How Stressed Do You Want Your Pastor To Be?

by Rev. Mark E. Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

What’s on the list? How long is the list? How much time should it take to tick off this list each week? What MUST be on the list and what’s negotiable?

Pastors and church staff persons are employed responsible people like so many of us, working to fulfill the responsibilities of their positions. Yes, vocational ministry is a calling which involves the whole self. At the same time, it’s a job, with responsibilities and duties embedded therein.

From experience, I can tell you that clergy and church staff persons typically have way too much to do. Their “To Do” lists are never completed and the expectations of their people are never fully met. Leading and shepherding churches is a highly demanding and potentially consuming vocation, requiring careful management of self and the situation, for those who would continue on and potentially thrive.

So friends, how stressed do we want our pastors and church staff persons to be? Allow me to share my reflections on this question, followed by your consideration.

I don’t want my pastor to be as stressed as most of us are.

Remember during the pandemic when we all pumped the brakes and slowed down? Perhaps you were like me, vowing never to return to that frantic pressured lifestyle. But… looking around, it appears as if the addiction to productivity is back in full force, including the menu of activities at church. Do we want our pastors working 60-80 hours a week? I remember the Alban Institute doing research with pastors in the 1990s, discovering the average pastoral work week was 66 hours. Of course I want my pastor to understand the pressures we live with in our performance-based culture, yet I don’t want my pastor to give in to the myths driving this culture, too stressed to love well.

I want my pastor to have time and space to pray for me and us.

Have you ever received one of those notes from your pastor or church staff team? I can remember many; simple notes informing me I was prayed for on that day, with their signatures on the card. Wow, I can’t tell you how much that means to us as challenged spiritual pilgrims. Yes, through leadership coaching I know plenty of pastors who struggle to give themselves permission to dedicate time to praying for their people, concerned this appears to be “doing nothing” or being unproductive. But I can tell you, I want my pastor to lift me up to God regularly. There is spiritual power and influence there. That IS productive and well spent time.

I want my pastor to be able to show up for worship with hope and energy, rather than completely spent.

Sure, it’s impossible for this to be always true. I have been, and periodically am, a pastor. Life’s not that neat and predictable. On the other hand, I hope pastors and church staff persons steward themselves in such a way that they are able to come into worship with gas in the tank. And sure there are those times when God provides though our tanks are empty. I know what that’s like. Yet, dare we test God regularly, ignoring our calling to steward ourselves well? Besides, worship is when the church is most gathered… this is when we need each other and God. I want my pastor and church staff to have the time and space to be able to lead worship with their faculties intact.

I want my pastor to model what it looks like to live a faithful, healthy Christian life.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of pressure! And, it is a real expectation. Church leadership is not an impersonal activity, one where we can be personally disconnected from what we preach and teach. I want my pastor to reject the productivity myth; that we are what we produce. I want my pastor to demonstrate what it looks like to honor Sabbath, though it probably won’t be Sunday for them. Pastors, when you are unable to do this, ask for help. There are plenty of us who will help you develop sustainable rhythms and practices. Church people, our part is to adjust our expectations to allow for faithful and healthy living in our pastors and church staff persons.

How stressed do you want your pastor and church staff persons to be?

Perhaps this is a good time of year for you and your personnel team to engage your pastor and staff persons in this conversation, aligning church expectations with the outcomes. May we become effective stewards of this one precious life we are given.