Personal and leadership frustrations are intertwined. The pressure comes from several directions: our insecurities, our children, our spouse, the church board. But who we are as a person ties it all together.
— Leith Anderson
Preaching that Sunday was the last thing I wanted to do.
The church where I’d been serving as a part-time associate had indicated they would put me on staff full time. A few days after my seminary graduation, however, I was terminated. The congregation held a business meeting and voted me out.
I was devastated. Charleen, my wife, and I were so anticipating seminary’s end and full-time ministry. We also needed the income. Without a job, the short-term financial picture looked bleak.
The senior pastor went on vacation, and I was scheduled to speak the following Sunday, four days after receiving my pink slip. Since it was too late in the week to recruit a pinch hitter, the congregation asked me to fill in for the vacationing minister.
So I did, despite the awkwardness of the situation. I recognized I couldn’t walk into the pulpit that Sunday morning spewing frustration at the congregation. Nor could I, in good conscience, refuse to speak. I felt that preaching God’s Word in that situation was the right thing to do.
This was a painful lesson in doing the right thing, despite my mood at the time. Pastors, at least in that sense, are professionals. God’s people have a right to competent leadership, even when we’re feeling tired, angry, frustrated, or lonely. Knowing this doesn’t make leading easy at such times, but it’s the first principle, of many, that has helped me lead when I haven’t felt like it.
Shirt-Sleeve Symptoms
How I happen to feel at any given moment is not a good indication of fatigue level. Sometimes I’m running on adrenalin and feel great, but I’m “high” only because my weary body has had to kick in extra juice to keep going.
So I’ve found it helpful over the years to monitor my feelings and behavior. For example, I know I’m fatigued when my emotions are out of control. Feelings are harder to control than intellect. Even when rational decisions are made, our emotions can lag far behind.
Too many times I have allowed an isolated comment by one individual to balloon in my mind until my emotions are raw. There is a temptation to fantasize a single criticism into a congregational mutiny. Thoughts race wildly from defense to offense to surrender or retreat.
When these feelings are way out of proportion to the reality of the situation, it’s probably because I’m worn out from many other things. Like the straw that broke the camel’s back, the last item is what upset me, but there’s a lot more behind it.
Chronic tiredness, headaches, sleeping too much, or insomnia are also flashing yellow lights of frustration and tiredness.
After my first two years of ministry (I was 26 years old) everything was getting me down. Outwardly most of ministry was going great; inwardly I couldn’t shake off constant discouragement that bordered on depression. I was tired all the time. Motivation lagged. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.
I never thought about going to a doctor about my problems, but I did make an appointment because of a sore throat and swollen glands. His diagnosis was swift and certain: mononucleosis. I talked him out of hospitalizing me on the promise I would get lots of rest.
What I thought was a spiritual or emotional or psychological problem was actually a physical illness. Once rested and recuperated, the earlier problems disappeared.
Having trouble focusing on a task is a less obvious fatigue symptom. Sometimes when I’m preparing a sermon and concentration wanders to all the things I have yet to do, I can trace it back to a subtle emotional fissure.
When I’m tired, angry, or resigned, I may deal with people in ways that dig a deeper hole for myself. I might make a comment in a board meeting or in another setting that sets someone off. Then I find myself in a loop of offending and apologizing.
Another sign of leadership fatigue: looking through the classifieds. In early years of ministry, I’d sometimes flip through the classified section of the Sunday Denver Post and think, What else could I do for a living? I discovered that having a master of divinity degree wasn’t much use for anything else. The one job that intrigued me was driving eighteen wheelers.
What I see now is that looking through the classifieds wasn’t a harmless diversion. I did that because I was frustrated with ministry and weary of trying to make it work.
Fatigue Factors
What saps a leader’s optimism and boundless energy isn’t always readily apparent. Often I can’t point to a criticism or a long week as the source of my infection. Sometimes its beginning is imperceptible.
I’ve also discovered that what I was susceptible to ten years ago may not affect me today. Here is a collage of contributing factors draining the energy reservoir throughout my years in ministry.
• Learning the ropes. Entry level pastoral experience is tiring. We’ve gone to school but don’t know how to handle pastoral situations.
Early in my ministry, a younger woman in the church with grade school children was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The last weeks of her life were painful as her life slowly ebbed away.
