If I hear one more crack about pastors working just one day a week, I may have to hurt someone.”
So said my friend Rick as the community’s pastors gathered for our monthly lunch at the El Sombrero restaurant. “People don’t really believe that, do they? I work longer hours than anyone on my board.”
“I was away from home every night last week,” groused Andy, as he reached for the guacamole. “Go tell my kids their dad has an easy job and see what they say.”
“My deacons told me I should slow down at church and play a lot more golf,” claimed Ron. “They’re afraid I’m going to burn out.”
The conversation stopped. We stared, then burst out laughing.
“It could happen,” Ron, the group comedian, insisted, though he finally admitted, “Well, maybe what they said was, ‘You better not burn yourself out. We don’t want to have to go through the trouble of finding your replacement.’ “
Somewhere between black humor and burnout lies the truth about a pastor’s workload. To get at that truth, Leadership asked the Christianity Today International research department to conduct a national survey to determine how pastors spend their time—and how they feel about it. Almost 600 pastors responded to the survey, and their honest answers challenged some long-held assumptions.
Surprise 1:
Who is driving pastors to work hard
Almost half of pastors surveyed said they are working too hard. (The average work week of our respondents was 55 hours per week.)
The study asked why. Are members’ expectations of pastors rising?
Perhaps, but less than one-fifth of respondents reported unreasonable expectations from members.
Does the pressure come from a church board that asks too much?
Just 7 percent of pastors felt unreasonable expectations from their church’s governing board.
No, the person driving pastors is the one they see in the mirror. The reasons pastors gave for working too hard were overwhelmingly self-generated:
- “I expect too much of myself”—68 percent.
- “I love what I do so much I don’t always know when to stop”—51 percent.
- “I find it hard to say ‘no’ “—40 percent.
But the distinction between your expectations and others’ expectations isn’t always clear. “You can say all the pressure comes from yourself,” says Peter Strubhar of First Missionary Church in Berne, Indiana, “but the expectations of what a few people think pastoral ministry ought to be are never-ending. From time to time I think, If I’d do this one thing, it would make the critics happy for a while. That soon becomes my expectation.”
In follow-up interviews, Leadership asked pastors how they combat unrealistic expectations.
One helpful practice is to conduct a daily time audit. Gary Blanchard, pastor of Assembly of God Christian Center in St. Charles, Illinois, explains: “Vision-driven, passion-driven people tend to go too far, too fast without stopping for course corrections. The only way I can evaluate my expectations is to step back, daily, and reflect:
“What did I do yesterday that mattered? How did I waste time? Did I veer from my course or am I still headed in the right direction? Am I giving my energy to the right things? Without that critical review, I tend to believe I’m not doing enough—without stopping to examine the evidence.”
Such reflection may have the added benefit of helping others serve more effectively in the church. Eric Carswell, rector of Glenview (Illinois) New Church, says, “In the book The Soul of the New Machine, there’s an image I relate to: flying upside down by the seat of my pants in the fog while smiling and waving at the crowd. It’s a big adrenaline surge to operate at a high pace on short deadlines, but I found that few people were willing to join in the thrills and chills.
“Our administrative coordinator finally said, ‘You really thrive on craziness, but I’m doomed to either run myself into the ground or get left behind. I won’t continue to run at your pace any longer.’
“I realized that if I wanted people to serve with me, I’d have to come up with a different strategy, a different pace. By doing better planning, not only have I helped others get involved, but I’ve actually become more efficient and met more of my expectations.”
Surprise 2:
Where the time actually goes
An oft-quoted statistic from Juliet B. Schor’s The Overworked American says that full-time employees in the U. S. worked an average of almost an extra month per year in 1987 than they did in 1969.
Is that true? And are pastors also working more?
American Demographics writer Cheryl Russell cautions that “[P]eople’s memories aren’t all they could be … . On average, the number of hours people recall working is significantly greater than the number they record in diaries.”
To check the accuracy of our survey, we asked sixty-two pastors who participated in the original study to log their time for seven days. We discovered that pastors do accurately report the number of hours they spend in ministry each week; the time-log participants also reported an average work week of 55 hours.
However, in two key areas, pastors tend not to remember how they spent those 55 hours.
- In administration. Pastors estimated they spent about 14 hours each week in leading meetings and worship services, and doing administrative tasks. The time logs, however, revealed those same pastors actually spent almost 25 hours in such tasks—nearly double what they estimated.
