{"id":78626,"date":"2023-08-16T13:05:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T19:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/?p=78626"},"modified":"2023-08-16T13:05:06","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T19:05:06","slug":"pastors-get-to-set-boundaries-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/pastors-get-to-set-boundaries-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Pastors Get to Set Boundaries Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastors Get to Set Boundaries Too<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Strategies for bringing healthy rhythms into a dysfunctional church culture.<\/h4>\n

MICHAEL MACKENZIE<\/strong><\/a><\/h5>\n

If I make these changes, I might lose my job,\u201d one pastor told me.<\/p>\n

For the sake of being honest, I replied, \u201cYes, you might.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had many versions of this conversation with the pastors I counsel. Many are frustrated, exhausted, and ready to quit. Some haven\u2019t had a real vacation in years. Others are experiencing panic attacks or other symptoms of extreme stress. Their marriages, children, physical health, and personal hobbies have all been neglected. They\u2019ve found themselves working 60-, 70- or even 80-hour weeks.<\/p>\n

For the past 20 years, I\u2019ve specialized in counseling pastors\u2014the last 10 years at a retreat center for pastors and ministry leaders. Many of these pastors have realized they can no longer do ministry the way they have been. But they\u2019re also keenly aware of a painful reality: Setting healthy boundaries might not actually be supported by their church. In fact, it might lead to their dismissal.<\/p>\n

Before you go<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is all well and good for pastors to work on establishing healthy boundaries, but that is only half the problem. There are two parties in this relationship: the pastor and the congregation. What if a congregation won\u2019t honor a pastor\u2019s healthy boundaries? What if they continue to expect the pastor to be available at all hours, every day of the week? To perform every wedding and every funeral? To lead every program? Then what?<\/p>\n

When my wife, Kari, and I had a private counseling practice, we occasionally provided support to young adults who were still living at home but in dysfunctional situations, such as with parents struggling with addiction. The young adults desired to be healthy. I assessed that they could take four potential paths:<\/p>\n

1. Try to stay healthy in an unchanging, dysfunctional system.<\/p>\n

2. Change the system so everyone is healthier.<\/p>\n

3. Leave and get healthy.<\/p>\n

4. Give in and take on the dysfunction.<\/p>\n

Pastors can be in very similar situations, and in my experience, many take door 3 or 4. They\u00a0may<\/em>\u00a0at first try door 1. But repeatedly attempting to hold healthy boundaries amid persistent pressure not to can eventually be more exhausting than simply succumbing to the unrealistic expectations. So pastors get out, believing that nothing will change at their churches. Or they give up on the changes they\u2019d hoped to make, resigned that this is the way it is in ministry so they\u2019d better get used to it.<\/p>\n

Must pastors either get out or give up? No. In many cases, before leaving becomes necessary\u2014or before they\u2019re let go\u2014they can try door 2: getting healthy and taking their churches with them. A pastor can grow into good boundaries and strategically help the church in this process too.<\/p>\n

Who can step up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Often pastors arrive at our retreat center having stayed up late the night before to get the last pieces in place so their responsibilities will be covered during their absence. This last push reveals a common church reality: No one is already trained to take over various aspects of the pastor\u2019s role, so now he or she is scrambling to find folks to do so. The good news is that pastors usually do find people who step up and step in.<\/p>\n

S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard\u00a0wrote<\/a>, \u201cThe more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.\u201d Many pastors have become adept at doing many things. A shift in the church culture can begin as a pastor candidly considers these questions:\u00a0What if I couldn\u2019t show up next week? What would happen? Who would do what? What can only I do\u2014and what do I need to focus on?\u00a0<\/em>In Kierkegaard\u2019s words,\u00a0How could I focus on intensity and not extensity?<\/em><\/p>\n

Finding and training others who are willing to fulfill various responsibilities of the pastor is a foundational step in maintaining healthy boundaries. For example, give guidance to an elder who has an inclination toward preaching. Take a congregant with a pastoral heart on hospital visits. Train someone to run the meetings in the pastor\u2019s absence. Not only does this help keep things running when a pastor is away or focused on other tasks, but it can also lead to regular expressions of lay ministry.<\/p>\n

