Tom Erich, who I knew when he was an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, recently wrote a column in which he described his view of the challenge of pastoral leadership in the church. The title of the column is A New Spirit and can be found at his website, www.morningwalkmedia.com . I’ll comment on his idea on leadership in a later blog but first let me share with you his job description of an average pastor.
A pastor is “underpaid (earning less than half the pay of a regular job with comparable skills and expectations), overworked (six-day weeks, 12-hour days, on call 24/7, minimal staff), and subject to occupational stress that lands many in divorce court and in treatment for depression and addiction.”
While that could be seen by others as whining, on the face of it, that seems to me to be an accurate description of what is facing the average pastor. One could go on to describe the many satisfactions of being a pastor, but you should not neglect the realities that are part of a pastor’s life. It is for that very reason that learning how to take care of oneself in the pastorate is so important. I’ve spent over 40 years as a clergy and most of that time I worked sixty to seventy hour weeks, but I also learned how to take care of myself and my family relationships in the process. I think I even did that without conveying to my congregations that I had drawn such hard boundaries around me that I wasn’t approachable or available when they needed me.
When I speak of care of the pastor, I’m not suggesting that pastors need to be coddled. Nor am I suggesting that they are fragile. They are often as tough as anyone in the workforce. What I am suggesting is that there is a healthy and and unhealthy way to engage in one of the most challenging and satisfying professions around.
For ways to do that, keep reading the blog.
