The tired pastor

Much has been written in recent years about the exhaustion many pastors feel. The pressures and stresses of ministry has led to many leaving the ministry and seeking other types of employment. There is no question that these pressures and stresses are real. I've experienced them myself, but I've also learned that there are some things I can do to help alleviate them.

One of the simplest is to take control of your schedule. I often joke that people who have nothing to do want to do it with you. Unfortunately, that is not a joke. Unless you control your calendar, someone else will. I recommend that at the start of each month block off times on your calendar for the things you are responsible for doing. If you are responsible for preaching each week, you need preparation time. When are you most effective in your study and sermon preparation? Many find their most productive hours are in the morning. If that is you, block out your mornings to plan and prepare your messages. You can then schedule other demands on your time at other times on your calendar.

When blocking out times on your calendar don't forget to schedule times with your family and for your own self-care. You don't want to schedule a deacon's retreat on your wife's birthday or your anniversary! Block out those days well in advance. Be sure to include time on your calendar for yourself. Remember...self-care is not selfishness, it is stewardship of a very valuable commodity...you. Take your vacations. Take your days off.

A second thing to do to help ease the stresses of ministry is to deal with interpersonal conflicts quickly. There are few things more stressful than knowing that someone is upset at something you've said or done. Address it as soon as you learn someone is unhappy with you. It may be something as simple as a misunderstanding that can easily be cleared up. There may be a legitimate issue that needs addressed. If so, acknowledge your part in that and see what can be done to resolve it.

Unfortunately, personal finances are often a stressor in a minister's life. Few ministers are paid salaries comparable to what others with our education and experience receive. Personal financial management is a course that should be taught in seminary. I would recommend that every minister take the "Financial Peace University" course offered by Dave Ramsey. It will help you get out of debt, avoid debt, build up an emergency fund and plan for retirement.

The final thing I'll address in this post is to set priorities. Some people act as if everything is a priority. If everything is a priority, nothing is. What are the top five things you need to do today? Once you determine that, you can then prioritize each of them. Number them one through five. Begin working on number one and don't stop until it is completed. Then move on to number two. You may not get to number two, and that's OK. That becomes number one tomorrow.

One thing I've learned in ministry is that there will always be one more phone call I could have made, and probably should have. There will always be one more visit I could have made, and probably should have. There will always be unfinished work at the end of every day, and I've had to learn to accept that. I'm not going to save the world today, and I'll burn myself out if I try. If that happens, then I'll be no good to anyone.  

 

Balancing the work of ministry

I sometimes like to tell people that pastors are invisible six days a week and incomprehensible on the seventh. It usually gets a laugh, but it does point out something very real about pastoral ministry. Many people do not know what we do, and this makes it very easy for a pastor to fall into two errors.

One is pastors can become rather lazy. As a resource minister with our judicatory I once had a pastor who played golf 4-5 days a week. He couldn't understand why people in the church had a problem with that. I finally told him one day that he needed to decide if God had called him into ministry or if he should get his PGA pro card. He left that church in less than a year and took a position as an associate pastor in another church. At a seminar one day his senior pastor confided to me that he could not get that young man to do anything without being told. I told him his associate was like an old Harley-Davidson. You had to kick start him to get him going.

This young man is an extreme example, but it is easy to let pastoral duties slide. Most of the time people do not know where you are or what you are doing. They assume you are ministering somewhere to someone, but nobody really knows. This can be true for those of us who have been in ministry for some time. The old sermon barrel can look pretty comforting even though those old sermons may not really be applicable today for your church. Some of those old messages can be repeated, and some of them probably shouldn't have been preached in the first place, but using them saves a lot of time in preparing a new message.

The other extreme are those pastors who work too much. A fully-funded pastor can easily work 50-60 hours a week, and some work more than that. Once you exceed that 50 hour mark you are probably sacrificing time that should be spent elsewhere...like maybe with your family. I realize that some weeks may require more hours than that. There are unexpected events such as hospitalizations and funerals that can take more time in a given week, but when pastors regularly schedule too many hours on their calendar, there is a problem.

When I served as a pastor I scheduled family time on my calendar. A date night with my wife was a weekly occurrence, and it was written on my calendar. If someone wanted me to do something during that time I told them I already had an appointment for then. There was never a problem. If a true emergency came up, then we would reschedule the date, but this seldom happened. I had set times for reading and sermon preparation, and I tried to protect those times from those who just wanted to see the pastor for a few minutes. (Have you ever noticed that people who have nothing to do want to do it with you?)

Every pastor needs to find a balance in his or her ministry. We have been called by God to an exciting, fulfilling task, but it is not a task that should consume our every waking minute. Even Jesus took time to go off by Himself and rest and pray. Many pastors could have avoided burnout if they had just created more balance in their lives and ministries.