Being inexperienced, I didn’t know what to do. Nor did I know the deceased or her family well. So at her funeral, I did what I had seen others do: I read her obituary from the local newspaper and attempted to make the funeral as personable as possible. Then I preached a brief message.
After an awkward silence, because I didn’t know how to end a funeral, the widower (he had recently been in an automobile accident) stood up, clutched his crutches, and staggered to where I was standing. I waited. Upon reaching me, he bent over and whispered loudly, “You forgot my son.”
In reading the family survivors, I had missed a son whom I didn’t know existed. His name wasn’t mentioned in the obituary.
I was devastated. I’ve just poured myself into this funeral, I thought, and all her husband will remember is that I forgot to mention his son. I drove home, emotionally tapped out.
Every new experience — the first time dealing with the deacon board, the first Easter, the first Christmas, the first child death, the first wedding — wore me down.
• Ineffective leadership. Many leaders get bogged down by creating too many close relationships in their congregation. Their leadership is like the hub-and-spoke wheel: the pastor is the hub, and the spokes are relationships in the church.
What tires a pastor is servicing all these relationships. Mrs. Black is upset because the pastor doesn’t visit her, so the pastor visits her. Mr. Thompson is angry because the pastor doesn’t call on his parents, so the pastor fits them into a busy schedule. The relationships are based on the pastor’s ability to meet everyone’s needs.
In a smaller church, of two hundred or less, that might work. But as a church grows, the pastor must carefully choose ministry relationships, moving to a more hierarchical model: the pastor relates to a few individuals who then each relate to a few more, until the whole congregation is ministered to.
Fewer, stronger relationships will not only enable the church to grow but also keep your emotional well-being intact.
• Criticism. In the late sixties and early seventies, my family and I lived in a church parsonage. During those years, housing prices were skyrocketing, and so I concluded we needed to buy a house before inflation put housing out of financial reach. I approached the church trustees, asking if they would sell the parsonage and provide an adequate salary adjustment, enabling us to purchase a home.
They agreed and recommended the proposal at the next congregational meeting. A few dissented, but the motion passed. Excited, Charleen and I then picked out a lot and had blueprints drawn up. Several contractors in our church — electrical, plumbing, painting — offered their services at cost. We would be able to build a $30,000 dollar house for $20,000. We were ecstatic.
But then some snipers took aim. “You’re just using the church for your own purposes,” we heard. “You’re in the ministry for the money.” Other cutting remarks followed. The personal attacks, though from a vocal minority, became so hard to handle that my wife and I called off the project.
I was hurt. I eventually resolved my emotions about that issue, but hearing personal criticism still tires me.
• Always being the answer man. I’ve never felt compelled to be in charge of every situation. Just because I’m a pastor, I don’t have to coach the church softball team or take charge of every meeting. Uncomfortable silence may fall over the dinner table when eating in a restaurant. Many people defer to me even in a nonchurch setting. He’s the pastor, they think. He should pray. I’ve chuckled inwardly as people wait for me to bless the food. Sometimes I do; other times I reach for my fork.
But at church, the buck does stop with me; I am the leader. And I can tire of that. Some days, walking thirty feet of hallway, from the reception area to my office, takes thirty minutes as I have to stop and answer questions and give input to staff and others.
As pastor I’m also often asked to make hard decisions about funerals or baptisms or weddings or building use.
About a year ago, we rented our facility to an outside organization. The church board decided on a rental fee, but it was never collected. A couple of weeks ago, someone from that organization called saying, “I think we owe you $1,000, but we’re not going to be able to pay.” Wooddale had no record of an accounts receivable from them.
So, a decision had to be made about our records. Then the accountant had to be contacted. And on it went. When many such decisions are mixed with physical weariness, I can feel overwhelmed.
• Incompleteness. A frequent source of our struggles in ministry is the lack of closure. Our tasks never appear finished.
A friend of mine pastored a church in the Chicago area. He remodeled his house, adding a new bathroom. After a day at the church, he would head for home, go into the new bathroom, even before speaking to his wife, and flush the toilet. He needed to know something that he did was completely finished. When the toilet flushed, he knew for sure he was finished with the bathroom. His job was complete. And it worked!
Ministry is more like soccer than baseball. Baseball is played with more order: the game proceeds, pitch by pitch, you try to touch four bases (and always in the same order), and everyone clearly has a position on the field. Soccer is more fluid: there are no long pauses in play, you run in all sorts of directions, at moments it’s hard to see who is playing what position.
