An impossible job

Last month, I raised a troubling question: Why are fewer ministry leaders choosing the local church? Seminary leaders are seeing fewer students preparing for pastoral ministry, while Barna reported that 43 percent of pastors seriously considered leaving it.

Do the math forward ten years, and we see fewer pastors entering, existing pastors leaving, and churches struggling to fill vacancies.

Who will be our pastors?

Perhaps this isn’t simply a recruitment problem. If we don’t like the outcome of the algorithm, we need to examine its inputs.

Consider what we’ve made the pastoral job into: train elders and deacons; shape boards and councils; manage conflict; oversee increasingly professional staff. Navigate finances, governance, HR, strategic planning and organizational change: areas now so complex that entire professions exist to support them.

Then add the wider church: denominational meetings, committees, assemblies, procedures and politics that consume another layer of pastoral time and energy.

Sunday still comes every seven days. Sermons need preparation, worship needs leading, people need discipline, the sick need visiting, families need pastoral care, marriages are celebrated, funerals arrive.

The old calling remains. We simply keep adding to it.

No single person can do all of this equally well. So pastors choose. The gifted preacher emphasizes teaching. The relational shepherd gravitates toward care. The organizational leader invests in vision and strategy.

But every choice disappoints someone. Focus on preaching, and some want more visitation. Invest in care and others question the lack of vision. Lead organizationally, and someone wonders why the pastor isn’t more “pastoral.”

Over time, disappointment becomes tension. Questions about priorities become questions about competency – or even calling. Eventually, those tensions can become public, divisive and ugly.

Which raises a provocative question: Have we created a job description for pastors that even the New Testament doesn’t ask of pastors?

Ephesians 4:11-12 describes pastors and teachers as those called “to equip his people for works of service.” Pastors certainly minister, but they minister with and among a congregation also called to ministry. Paul’s picture of one body with many parts similarly assumes that no single person possesses every gift the church needs.

Perhaps our modern algorithm has subtly shifted that equation. But if we’ve helped create the algorithm, we can change its inputs.

Pastors can equip the gifts within their congregations and partner with Christian ministries that already possess expertise. Want to strengthen evangelism? Partner with an organization such as ShareWord Global to equip congregational members for that work. Need help with governance, strategic planning, charitable best practices or mediation? Bring in appropriate professional expertise rather than expecting the pastor to master another discipline.

Boards and councils can become appropriately hands-on and focus leadership conversations less on the tyranny of the urgent and more on agreed, godly goals.

Establishing clear roles

Shared leadership also means deciding who else can carry the work. In one church I served, we elected a ‘denominational elder’ who stayed abreast of denominational matters and represented us at Classis meetings. The pastor didn’t need to be everywhere simply because he was the pastor.

Churches should annually clarify not only what their pastor is responsible for, but what they are not responsible for – and evaluate them accordingly.

A healthy church doesn’t simply give its pastor permission not to do everything; it equips other people to carry the ministry with them.

The calling to shepherd God’s people remains beautiful. Maybe it’s the job we’ve constructed around that calling that needs to change.

If so, perhaps the pastoral algorithm can be rewritten.