Emerging Wednesday- burnout

I have never been a big fan of the "Superman Pastor." While attending college preparing for ministry, I vowed I would never let myself experience burnout and would never try to run my own show and do everything. While I think a little age and maturity have shown me that avoiding that may be harder than you think (passionate people have a hard time holding themselves back), I still think that if you as a pastor can remember a few key points, you're well on your way:

1. The pastor isn't supposed to do it all. I'm not a C. Peter Wagner follower, but one book he wrote, Pastors & Prophets, makes a really good point: pastors shouldn't and can't wear all the spiritual hats in a body. He/she is not supposed to be the pastor/teacher/apostle/prophet/elder/evangelist/caregiver. It will kill them to try to do it all.

2. Some pastors are bad at doing anything other than pastoring. Let's be clear: a pastor is someone that fosters relationships and communes with others in fellowship through life. They comfort, guide, and share with others and serve them. That doesn't make them a good preacher or speaker, though, and that's part of the problem. Some pastors need to get out of the pulpit, and some preachers need to just teach and let someone else run the church. We have titled people as "pastor" when they aren't, and we have asked pastors to be things they are not.

The paradigm problem is that the "pastor" is in charge, and only he can be the mouthpiece of what God wants to say on Sunday, and that's not healthy. Why? Because I don't think the pastor can hear EVERYTHING God is saying and I don't think one man can convey that message to the right people at the right time.

I was fortunate in 2005-2006 to work in a church where the head man was willing to share his pulpit, and all the leaders rotated and shared the pulpit. Some were better than others, and sometimes I wished someone would skip their turn, and sometimes I thought someone had something going and should go a few weeks in a row. But the overall beauty was that the congregation got to see the hearts of their entire leadership, and the church experienced the Word of God and the heart of God from different perspectives, different voices, and different styles. It was refreshing!

The problem is that if the "pastor" is relieved of the majority of preaching, then what are you paying him for? The idea would be that he is more free to pursue community development, counseling, relationship building and visitation. But how can you measure that? Will logs have to be kept? Would he have to report his minutes? The reason I bring this up is because tithers will want to know where there money is going. I don't like that, but it's going to be an issue.

I'm going to ramble more on this later....

In other news, the Cubs are 0-1. Surprised?

Pastors on the tightrope

I went to college and earned a Pastoral Ministry degree. I knew enough from growing up in church and hearing snippets of gossip that a pastor can go from hero to pariah faster than you can blink. Always aware that being a pastor in a traditional church setting would be hard, I knew that it would be a tough life. I eventually decided that I would rather serve on an associate level, freed from the responsibility and the stress of being the man on top.

I want to present this article by Jim Rutz about the infamous Ted Haggard scandal. Jim's not really going to get into the specifics about what happened, but he is going to raise some hard questions about the pastoral position in American churches. This is exactly why I never wanted to be a "senior" pastor. Here are some snippets:

"Yet Ted was and is a saint, just like the rest of us who have genuinely been born again by the grace of God. Trouble is, we all have dirty habits. Ted was more like the reforming alcoholic who really wants to quit the bottle, except that he didn't have a close group of fellow alkies around to support him.

Ted probably has a personal prayer support team. But it's almost impossible for pastors to share their innermost problems, even with a select core of parishioner friends. The word about the pastor's weaknesses will eventually get out, and then he will be out of a job. It's lonely on that pedestal, and very slippery."

"We can blame Ted for not seeking help. But there is a much greater blame in this case, and it must be aimed at the pastor-centered church system that does not and cannot provide ongoing help and correction."

Ouch.
What really stinks is that the reason the help and correction is not there is because pastors often operate under a zero-tolerance policy, while those in the pews can make the same mistakes and as long as they make their weeping trek to the altar during revival week, they get off with little punishment. For pastors, correction is often a U-Haul and tarnished record. I've even heard of pastors who went out of state to get another church, and members of the church that fired him tracked him down and called his new church members and gossiped about the man, claiming they were operating "in love."

The dilemma for me is that I don't see how this can change within the traditional paradigm, because I don't think the traditional church is willing to give up the pastor pedestal as Rutz aptly calls it, so the problem spirals into a chicken or egg coming first argument. You need a new system to protect pastors and help them, but you have to eliminate the lofty perch they are forced to live on. Which one comes first?