In the church, people don’t always run in the same direction nor do they stay in their positions! Furthermore, it’s difficult to figure out when you’ve succeeded or failed in the pastorate. When is your sermon finally honed enough for Sunday? When is everyone needing care attended to? When is Sunday’s attendance high enough? When is there enough money to go around? Living in such fluidity, with questions that can never be fully answered, can be tiring.
• Internal pressure to succeed. I have a nephew who pastors a church in the shadow of Willow Creek Church, where over 16,000 worshipers from the Chicago area attend weekly. Though growing and ministering effectively to its community, his “David” church is relatively small in comparison to the “Goliath” a few miles away. But my nephew appreciates the effective ministry of Willow Creek and doesn’t chafe because his church isn’t the same.
Comparing ourselves to others’ Olympic standards can be frustrating. Our internal motivations to succeed, based on others’ success, can make us driven and perpetually dissatisfied. Our interpretation of success and failure is often the mother lode of leadership fatigue.
• Breaking the “rules.” When policies or guidelines are regularly broken, it not only hampers the ministry of the church, it tires me out. I get frustrated with people, and I have to take extra time and effort to put things back into line.
Wooddale Church has a policy book covering building use, the hiring process, staff procedures, salary guidelines, bus use, and much more. I became frustrated when I learned that some staff members followed policies while others did not. They weren’t deliberately breaking the rules; they forgot what the policies were.
So I invited the pastoral staff to our home for a one-day retreat. I read and explained the history and rationale for every policy — it took about six hours. That day has become a legend.
True, what I did was triggered by frustration, but it worked! Now I hear staff members tell each other to know and follow policies or “we’ll end up spending a whole day with Leith reading the policy book again.”
Which Is It: Me or My Job?
I find that my physical state can exacerbate my feelings about leadership, so I make a distinction between being tired of leading and just plain being tired.
I’ve been up Saturday night with a sick child and still had to preach the next morning. By Sunday evening, I’m exhausted. And then I become vulnerable to being discouraged by whatever happens to be the crisis of the day. I’m weighed down with my sick child or my physical or mental health. When this happens, my emotions usually turn around in a day or so.
Being tired of leadership, though, is a deeper tiredness. When the church I pastored in Colorado voted down a proposal to hire a part-time associate pastor, someone I felt the church needed, something inside of me changed. Though the church’s leadership was on board with the plan, my proposal died on the floor of a church business meeting.
Sitting in the meeting that evening, I thought, If every decision is going to be based on finances and if people are going to block continually this church’s mission, I can’t invest the rest of my life here.
I had been frustrated before, but usually I felt better within 48 hours. This time I began thinking, How much energy can I keep pouring into something that is not going to get an adequate return, especially considering my gifts and goals? The feeling didn’t go away for months. I knew I had leadership fatigue.
Personal and leadership issues, in the final analysis, are intertwined. Our frustration comes from different directions: our insecurities, our children, our spouse, the church board. But who we are as a person ties it all together.
Rx for Fatigue
Through the years, I’ve discovered I have the ability to take a bad situation and make it worse. So when I’m feeling down, besides eating right and getting enough sleep and exercise, I’ve taken precautions to lessen or resolve ministry frustrations.
• Be selective with whom you confide. I want to be frank with the congregation about my weaknesses and struggles — up to a point. But I don’t have the right to dump my personal problems on the people.
An open display of rampant emotion might invoke initial sympathy, but questions about competence and spirituality will inevitably arise. In doing so, we destabilize the situation even more. When a leader shares his personal problems in a broad context, people feel helpless.
When I’m down, I’m careful with whom I confess my struggles. The fewer who know of my condition the better — though it is critical that I talk with someone.
The first person I talk to is my wife. Charleen has had greater positive spiritual impact on my life than anyone. She was God’s agent in my life at age 15 when we started dating and still is today.
I talk to others, including fellow pastors on the staff, elders, trusted friends in the church, and lifelong colleagues who make up a network of friends across America.
• Stay with the ship. An extended leave of absence, though the most desirable option when you feel burned out, is often ministry suicide. You so remove yourself from the situation that while you’re gone, the dynamics change. Just like marriage, the trial separation becomes a harbinger of divorce. Leaves of absence often lead to departures within twelve to twenty-four months.
