Insurgent Advice for Pastors (Parishioners Welcome to Listen In)

            We all know that ministers are supposed to be great preachers, Bible scholars, and culture critics. They should have a rich interior life, great emotional intelligence, and manage time effectively. And so on.

            But there’s more. Stuff they don’t necessarily talk much about in seminary. So, what follows is my insurgent advice for young pastors. Take it with a grain of salt, since my experience may not be universally applicable. Still, this is the sort of stuff I would talk about if I were invited to a seminary ministry class. And, from another angle, it is the sort of insight that parishioners can use to support and encourage their pastor.

            One: Friends. For reasons I’ve never fully grasped, I find that ministers rarely make good friends with other ministers in their community. Partly, this is my fault. If making new friends isn’t my priority, it won’t happen. If I won’t brave time in traffic to get to the coffee shop, it won’t happen. If I don’t pick up the phone and ask about stopping by, I won’t. And if my internal theological or professional “weigh and evaluate,” apparatus is too finely tuned, I’ll be too judgmental.

            Still, even when I try to overcome these personal challenges and I do meet other ministers I rarely find my interest reciprocated. Maybe I’m just hard to like, but, from my conversations with fellow ministers I know in other contexts, I sense this reticence to connect is widespread. I think part of it is rooted in the temptation we all have to brag about how things are going rather than get real—and bragging is irritating.

            Ultimately, however, no man or woman is an island. We all need friends. So, if it isn’t going to be other ministers, it still needs to be someone else. Find friends! They are one of life’s greatest pleasures.

What does it take?

            Two: Loose ends. They are both unavoidable and precious. Unavoidable because you may have as many as two or three hundred “bosses” in your congregation, parishioners who feel strongly about “their” church and how it is going. They see you as many things—but also as their employee. So, that comes with lots of expectations. Your email box will fill up with their advice, queries, and complaints. They will corner you in the hallway to fret and direct and complain about everything from youth ministry to janitors to music selection. It adds up to a lot of emails that need to be answered, promises that need to be kept, serious concerns that must be addressed, and phone calls to make. Loose ends. Tough stuff.

            But loose ends are precious too, because each one—every email waiting for an answer, every expectation laid upon you in person, every appointment you need to make or keep—every loose end is a great opportunity. When you tie up loose ends you connect, you show yourself to be a caring minister, and you create trust. Tying up loose ends makes you real to other people, helps you laugh or weep with them, embrace or nudge. Loose ends are precious because they are a raw material ministry provides for connecting you more deeply with parishioners.

            So, tabulate those loose ends. Keep “to do,” lists. Answer every email religiously (spiritually?). Stay organized. Connect.

            Three: Anxiety is a fact of life in ministry. I used to handle anxiety easily, but it gets tougher and tougher as I get older—a pattern I’m seeing over and over among colleagues.  I’m not sure why. For me, it’s partly my nature. It is that unending sense that there is always more I could do (see two, above and four, below). And I’m anxious because of the ever-increasing complexity of the job itself. To make matters worse, fewer and fewer people are going to church. Success in growing churches is rare. But expectations for ministers remain high.

            What can I say? Most interesting jobs are more complex than they used to be. Most interesting jobs are never done.

            The thing is, all of us need to take anxiety seriously. Don’t drink too much. Don’t take it out on others. Face anxiety straight up without blaming others. Get counselling if your anxiety is extreme. Practice prayer or mindfulness meditation or a hobby or sports or long walks or best of all, all of these things, because they do give relief. Confide in your partner or a friend who will listen. Read up on anxiety. Get to know all about your enemy. Tackle it. If you don’t, your anxiety will stop being a helpful goad encouraging you to do what really matters, and will start being a corrosive force that saps your life of pleasure.

            Four: Relax. Even though the Bible loudly promotes the idea of Sabbath, too many ministers find it really hard to take time off. There are those loose ends I mentioned in two, above. And anxiety can sometimes fuel increasingly less productive attempts to get on top of things—attempts that take more and more time and that become a vicious cycle. What happens, eventually, if you don’t take enough time for yourself, is that you start spinning your wheels. Your time at work becomes less productive. You play Solitaire to avoid difficult tasks. Resentment about being busy builds. Things slide.

            So, take time off: every day, every week, and every year. Walk the dog. Pick up a novel. Visit friends. Play a game of Scrabble. It takes discipline and self-understanding to get the balance right and to stay organized enough to leave time for yourself. If you don’t try, however, you are not going to make it as a minister, because you will burn out—and probably with lots of unfair resentment to spare.

            Five: Flexibility. Ministry isn’t unique. Lots of jobs come with huge responsibilities, stress, potential conflict, anxiety, and high expectations. But ministry is very special too. We usually have a great deal of flexibility in how we structure our days and lives. We’re not expected to clock in or out. We can arrange, on almost any day, to either golf with a friend or be home when the kids return from school. We need to recognize that flexibility, exploit and enjoy it. It is one of the things I most love about my job.

