Fellow pastors and church leaders are always asking, “so, what are you seeing in churches lately?” One of the most frequent answers in the last few years is “pastors are tired, but they’re not taking the time to heal.”
Dale Sellers knows this well. As Executive Director of 95Network, he’s been very honest about his own seasons of healing. Now he helps others.
This article is an excerpt from his book, Stalled: Hope and Help for Pastors Who Thought They’d Be There By Now.
— Karl Vaters
Our oldest daughter, Tiffany, fell and scraped her elbow when she was a toddler. It was quite a traumatic experience for her at the time. However, Gina was able to bring miraculous healing to her boo-boo by putting a Band-Aid on it.
Like most toddlers, Tiffany spent the next few days looking at her injury. She also made sure everyone she encountered knew about it too. Once the Band-Aid was removed, she continued to observe her boo-boo daily as if to monitor its healing process.
One day, while walking and looking at her boo-boo, Tiffany walked right into our sliding glass door. Ouch. She had become so fixated on her injury that she slammed into an invisible wall right in front of her.
Tiffany’s toddler experience describes thousands of pastors and other leaders in the church today. Can you relate? You may be carrying around some devastating wounds that still need healing. However, because of your responsibilities, the time to heal isn’t available. So you continue leading as a wounded warrior.
Eventually the outcome is the same as a toddler focusing on a boo-boo—you slam into a glass wall. The results of focusing on our wounds are always the same. Inward focus stops momentum in its tracks.
The larger ramification is this: an inward-focused leader always produces an inward-focused organization. Outreach and church growth cannot happen in such an environment.
The Machine Of Ministry
This issue has given rise to a generation of pastors who have become doers instead of equippers. It’s simply easier to carry out tasks while injured than risk being exposed while attempting to train others.
A pastor’s inward focus results in unhealthy codependency between the pastor and the congregation. The harder you work, the more you feel affirmed and significant, which temporarily eases your pain.
Unfortunately, relating to your congregation in this fashion creates a dysfunctional church with an insider focus. The people in these churches are more concerned with having their needs met than with having an impact on their communities.
Eventually insider-focused churches slam into the invisible wall of obscurity. In other words, although they are still in the community physically, their ability to influence the community dissolves. Once-thriving ministries fade into oblivion because they lose the ability to relate to those around them.
Pastoring is difficult. Our actions while caring for eternal souls have lasting consequences.
Although we face many challenges, the hardest issue I dealt with while pastoring was having to grow personally while still leading my congregation. Nothing made me feel more hypocritical than preaching or counseling about an issue I was personally struggling with.
The machine of ministry never stopped making demands of me. It seemed as if I never had any time to withdraw and focus on my own health, let alone enter God’s refreshing presence.
Many pastors struggle in this way. While we preach sermons about the benefits of Sabbath, we continue working seven days a week. We seldom practice what we preach.
Sometimes this is because we refuse to slow down to rest and reflect. We can’t take a time-out because we will spend that quiet time reviewing the results of our ministry. However, it’s not just the workaholic pastor at fault here. Many of our congregations contribute to this problem as well. Their unrealistic expectations keep us spinning in this never-ending cycle.
Has your congregation ever required that you or your staff take time off to work on your marriages? Have they ever paid to send you and your spouse off for a week of restoration and replenishment? While some churches may be intentional about doing so, these practices rarely show up on the average church’s radar.
While our congregations are quick to pounce on us if we have marriage problems or other issues, very seldom does a congregation invest in preventative measures to encourage the personal, marital, and professional growth of their shepherds.
The cycle of unrealistic expectations soon causes us to find other ways to stimulate growth and present the appearance of a healthy congregation to the community. As is often the case, everything continues moving along in the same direction as long as it looks good.
It is easy to create the appearance of health in today’s church culture because our society has become accustomed to churches that don’t have a major impact on their communities.
You Can’t Sustain Hype
It seems that the main goal of a lot of churches is to blend in with the local culture. I call them chameleon churches. They simply take on the characteristics of their surroundings.
This path usually leads pastors to embrace a destructive practice. Out of sheer desperation, we allow our ministries to be driven by hype. Hype can manifest itself in many ways. It’s not always about being louder, flashier, or more cutting edge. Sometimes hype involves attempting to be deeper, smarter, or more refined than others. Regardless of how it’s manifested, it has the same results.
A friend of mine used to say, “You can’t sustain hype.” There has never been a truer statement. The hype-driven ministry is faced with a perpetual challenge—you have to come up with something next week to “out-hype” what you did this week.
The hype cycle never ends. It doesn’t take long to discover that your ministry becomes shallow when you’re hype driven. Additionally, you lose credibility with everyone. The elders become wary, the staff gets worn out, the volunteers run for the hills, and the congregation looks for a more authentic worship experience elsewhere.
It becomes apparent to everyone that it’s time for a change in leadership when the hype-driven ministry comes to a halt. The promises you made haven’t panned out. The growth you anticipated hasn’t materialized.
When this happens, everyone you have been leading develops a lasting distrust of you. Broken trust results in broken relationships. If left undealt with, the blind spot of hype-driven ministry will deal a blow to your leadership that is hard to overcome.
Continuing to overlook this blind spot only worsens our injured condition. As is true with any physical ailment, healing requires us to stop and deal with our injury.
There is no such thing as healing on the fly. The first step toward healing is to become aware of the real issues. Then we can move toward freedom, growth, and fulfillment.
Digging Deeper
- Are you living with an unhealed wound? In what ways does that affect your ministry?
- Has the lack of church growth caused you to become inward focused? What is one thing you could do immediately to shift your focus outward?
- What blind spot might you have overlooked because you have become accustomed to leading a ministry that isn’t making an impact on your community?
- What is one action you can take this week to begin healing and move toward dependency on God rather than your own efforts?
(Photo by Mitch Barrie | Flickr)