Intentionally equipping others to step into some pastoral responsibilities helps the church body grow and mature. It enables the pastor to take some things off his or her plate, it gives lay leaders a greater understanding and empathy for the pastor\u2019s position, and it is a direct intervention against the primary resistance to a pastor\u2019s boundaries. The main reason people resist another\u2019s boundary is because they believe that boundary takes away something they want or need. People in a church push back when a pastor says, \u201cNo, I am not doing that,\u201d because they think they\u2019re losing something. This could stem from their own fear, insecurity, laziness, sense of ownership, or even pride in how good the pastor is at a role. But when it becomes clear that someone else can do a given task, people learn they don\u2019t need to fear losing something.<\/p>\n

Get it in writing<\/strong><\/p>\n

A core component of a church honoring their pastor\u2019s healthy boundaries is having a realistic written job description that provides clarity about the church\u2019s expectations for that role. A pastor can meet with church leadership to evaluate and adjust the job description, adding specificity when possible\u2014such as detailing the expected weekly work hours, the number of Sundays the pastor is expected to preach per year, or the maximum number of weddings he or she is expected to perform in a year.<\/p>\n

One big hurdle a pastor can face is when other leaders in the church (such as the elders or church board) don\u2019t have a full picture of all he or she does. In this situation, a pastor can keep a log for a month, recording all time spent on ministry tasks (including things like text conversations with church members). This log will help other leaders understand the pastor\u2019s struggle in limiting the number of work hours per week and can prompt fruitful discussion on how to prioritize the pastor\u2019s main tasks, such as sermon preparation.<\/p>\n

When pastoral responsibilities are limited, specific, and supported and a congregation experiences a refreshed, passionate, focused, and enthused pastor, they see the benefit of the pastor choosing wisely what he or she does and does not focus on.<\/p>\n

Let Scripture teach<\/strong><\/p>\n

As pastors grow and deepen in spiritual maturity and health in Christ\u2014particularly in the area of boundaries\u2014they can pass these lessons along to their congregations from the pulpit. This benefits not only the pastors themselves but also all those listening, as it cultivates a wise pace and Christlike priorities in laypeople and church leaders alike.<\/p>\n

Preaching on the underlying biblical values that drive good boundaries can take many forms. For example, pastors could preach on biblical themes, like how protecting one\u2019s heart is vital because it is the wellspring of life, or how each member of Christ\u2019s body is called to be a hand or foot or eye and boundaries can help people stay within their callings. Sermons could explore how important prioritizing Sabbath rest is or how our identity in Christ frees us to say yes or no to things. Messages like this can foster a church culture that sets healthy expectations for both church members and pastoral staff.<\/p>\n

To further clarify for the congregation what the pastor does and doesn\u2019t do, a sermon on the biblical role of the pastor (especially one provided by a guest preacher) can be effective. It would also be wise to have a leader other than the pastor share the key components of the pastor\u2019s job description with the congregation during a church business meeting.<\/p>\n

A worthwhile risk<\/strong><\/p>\n

When a pastor faces the fear that the congregation may not honor his or her boundaries, I believe it\u2019s better for the pastor to communicate to church leadership that the current arrangement is not working and try to help things change rather than simply leaving quietly or waiting to be fired. Setting boundaries, asking to be supported by leadership and the congregation, and delegating roles are the right steps to take\u2014even if they fail.<\/p>\n

While I have seen pastors throw a last-minute Hail Mary to set boundaries that were accepted by church leadership and the congregation, sadly, I have also seen the receivers drop the ball. This is just a painful reality some pastors face. Though it\u2019s not guaranteed to be successful, patiently and strategically working to try to change the church culture so that healthy boundaries are valued (including those of the pastor) is good for everyone. It is worth the risk. The pastor being the pastor he or she is called to be, engaging with each one in the flock as they are called to be, will create a beautiful expression of the body as we are all called to be.<\/p>\n

Michael MacKenzie is a licensed counselor and ordained pastor. He has counseled pastors and other Christian leaders for the past 20 years and is currently executive director of Marble Retreat. He is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Don\u2019t Blow Up Your Ministry<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2022 Christianity Today<\/strong>\u00a0– a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastors Get to Set Boundaries Too Strategies for bringing healthy rhythms into a dysfunctional church culture. MICHAEL MACKENZIE If I make these changes, I might lose my job,\u201d one pastor told me. For the sake of being honest, I replied, \u201cYes, you might.\u201d I\u2019ve had many versions of this conversation with the pastors I counsel. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":78623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3380,4661,276,266],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-leadership-articles","category-resources-ndi","category-sunday-school-and-discipleship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mesonaz.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}