            So, don’t complain about the unreal expectations placed on us ministers unless you also own up to some of our great benefits. And perhaps most important, be disciplined about both taking advantage of your flexibility, and about not using it to waste your time.

            Six: Don’t show contempt—even in private. If there is one quality in a minister that, from my perspective and experience at least, suggests failure, it is a penchant for complaining about your parishioners or refusing to hold them in high regard or even attacking them publically from the pulpit.

            People catch on when you don’t hold them in high esteem. You can’t hide contempt for long. People have a sixth sense for it, even if you think you’re putting on a great show. Don’t be condescending. Don’t mock in private. Don’t disparage parishioners to staff or other parishioners. This is just really, really dumb. Not only is showing contempt hypocritical, given scripture’s own values, you will eventually pay for your contempt with your own happiness and probably even your career.  

            Seven. Congratulate. This is a corollary to “don’t show contempt.” Churches thrive on success, gratitude, and volunteerism. So, congratulate members or committees or leaders whenever there is a reason to do so, even if the reason is weak! A steady stream of congratulations from the minister sets the mood for all congregational interaction. Congratulations create positive vibes. Saying “thanks,” makes people happy and encourages them to volunteer again. Every church needs to be a place where people are happy to leave with a job to do, and the expectation that they will be thanked helps make it so.

            Eight: Moving on. Leaving your current charge can relieve some stresses. You get out from under a lot of loose ends. You don’t have to repair those difficult relations that mark every ministry stop. You can skimp on sermon preparation by starting out with oldies but goodies in your barrel.

            But moving also creates great stress—just check out one of those web pages that lists the most stressful activities people regularly engage in. Moving is right up there with things like death in the family and marital breakdown. What’s more, many ministerial moves are to distant cities where you may not have friends or family and the support they offer.

            Moving is hard on kids too—though you never really know how hard till they tell you about it twenty years later. And ultimately, honeymoons in new churches only last a few months, and then it will be back to all the usual challenges, stresses, and strains. So, before you move, think twice—because moves are about you and your family’s long-term health as much as they are about the congregation’s.

            Nine: Exegesis. Exegeting a difficult text to within an inch of its life, as if this is what matters most about preaching, is just wrong. It isn’t the sitz in leben or unique use of the aorist that matters most about texts, at least week in and out. No. What congregations really need to hear about are the big themes of scripture, the core story, and how that stuff still makes a difference today. Instead of focusing on exegeting difficult texts, ministers would be way further ahead by paying attention to the art of actually getting people people hear the old, old story with new ears and interest. Spend your time on that.

            Ten: God’s gift to ministry. It isn’t me and it isn’t you. We all have weaknesses that, even if we recognize them and work hard on them, we are never going to totally overcome. We cannot be equally skilled at every aspect of our jobs. People will recognize our weaknesses even when we don’t, and they will likely grumble and complain too. If we expect or need 100% positive feedback about everything we do, we will all be unhappy campers.
           So, I try to keep two things in mind. First, I never stop trying to do better, because I have not yet arrived and with time I could do better. But second, along the way, I’ve tried to admit my weaknesses and ask for help—either for training to overcome my weaknesses or for other people to step in and do what I find most difficult. The alternative is us to live in a make-belief world with make-belief accomplishments.

ADMINISTER. OR. ELSE.

One of the things that amazes me most, thinking back to my first few years as a pastor, was that most Sundays I preached twice a week. It made for a busy life, as each new sermon usually took two days to write. But between being allowed to exchange pulpits once a month or so, and having a few Sundays a year off, I managed the two-sermons-per-week routine without too many problems.

I could never manage that sort of preaching load anymore. Why not? In a word (or two), church administration.

In my first congregation, things pretty much ran themselves—and if they didn’t, a layperson was there to make it run. So, when a new church needed to be built (around the bones of an old fire station), every detail was handled by church members—from building support for the project, to fund-raising, to getting zoning approvals, to final construction. Many members contributed free labor, as well. I didn’t have to do a thing, other than take a few turns behind the paintbrush and serve as a cheerleader.

Worship was the same every week—only the songs and sermons changed. On Tuesday mornings I’d pick the songs we were going to sing the following Sunday, write a few announcements about upcoming events, and pass them along to the secretary. Members of the congregation looked after almost everything else—nursery and coffee schedules and volunteers, committee meetings for education, building and grounds, as well council meetings. The clerk received all church mail and responded to it all.

It isn’t that I didn’t have a few projects of my own that I promoted and planned for. But the bottom line was that the church was owned and run by the membership. Volunteers were never in short supply. And the church template—what churches did on Sundays, in particular—was far simpler than today’s.

These days, things are different. It isn’t that there isn’t any more lay participation. In my current congregation, there certainly is—from the flower guild to the council, from greeting to coffee preparation, many volunteers participate in the life of the church. Still, volunteers, especially for longer-term responsibilities, have become harder and harder to find over the past thirty years. And when things are not going smoothly church members look to the pastor and his or her staff to fix it.

What has changed?

