7 Challenges Pastors Face: Overcome Common Struggles and Thrive in Ministry

By David Horner

With 30 years of experience behind him, David Horner knows the pitfalls of a life in ministry. In 7 Challenges Pastors Face, Horner shows you how to

- balance the demands of your calling
- sharpen your vision
- grow a team
- cultivate humility

Developing a well-balanced approach to responsibilities and passions will equip you to thrive in the face of the many challenges of ministry. This book can show you the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781493421756

David Horner

David Horner is an emeritus professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian University, Canberra, where he was previously professor of Australian defence history. A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, who served as an infantry platoon commander in South Vietnam, Colonel Horner is the author of over thirty books on military history and defence, including High Command (1982) and Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief (1998).

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1

ARE YOU DRIVEN OR CALLED?

When God called you, what do you think he had in mind? If you have sampled some of the material written on what it means to be called into the ministry, you have probably been disappointed. Most people in ministry want more than broad, generic answers to questions about their calling. Although some may have doubts about what it actually means to be called to ministry, far more are dealing with very specific questions related to the circumstances of their particular place of ministry. Generalizations about the overall nature of God’s calling do have value, but many of us want to address the particular issues with which we wrestle every day.

Is the calling to be a pastor irrevocable, or can God have one sort of ministry for you now and another later in your life?

If you become a pastor, does that mean

. . . you never get a day off?

. . . you have to be an expository preacher? a topical preacher? an evangelistic preacher?

. . . you have to visit all your church members in their homes at least once a year?

. . . you should be prepared to drop everything the instant you hear of someone in the hospital and rush immediately to his or her side?

. . . you have to be on call to give counsel to anyone and everyone who knows your phone number?

. . . your family has to take a backseat to your ministry?

. . . you have to maintain the same standard of living as your congregation on a third to a half as much money?

. . . your wife has to be all things to all people (pianist, nursery worker, missions champion, Bible study teacher, modest but not dowdy, a model of motherly effectiveness with the children, and always at your side supporting you)?

. . . you have to be ready to move to a new location every few years?

Can God really use someone to pastor a church who is not an evangelist and not even a particularly effective witness?

What if you can preach but are not very good with administrative details? What if you are a great people-person but are lousy with planning and strategy development? What if you seem to be very effective in helping hurting, confused people one-on-one but are just average before a group?

Answers to these and hundreds of questions like them represent an extremely wide range of thoughts and concepts of what a pastor’s calling ought to be. Many pastors find themselves flooded with confusion and doubt as they try to either measure up to or avoid the examples of pastors they have known in the past. The good news is that God never intended for pastors to try to satisfy the demands of every model for ministry ever developed. He did not call you to crush you!

God calls you to engage in a lifetime of effective, satisfying ministry in which he maximizes your spiritual gifts, considers your calling (not someone else’s), recognizes your strengths and weaknesses, and commits to shaping you into a godly individual who grows more mature every day in your walk with Jesus Christ.

Your Calling Is from God

As difficult as it is for some to understand, our calling is from God. He can and will use the collective wisdom of others to help mold our comprehension of what that calling should look like, but essentially, he wants our personal calling to be measured by one standard: the Word of God. His will for your life may share similarities with his will for others, but in his perfect wisdom, he has tailored a purpose and a plan uniquely suited to each of us. Our individual calling to ministry will certainly reflect that distinctive design. In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul expresses it this way:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.

1 Corinthians 1:26–29

Although some pastors stand out in our minds as superstars who give every appearance of having been blessed with more than their share of gifts, Paul assures us that there are not many like that. Our calling is not measured by the plethora of gifts we have received but according to the purposes God has for the unique gifts he has entrusted to each of us. In fact, Paul also says that we have been called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Our responsibility in meeting the demands of ministry consists of being and doing all that fulfills God’s purpose in our lives. To that end, we are called to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called by honoring the special purposes God has established for us (Eph. 4:1).

Therefore, our calling will often be misunderstood, challenged, and even attacked by those who see pastoral calling as a one-size-fits-all issue. The churches we serve will have stated and unstated expectations about the particular calling they envision for their pastor. Individuals within those churches will further complicate matters by adding their own expectations to the mix and keep us, as pastors, off balance by their constant questions about why we do not do what pastors should do. If that is not exasperating enough, deep down inside we wonder if perhaps they are right and we are not cutting it as a pastor. Talk about adding guilt on top of confusion! No wonder pastors have a hard time keeping their equilibrium!

