out of fear of people, but most of the ones I run with still choose to deliver the mail regardless of the popularity of its message.
Yet, we still worry about how you may take it.
9. We struggle with competition and jealousy.
We like to hold ourselves above the petty fray and reiterate, “It’s all about the Kingdom,” but in reality, pastors are a competitive bunch.
As soon as one pastor asks another, “How big is your church?” the game is on if the two churches are within 20 miles of each other (past 20 miles, we lighten up a lot and think each other is pretty cool). Within 20 miles, however, we begin to assess one another’s style, focus, message, sophistication and marketing. We gauge to see if it’s a “Goldilocks Church”—not to deep, not too shallow, but just right (like us).
If you’re too deep, we benchmark you as internally focused. If you’re too shallow, we brand you as consumer-driven. If, however, we conclude that you too are a “Goldilocks Church,” we then figure out how our church is still better than your church.
If you have lame amenities, we critique that you will never grow until you reboot that ’70s sanctuary. If you have awesome amenities, we criticize that you grow only because people are shallow and care more about stuff than Scripture.
Yes, we know it’s not right. We know that it’s ego driven, but we still fall victim to it. We believe our church is the best church ever, and we can’t understand why everyone doesn’t see it.
10. We feel like we failed you more than we helped you.
Most pastors will never be famous. Most churches will never break the 100 mark. Yet we all entered ministry to change the world and reach the masses.
With this, we know it is the expectation of churches that we accomplish this very thing. Every job posting reinforces the idea with the sentence, “We are looking for a man that will take our church to the next level.” Then when the next level isn’t hit in the way anticipated or within the timeline envisioned—we feel like we failed you.
This is especially true in light of the reality that we are our own biggest critics. We came in with expectations higher than anyone in the church. You look to us for direction, and when we feel like we failed to produce, these challenges pastors face make us feel like we failed you.