1. Most people have less time. Especially in large urban centers like Toronto, where most people now live, people are feeling more and more pressed for time. Traffic is a mess, especially in the hours leading up to traditional church-meeting times like breakfast and just after supper. What is more, with unemployment hovering between 7 and 8 percent, people have to give extra time and effort to their jobs. Many feel vulnerable. Again, time for other activities suffers. On the plus side, some people have less time because community—and even foreign—NGOs are also dipping into the traditional church volunteer pool.

2. A related factor, and probably the single largest factor in this list, is that many more women—once the heart and soul of church volunteerism—are now working professionally. They (as was almost always the case with their husbands) are coming to church exhausted. They want to participate in worship, but resist teaching for and planning Sunday School, babysitting during the service, organizing social and community events, and serving on council. More and more equality in the workplace means more and more tired, stressed out church members.

3. Our culture has encouraged greater expectations for parental involvement compared to the seventies or eighties. Parents want to cheer kids on, drive them to and from practices, and spend quality time at home or on vacation with their kids. Overall, this is a great development, as many of us boomers can remember when parents were just too busy or distracted to spend much time with us. But a byproduct of this is that both parents and kids are too busy to help out at church.

4. Still, expectations for the quality and variety of church programing have only increased. No surprises here. In the era of TV preachers, megachurches, and a consumer-satisfaction oriented culture, churches that don’t shine don’t attract new members. They lose old members and fail to excite current members. People—whether consciously or not, rightly or wrongly—treat churches as franchises they have to choose between. Franchise outlets that don’t sport the best menu, the latest innovations, the best music, the latest technology all fall behind. Churches run as mom and pop operations don’t keep up with the times and fail. Ironically, just as members have less time for church involvement, expectations for what churches must deliver have increased.

5. Technology can save time, but it has also increased expectations on pastors and staff for fast response times about ever more and more matters. More insidiously, the very ease of sending off an email means that lots of them are sent! Even when parishioners are not deeply involved in offering time for church matters, they are making suggestions and asking for answers. Email represents a great opportunity to stay in touch—and to touch—church members. But it comes at a cost in time and energy.

6. Technology two. The Internet and other contemporary technology is great for getting your church noticed—if you are good at it. But that means someone on Facebook and Google Plus, and updating your webpage on a weekly or more frequent basis, providing great content for blogs, and regular tweets. As the franchise competition heats up, more and more resources have to be dedicated to marketing. Someone on staff has to be on top of this.

7. Bigger staffs themselves require more administration. Although my first congregation and my current congregation are about the same size, many of the factors mentioned above mean I work with a much larger staff than ever before—from 1.2 FTE to 4+ FTE. But working with a large staff, maintaining morale, helping them grow in their skills and keeping everyone on target takes a lot of administration too.

8. Laws have become more and more complex—often for good reason. But the burden on churches is also real. From the annual audit to voluntary sector criminal reports, to writing policies covering matters as diverse as sexual harassment to what foods can and cannot be served during coffee time, churches are being held to a higher standard. And the staff is expected to stay on top of the constantly changing demands.

9. Worship is better. More musicians playing more genres of music practicing with each other and looking for direction from staff, more thoughtful use of movie clips and other media, more drama and lay participation, more responsive reading, more consideration for historic liturgical practices—worship has changed a lot from the days I used to give the part-time secretary a list of six songs to put into the church bulletin’s never changing worship template. All of this requires a lot of planning and administrative work behind the scenes.

10. Denominational and local church structures are more intrusive than ever before. They always claim that every new initiative is going to save you time and help your church thrive, but the truth is denominational leaders have only rarely figured out how to offer real and timely help rather than more obligations. Denominations undoubtedly struggle with many of the same trends that local churches do. Denominational agencies and affiliated organizations are vying with each other for time and support in an era it doesn’t come to them automatically anymore. As a result, there is more and more stuff from denominations, more and more new initiatives, and more and more insecurity. A lot of pastors try to ignore the whole scene, but that won’t make for improvements, either—or eventually deliver real help.

We live in an era heavily influenced by post-modern suspicion of institutions. People think institutions are rule-bound, hidebound, and acronym-obsessed. They don’t like the rules, regulations, master plans, and perceived coerciveness of institutions. They want church experiences that are of a gee whiz sort rather than church responsibilities that require time, attention, and dedication.

But ironically, as their other obligations make church involvement more and more difficult, and as they download their old volunteer jobs onto church staffs, and as they raise their expectations, churches themselves become more and more the staff-driving institutions that the same members are suspicious of.

What’s the solution? Well, it isn’t going back to how things were, because it just isn’t going to happen. Jobs will not become less demanding. Children won’t need less nurture. Technology is not going to simplify our lives. Commutes will only rarely take less time. And so on.

No, the solution, though counterintuitive, has to be better administration. As church administrators, our work has to become more effective from Monday through Saturday, so that our work becomes mostly invisible on Sundays. That creates the atmosphere—along with great worship and community that staff has done much to arrange—where congregants may become inspired to figure out how they can give more too.

What do you think?