Instead, I urge burned-out leaders to deal with their issues in short-term departures — two to three weeks — or remain in the saddle, cutting back hours and responsibility.
One pastor friend took a year-long sabbatical. When he returned to the church, he warmly explained, “I’ve changed!” He liked the way he had changed. They liked him better as he was before, however, and fired him.
Then there’s the untidy matter of the Lord’s call to another ministry. Knowing whether the time has come to move on is complex — especially when I feel under the gun. So when I’m tired and thinking of leaving, I write down in detail what’s happening: my emotions, conversations, events. Then I tuck this “diary” in an envelope and shove it in a desk drawer, deciding not to pull it out for six months or a year.
This exercise does two things. First, it gives me emotional release. Because of an impending date I’ve set, I know I won’t have to endure this frustration forever. The end is in six months or a year. And if after six months of prayer and consideration I still feel like moving on, I’m more likely to do so. Most of the time, though, I discover that I can hardly remember the intensity of the emotions I felt six months earlier.
Second, it gives me a place to vent emotions. Journaling is widely known for its therapeutic value. Writing leaves a permanent record, which allows me to reread what I wrote. Having the process on paper (or disk) shows how much emotions and circumstances do change with time.
• Monitor the critical areas. Al Sloan, the board chairman who led General Motors to a significant spurt in growth, said that he made decisions in two critical areas: personnel and money. Monitoring just those two areas gave him sufficient control to help the company succeed.
Leading a church, I’ve often mused, may be more complicated than running General Motors. But at a minimum — even in frustrating and volatile times — pastors need to stay abreast of key personnel decisions, finances, and preaching. Even when we’re angry, moody, lonely, and discouraged, the stakes are too high to ignore these vital areas.
I’ve lost track of how many pastors have told me they desperately needed to hire an assistant immediately but didn’t have time to search for candidates or research references. So they hired the easiest and most available person. Twelve months later there was conflict, disappointment, and sometimes termination. You can’t be too busy to recruit the right staff.
• Communicate frustrations. I need to talk through my frustrations. I need to describe what I’m feeling and hear the other person’s perspective. That prevents bitterness and anger from festering and keeps fatigue to a minimum.
I’ve been blessed by outstanding elder-board chairmen at Wooddale Church. Each one has responded to one or more calls to hear me vent frustration about some person, a building construction problem, staff decision, or personal problem. They hear me out. They make suggestions. They calm me down. Without exception they have de-escalated my rising emotions.
• Be self-aware. When I pastored in Colorado, Charleen and I attended Saturday night church socials and parties. However, I tired of getting home late only to have to get up early and preach the next morning. But after being at church parties for ten years, we couldn’t say, “We’re not going to do this anymore.” The expectations were set in cement.
So when our family arrived at Wooddale, we decided to protect our Saturday evenings. Not long after, there was an usher’s dinner on a Saturday night.
“I’ll buy your ticket, Pastor,” said an enthused church leader. “My wife and I would like your family to sit at our table.”
“We’d loved to sit with you, but we won’t be at the dinner,” I replied. “We don’t go out on Saturday nights.” He was surprised and disappointed, but I knew better than to agree to go.
Strength Through Weakness
Ministry fatigue is to be avoided. It usually makes everything worse — self, church, family, and friendships — when we wear ourselves down.
But I couldn’t close this chapter without mentioning a paradox: often when I’ve been at my lowest, I’ve found God to be at his best. My weariness is reinforced with his pylons of strength. And that has been a wonderful experience. The times I didn’t want to preach but stepped into the pulpit anyway, I’ve heard, “God really touched my life through that sermon.” Christ was lifted up.
For instance, God also honored my decision to preach the Sunday after my seminary graduation.
“Why don’t you stay on staff until you find another job,” the church countered after that unforgettable Sunday. Later that summer the senior pastor resigned, and the church voted overwhelmingly to make me their senior pastor.
It’s easy but inappropriate for ministry to revolve around me — my needs, my gifts, my ability to get things done. That’s a setup for a sinful ego trip. Christ is exalted in my weakness, inadequacy, and desperation. Weariness can become the greatest opportunity for leadership — because then I must lean on God and his provision of grace.
Copyright © 1993 by Christianity Today