It’s no surprise that many in our study said they would like to spend less time in administration and in meetings.
- In prayer. Pastors estimated they spent six hours each week in prayer and personal devotions. But those keeping a time log recorded four-and-a-half hours. Perhaps many sensed this disparity intuitively: Three out of four pastors said they would like to spend more time in prayer.
Surprise 3:
How large-church pastors spend time
A common belief of pastors is that with experience and church growth, there will be more time to give to tasks of preference. I recall talking with a senior pastor of a large church when I was a solo pastor. I said, “If I just had some staff support, I’d sure spend more time preparing to preach.”
He looked wearily over his coffee cup and said, “If I didn’t have a staff to support, I’d spend more time preparing to preach myself.”
Prophetic words. One surprising result from our study was that solo pastors and senior pastors spend the same amount of time in sermon preparation: 11 hours each week. (And 73 percent of all pastors said they would like to give more time to sermon preparation.)
The only real difference in the way solo pastors and pastors with staff spend their time is this: Senior pastors spend two more hours per week leading meetings and services, while solo pastors spend an extra hour each week in pastoral care. Pastoring is pastoring, and the way time is spent shifts little based on church size.
Surprise 4:
How pastors learn to manage time
When Bill Vest came to Wildwood Baptist Church in Englewood, Tennessee, the church didn’t have a budget, constitution, or formal organizational structure. That lack created a huge amount of work. “After five years,” he says, “we now have some systems in place to make decisions, organize ministry, and fulfill our vision.”
Vest was also de facto construction supervisor on their church’s addition, pounding nails by day and doing ministry by night. “It about killed me,” he admits.
Thankfully, the church recognized how tired their pastor was and released Vest from all responsibilities except preaching until he feels rejuvenated. “I think we’ve entered a new stage in the lifecycle of this church,” he says. “I’ve learned how not to work. Now I’m learning how to work smart, how to become a better steward of my life so I can do this for a long, long time.”
The Leadership study showed that most pastors have had to learn “how to work smart” through painful trial and error. More than half of pastors have never had any training in time management. And more than one-third don’t use any type of time-management tool.
The survey showed that many pastors desire to learn more about managing time.
Surprise 5:
How pastors feel about their work
Almost two-thirds of pastors dream occasionally of a Monday-through-Friday, eight-to-five job. One pastor wrote, “Just once I’d like to have a three-day weekend to go camping or visit family like my parishioners do.” (The reality, though, is that less than one-third of today’s workers have jobs on a fixed schedule of daylight, weekday hours, according to University of Maryland demographer Harriet Presser, and that number may be declining.)
Still, in spite of the long hours and roller-coaster emotional stress, over 80 percent of pastors feel satisfied with their current workload. Even more striking, an overwhelming 91 percent of pastors feel satisfied with the kind of work they do. That far exceeds the 64 percent of American workers (ages 30-49) who can say the same.
One reason for the satisfaction: the flexible schedule. More than half of pastors list “flexibility” as the number-one benefit of their work schedule. For example, Kathryn Moore Newman, assistant rector of St. Mark’s on the Mesa Episcopal Church in Albuquerque, appreciates that she has “flexibility around inflexible responsibilities.”
Being able to borrow an hour in the middle of the day to attend a child’s classroom party is a perk not available to many professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 15 percent of workers in the private sector currently have the option of working a “flex” schedule.
The survey revealed key differences between pastors who feel satisfied and those who don’t.
The most satisfied group of pastors are methodical about taking care of themselves and setting limits. They:
limit their work to from 45 to 50 hours per week (rather than the 55-hour average)
have learned to live with unfinished business
use all of their annual vacation (average: 25 days)
consistently take at least one full day off each week.
Reull Navarro, pastor of United International Christian Church in Royal Oak, Michigan, expresses the satisfaction many pastors feel. He immigrated from the Philippines in 1980 to work as a graphic artist for a major studio in Los Angeles. “I loved my work and the chance to work in the entertainment industry,” he says, “but the greatest satisfaction of my week came when I led Bible studies as a lay leader in my church. After a while, I had to decide, Do I want to invest my life entertaining people, or enlightening people about the life-changing message of Christ?
“As a church planter, I work far more hours for far less pay. But the compensation comes in seeing that the gospel really does change lives. You can’t put a price tag on that. This is about eternity.”
— Ed Rowell is associate editor of Leadership.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
