Unfortunately, I don't think many church cultures even see that there's a problem. These ecclesial cultures consider over-worked, hyper-stressed pastoring to be part of the gig- indeed, part of THE CALL; an outworking of cross-bearing.

Of course, part of the problem lies in the clergy/laity false dichotomy. Of course suffering is part of our call to follow Jesus. But that is a call that every believer shares- not merely every pastor.

Both clergy and laity need to help shift this misguided and unbiblical attitude. If both walk towards the middle ground perhaps we will eventually find that false line in the sand has been rubbed out.

It's little wonder pastors and leaders are driven to endurance-killing over-work. They are our Moses but without someone to hold up their arms or a father-in-law to counsel them in wisdom.

There is a powerful tension between the Biblical mandate to confess our sins to one another and the Biblical requirement for elders, pastors, and teachers to be above reproach.

Guess which one, on the surface, wins?

We need a theology and practice of ministry that encourages and fosters transparency and authenticity in our leadership while also providing stable, mentoring relationships that enable and promote purity.

As it is, pastors and leaders are ministering in virtual isolation. Too many pastors have zero friends hey can turn to, rely on, or confess sins to.

What happens when sin is unconfessed? Frankly, it often goes unrepented.

So we sacrifice transparency for purity. And in the end we lose both.

Rich
BlogRodent

We have to re-read Jesus and pull off the "Jesus CEO" lens. We have to be willing to come to grips with the biblical vision that church is called to be a contrast community that prophetically speaks into socio-cultural milieus pointing to a different way. Too much of the "Christian" leadership stuff is re-hashing what works in the Fortune 500 world. No wonder many of our "successful" churches look just like these companies. And what is worse is the faithful discipling communities who really know each other, but are only 50-250 people are given a complex by all the "programming" and "growth" stragetgies pumped out by these Fortune 500 churches.

I'm living that nightmare now. There must be a healthy balance between servanthood and common sense.

Unfortunately, our entire culture is performance driven . . . from our elementary education throughout all corporate and non-profit enterprises. We've done an injustice to our pastoral leaders and many of our everyday workers by expecting them to do more, achieve more, and give up more. All the while we "preach" the need for life/work balance . . . but reward overwork and life-limiting "dedication" to our jobs, and then give everyone a Blackberry to make sure they're always reachable.

Quite frankly, performance excellence is the new god we worship. We sacrifice at the alters of our executive board rooms and all pray for our performance bonuses.

It's time for a worker revolution. Wasn't technology supposed to ease our burdens?

in today's church culture, any emotional,or spirtual struggles by leaders is viewed by the leadership as weakness, and weakness is failure. Who whats to ba a failure?

No offense but the leaders I have worked with have very big wallls and pretty much have told the "lay" people that they neither need, want, or care about having lay care or input into their spiritual lives. In one church the pastor actually convinced the church that he could be "accountable" to someone who lived in another state over 400 miles away! What a joke!

In one church, as we moved into leadership, we were told we could or should not be close friends with the people we lead and mentor. Both are definitely "business" models. Although my husband and I have held numerous leadership roles, we no longer feel that very many pastors and church leaders really want truth-they say they do and maybe emotionally there is a desire but to do the necessary work to create close honest loving relationships does not seem very prominent.

On a positive note, as we moved out of leadership, we, along with other "ex lay leaders" are more and more involved in building those relationships laterally-in many places the church body is even more healthy than its leadership.

BTW, it is not the lay community putting these expectations on the pastors-it is all the books, seminars, gurus, etc that have them convinced that a church is a failure if it doesn't move from 100-200 members in the "correct" time!