Why Your Job is So Incredibly Hard
“So now you’re the senior pastor?”
“That’s right,” I told my friend.
We’d known each other since our time together at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. In those days, neither of us really knew what being a pastor entailed. However, as pastors in training, we talked about what pastors should and should not do. We dreamed about pastoring our own churches and confidently expressed to one another all of our grandiose plans.
We graduated from school and I found a job as a support staff member of a church and then served on the mission field for a time. Similarly, my friend secured a position as an associate pastor at a church. After a few years, though, another church called him about becoming their senior pastor. He was excited. This is what we’d dreamed of together. Only a few years out of seminary, he was finally getting the chance to live that dream.
Three years later, it was my turn. A church called me to be their senior pastor. He was one of the first calls I’d made, excited to let him know that’d I’d finally gotten to join the club. I was pretty sure he’d congratulate me and tell me all about how wonderful my life would now become.
Not so much.
“Get ready,” he said.
“Get ready for what?”
“I don’t know what. Just get ready. It’s a tough job. Really tough. Remember all those things we talked about back at Beeson? Forget all of it. We knew nothing back then. We were idiots.”
“Man, what’s wrong with you? I thought you’d be excited for me.”
“No, I like you too much to be excited for you. However, I’ll certainly be praying for you.”
I hung up the phone very disappointed in my cynical friend. I just assumed he’d had a bad day. Perhaps someone had criticized his sermon from the previous Sunday. Maybe a committee meeting had gone sour. I just couldn’t understand why my friend had turned into a grump. I remembered well our conversations when he was interviewing for the job and the excitement in his voice when the church voted to call him as their senior pastor. Now, though, he was all about throwing cold water on my pastor parade. It didn’t make sense.
Until a few months later.
One day, as I was drinking water from the proverbial fire hose of information and issues coming my way, I thought about my friend. I dialed his number. When he answered the phone, I said, “Now I get it,” and hung up. He called back almost immediately. He knew exactly what I meant and that I needed to talk. He wasn’t able to offer many solutions, but he was a great listening ear.
After years of serving as a senior pastor, I’ve learned why this is such a difficult job. Consider that in any given week, you are expected to be an expert (and even speak for God Himself) on so many different disciplines.
- You’re expected to have an accountant’s grasp of the church’s monthly P&L as you sit with the Finance Committee. You’ve never heard of GAAP, yet an accountant on your Finance Team asks why the church’s bookkeeper isn’t recording accrued vacations on the financial statements. You try to remember the Accounting 101 class you took in college and then suddenly remember that you took a religion course instead because you knew that you’d been called into the ministry.
- In that same week, you get a call about a church member who fell and broke her arm leaving worship last week. You’re asked, “Does our insurance cover this? Are we liable if she sues us?” You think back to your classes in seminary on risk management and legal liabilities issues for non-profits, and then you remember that those classes were never offered.
- Then a deacon shows up to your door and let’s you know that the electrical panel isn’t up to code and wants to know what you think should be done and if his cousin who does electrical work on the side can fix it or if you should pull a permit with the county. Again, you think back to those not-offered electrician classes you never took.
- The chairman of the Personnel Committee calls you about making sure that the church has the correct paperwork on all employees and that I-9 forms are in a separate file. You have no idea what an I-9 form is or why it should be in a separate file, but you assure him that you will look into it as soon as possible.
Moreover, you are expected to excel in those things in which you did receive training. A couple’s marriage is falling apart and they want to meet with you, share their issues, and then hear from you God’s plan to fix their relationship.
The church expects you to be a great writer, master of social media, know how to put together a website and keep it updated, and communicate with those in and outside of the congregation all of the offerings and activities of the church.
You are expected to know how to organize small groups, recruit volunteers, put together a great children’s ministry, get students excited about church, visit those in the hospital and shut-ins, be a presence in the community, and have worship services with music that appeals to all ages.
Oh, yeah, and that sermon thing. Sunday’s coming, and you’d better be prepared.
It is completely understandable why the attrition rate of pastors is so high. It is a high-pressure, extremely demanding calling.
Adding to these many, varied expectations is the spiritual weight of caring for souls. The pastor — and especially the senior pastor — bears a such a great burden for the congregation. This responsibility is with the pastor all day, every day, and throughout the year. When a couple divorces; when a college student announces that she’s abandoned her faith; when a once faithful member quits attending worship; when there are hateful words spoken between church members; when the church declines year after year in attendance because it seems no one really cares about reaching the community… all of these heavy loads weigh on the heart, mind, and soul of the pastor.
In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth about the burden of being a pastor and missionary. In versus 16 and following, he outlined all the suffering he’d endured for the sake of the gospel: Sleepless nights, beatings, left for dead, going without food and water, persecution from Jews and Gentiles. The list certainly puts into perspective my own situation and the lack of suffering I’ve had to endure as a pastor. However, at the end of Paul’s inventory of sufferings, he wrote an interesting, revealing sentence. Added to all of his physical tortures was this: Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches (28). In other words, “Sure, I’ve nearly died from the beatings I’ve endured; however, those physical sufferings pale in comparison to the constant spiritual weight of responsibility I feel for the churches.”
Meaning, pastor, if you feel overwhelmed at times, you’re in good company.
Now that I have you completely discouraged, let me flip to the other side of the coin for a moment. I’ve served in full time vocational ministry for more than two decades. As of this writing, nearly 15 years of that has been in the role of a senior pastor. Even with all of the challenges, I wouldn’t ask for anything else. While there have been many hard days, the rewards of this calling far outweigh the difficulties. The joys of ministry — seeing individuals embrace the gospel, preaching truth from God’s word, leading a group of Christ-followers to embrace the mission of God, reading Scripture to someone who is in the hospital and bringing them comfort from God’s Word — all of these and so many more wonderful moments far outweigh the frustrations and disappointments. The privilege of getting to serve as a pastor is exactly that — a great privilege for which I’m eternally thankful.
In other words, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.