The occupational hazard of the Christian ministry and evangelism is discouragement.
John R. W. Stott
Those whom the Lord has destined for this great office he previously provides with the armor which is requisite for the discharge of it, that they may not come empty and unprepared.
John Calvin
For a year now I have been talking with pastors from across the country about the joys and the discouragements of their ministries. I have sat in the offices of dozens of these church leaders and read surveys from nearly two hundred more.
With some, I have been privileged to share in the high point of their ministries. “After ten years in ministry,” wrote one, “my greatest sense of encouragement has come this year. I’m enjoying ministry.” I’ve seen others in deep crevices: “I’ve never been so discouraged,” said a minister in his forties. “This week I sent out twenty-two résumés.”
What news can I report from the armloads of surveys and hours of tape?
A combination of good news and bad news.
First, the good news: Many, many pastors feel fulfilled in their calling and committed to their work. The vast majority of respondents to the Leadership survey said they feel positive about their ministry. Writes a Christian Church minister: “I’ve seen people changed by Jesus Christ. What else could I do with my life that would really count for something like that?”
The bad news: Thousands of pastors feel lonely, fatigued, discouraged, and ready to quit. Nearly half of all pastors responding to the Leadership survey said they regularly or often feel discouraged about their ministry.
The Channel Swim
The English Channel, that twenty-one-mile stretch of water between Dover and Calais, is still the ultimate challenge in long-distance swimming. “Ask channel swimmers what makes it tough,” writes Robert Glass, “and they invariably mention the cold. During the swimming season, the water is usually about 60 degrees. Nobody tries it without a thick coating of grease to hold in body warmth.
“Then there are the stinging jellyfish, the throat-parching salt water, floating logs, diesel fumes from the escort boat, winds that come from nowhere — a strong breeze can stir up swells twice a man’s height — and the opposing tides down from the North Sea and up that channel that drag a swimmer into an S course and nearly always add ten miles or so.
“At least two people have died swimming the channel, and scores have been pulled out, exhausted and suffering from exposure.”1
I thought of Glass’s account recently as I read comments from pastors who have written to Leadership. “My number one struggle in the ministry is discouragement,” wrote one pastor who is growing tired from the swim. One pastor who is suffering from exposure was blunt about it: “I’m in ministry only because I spent thousands of dollars preparing for it and I don’t have training to do anything else. As soon as I can, I’m getting out.”
“Discouragement is a big issue for the pastor,” says Steve Harris, pastor of Maple Lake (Minnesota) Baptist Church. “You can be discouraged by your ministry, and if you don’t do something with that, it can slide into discouragement with your life, with your marriage. Dealing with discouragement is a matter of life and death for me.”
In short, ministry subjects a person to certain hazards. Eugene Peterson, pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, tells how he was at a Red Cross bloodmobile to donate his annual pint, and a nurse was asking him a series of questions to see if there was any reason for disqualification. “The final question on the list was ‘Do you engage in hazardous work?'” Eugene remembers. “I said, ‘Yes.'”2
What are these occupational hazards of the pastoral ministry, these floating logs that may catch many ministers by surprise? What factors are most likely to cause a pastor to be discouraged?
The Dirty Near-Dozen
The Leadership survey revealed a variety of discouraging factors, but pastors put these at the top of their list:
A sense of incompletedness, the feeling that nothing is ever finished, nothing is fully accomplished. Says Rick McKinniss, pastor of Kensington (Connecticut) Baptist Church, “The most discouraging aspect of being a pastor, I find, is the incompletedness of it all. Your product is people, and they are always in process.” Because of that, a pastor can never go home at the end of the day and say, “Boy, that feels good. I finished everything I wanted to do today.”
Another reason for the feeling, as a pastor of a small church points out, is that “I have so many irons in the fire, it’s hard to concentrate on one and really see progress in any one area.”
The rate of my church’s growth. More pastors identified this as their greatest discourager than any other item. Writes a Christian Church minister on the West Coast: “In spite of ten years of hard work, there’s been a lack of visible church growth in my present ministry.” Down the road from him are churches that grew to several thousand at meteoric speed. No matter how many plausible sociological reasons there may be for the church’s plateau, he feels a nagging sense of angst. “I think I’m doing a good job. I know I am. Then why aren’t we growing?”
Lack of family time. Gary Downing, executive minister of Colonial Church of Edina, Minnesota, knows the struggle. “As recently as last night I missed dinner because of a couple in crisis who needed time and needed it now. Having to make that call home was so tough. You dial slowly because you know what the response is going to be on the other end, and you kind of wince when you hear it.”
Apathetic volunteers. “It appeared for a few months that the vision was being caught by our elders to press ahead with a shepherding ministry and a building program,” wrote one pastor on the Leadership survey. “But this was short-lived. Their slackness in doing the little things made me aware they could not handle anything bigger. To lead our folks further would only result in much more work for me personally. I just don’t sense the needed support from the elders and deacons. They say, ‘Yes, let’s do it!’ but then don’t carry out their plans.” Apathetic lay leaders have enervated this pastor’s spirit. He admits he has given thought to leaving the pastoral ministry altogether.
My level of compensation. Like mononucleosis, low pay causes a persistent, draining sense of helplessness. As one pastor put it succinctly, “It is hard to serve when you’re worrying about how the bills will be paid.”
“A few vocal members” are the bane of countless pastors. Three deacons, two families, five committee members — a tiny coalition that harasses a pastor with gossip and criticism. Their numbers are few, but their impact is great. “We had nearly completed a vast building project,” writes one pastor, “and some people in the church were negative about what I was doing. I focused more on these few personalities than on anything else. I became physically ill and entered a cycle of depression.”
My diverse job expectations/roles. Gone are the days of the parson who merely preached, married, and buried. Today’s pastor is expected to administrate, counsel, lead music, teach, write, intervene in conflict, visit, evangelize, and on and on. “I have thought of leaving pastoral ministry,” admits a pastor, “and what has most led me to feel this way is that the expectations are virtually unreal.”
Doing church administration. Many pastors went into the ministry because they wanted to preach, study, pray, and give spiritual guidance. Often they end up with papers at a desk. The administration ranges from the mundane (calling in orders for Sunday school curriculum, recruiting a third-grade teacher, and making sure the copier repairman shows up) to the mammoth (projecting and managing budgets that, even in the smaller church, may range in the hundreds of thousands of dollars). Phil Sackett, pastor of the Excelsior (Minnesota) Bible Church, admits, “Administration drains me because that’s not where I feel I’m gifted. Doing something outside your gifted area is more a drain than working in line with your gifts.”
Counseling. The final entry on the “Least Wanted” list may be something of a surprise. After all, counseling is at the heart of the ministerial role; it’s direct work with people in a helping capacity. But many pastors said counseling wears them down. Part of the reason may be the increasing complexity of problems today. Another may be how quickly counseling can consume a minister’s schedule. But the main reason may be the simple fact that dealing with troubled people drains you. As one pastor put it, “The church seems more and more the place where people dump their garbage, and the minister is frequently the primary dumping spot.”
Inside Slide
The factors listed above are all external; they are part of the pastoral task and come at the pastor from the outside. Accompanying these are internal sources of discouragement, inner feelings and attitudes that may drag a church leader down.
“The pastorate isn’t supposed to be this way.” The pastor enters his or her work with a sense of divine realities. The work is filled with eternal import. He or she dreams of unity in the body of Christ, of spiritual growth.
Indeed, the pastoral task calls for that. As Gary McIntosh, formerly a pastor and now a seminary professor, writes: “Robert Schuller says the pastor ought to be hired to dream dreams and then execute them. Robert Dale adds in To Dream Again, ‘Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the dream must be there first.’ … Healthy churches have a dream of what God wants to do through them. And the pastor is the chief dreamer.”
And yet there’s a built-in liability: The person who dreams can be dashed when those dreams don’t come to pass. To be successful a pastor must dream, but to do so is to invite disappointment.
Paired with this is the common clerical question, Am I doing any good? Pastors, who deal with matters of the spirit, have a tough time quantifying their work. Few clear bench marks exist. Says Robert Hudnut, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Winnetka, Illinois: “I find that on some Saturday nights I’m asking, Am I doing anything worthwhile? Have I made any difference in anybody’s life? How many have turned the corner for Christ? The other day I was talking with my mother about my job. She said, ‘You’re making a wonderful contribution with your life.’ I want to believe that, but sometimes I wonder.”
“I can’t talk to anyone.” Pastors listen to members’ deepest problems — and must keep the information confidential. Ben Haden, pastor of Chattanooga, Tennessee’s, First Presbyterian Church, says, “So much of what you know, you cannot share with anyone else without breaching confidence, and nothing destroys ministry more quickly than running off at the mouth.”
Even basic concerns about the church or worries about the ministry can’t be shared with members of the congregation for fear they will create ripples of unrest.
Related to this is the feeling expressed by Steve Harris: “Nobody outside the pastorate really understands what it’s like.”
“Every day I am under the pressure of my concern for all the churches,” was the way the apostle Paul described a final inner difficulty for the church leader. “When someone is weak, then I feel weak too; when someone is led into sin, I am filled with distress” (2 Cor. 11:28-29, gnb). A parent feels pain when a six-year-old daughter falls off her bike and has to be rushed to the emergency room. In the same way, a pastor, charged with the spiritual care of many people, feels pain when any one of them falls into sin, is sick, or gets hurt.
Resources
Though it’s essential to understand what causes discouragement, we must keep in mind the joys and the encouragements of ministry, the substantial and overwhelming resources on the pastor’s side. Caleb and Joshua, the two spies who brought a positive report on the Land, recognized honestly the giants they faced but remembered as well, “We are strong enough to conquer.”
One survey response that impressed me was from a minister in his fifties who reflected on his current pastorate, a situation of immense pain. “Church morale has seemed to drop,” he wrote, “and people have been leaving. Attendance is on the decline, for a number of reasons. The community has been hit by a serious economic crunch, causing many to move away. Then I had to deal with a couple of discipline problems in the church, and even though the church lay leaders were also involved, the burden for those people leaving was placed on me. I’ve had just about all I can take.”
But this minister is not giving up. He’s not looking to leave the ministry. Part of the reason, he says, is his “sense that this is what God has called me to do.” But in addition, he has been able to remember the blessed encouragers that are also the minister’s portion. He has kept a hopeful eye on them. As he puts it, “I still have the realization that when circumstances are right, I can’t imagine anything I would enjoy doing more.”
What are these encouragements in ministry, the oases that have sustained this pastor through a trackless desert? We turn now to them.
Robert Glass, “The Channel: Still the Ultimate Swim,” Chicago Tribune (April 29, 1987).
Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1980), 67.
©1988 Christianity Today