You may ask, Since my calling is from God, should I be unconcerned about the expectations people have? No, that is unrealistic. You cannot simply ignore them, but you do not have to satisfy them.

I struggled with this for years. I was blessed to have been exposed to the successful ministries of several effective pastors, but to my dismay, I was not like any of them. I spent years trying to become like them, essentially living like David in Saul’s armor, knowing that the fit was awful but sensing that it was not okay to come to the battle with my own sling and stones. Eventually I discovered what every pastor must learn: my calling is from God, and my equipping is from him as well.

How has he equipped you? Discovering this will answer many questions about your calling, because the clue to what he wants you to do is found in what he has equipped you to do.

Your Calling Is to a Balanced Ministry

Without debate, it is certain that if you have been busy trying to succeed in a style of ministry to which God never called you, you have been way out of balance in your life and have suffered untold misery. Juggling the demands of your calling as well as the demands of someone else’s calling has caused the downfall of many pastors. The weight of responsibility simply overcame them and threw them over the edge.

Once you have learned to be content with the calling God has given you, you will find that you have quite enough to keep you occupied within the context of your own concerns. Within the ministry calling God has designed for you, there is still plenty of room for the perils of overload and imbalance. How you handle them will determine how well you stay in balance. In your ministry, you will find there are various factors that seem to compete against one another and make you feel pulled in all directions. The challenge is to recognize the difference between competing demands and balancing counterweights.

Should you spend more time in prayer or more time handling the dispute between two of your deacons? Should you be out visiting more or staying in the office to be available in case someone with a pressing need phones or stops by? Should you be spending more time cultivating a relationship with your unbelieving neighbor or knocking on the doors of people you would never meet otherwise? Which is it going to be this week—more time for counseling or more time for sermon preparation?

Life in ministry, even within the specific area of your calling, presents so many issues that compete for time that you can easily go to bed each night feeling like a complete failure because you never got it worked out in the right proportions. There is always something you think needs to be done but has to be slighted in order to do something else. Demands upon your time and energy will force you to make choices you would rather not make. How you make those choices and then how you feel about your decision afterward will largely be determined by the way you see yourself—as someone God has called or as someone who has become inexplicably driven.

Gordon MacDonald, in his book Ordering Your Private World, explains what it is like to be a person who is driven.

In an exploration of the inner sphere of the person, one has to begin somewhere, and I have chosen to begin where Christ appears to have begun—with the distinction between the called and the driven. Somehow He separated people out on the basis of their tendency to be driven or their willingness to be called. He dealt with their motives, the basis of their spiritual energy, and the sorts of gratification in which they were interested.[1]

MacDonald outlines the symptoms of a driven person, which I summarize here. As you read, ask yourself if some of your struggles in handling the demands of your calling might not be related to your tendency to be motivated by a driving force within you rather than a zealous calling to follow Christ.

Symptoms of Driven People

A driven person is most often gratified only by accomplishment.

A driven person is preoccupied with the symbols of accomplishment.

A driven person is usually caught in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion.

Driven people tend to have a limited regard for integrity.

Driven people often possess limited or undeveloped people skills.

Driven people tend to be highly competitive.

A driven person often possesses a volcanic force of anger, which can erupt any time he or she senses opposition or disloyalty.

Driven people are usually abnormally busy.[2]

MacDonald continues, This then is the driven person—not an entirely attractive picture. What often disturbs me as I look at this picture is the fact that much of our world is run by driven people. We have created a system that rides on their backs. And where that is true in businesses, in churches, and in homes, the growth of people is often sacrificed for accomplishment and accumulation.[3]

When driven people confront the competing demands on their time, they view them as counterproductive assaults against their agenda, their mandate to get things done. Competing demands confuse and delay their carefully conceived plans and leave them feeling frustrated by their inability to solve the riddle, to find a way to get rid of the distractions that impede the progress of their singular focus.

Obviously, I believe that pastors are supposed to be called, not driven! Certainly our calling will result in an undeniable drive to fulfill all that God intends for us, but we will not be controlled or consumed by ungodly motives measured in terms of achievement and accomplishment. Our greatest satisfaction arises from being faithful to Christ, first in the character of our hearts, and then in the conduct of our lives and ministries.

1. Gordon MacDonald. Ordering Your Private World (New York: Oliver Nelson, 1985), 29.

2. Ibid., 31–36.

3. Ibid., 36.

2

DISCOVERING COUNTERBALANCES IN MINISTRY

God has a way of enforcing balance in our lives to keep us from spinning out of control into eccentric obsessions. Without the presence of competing demands, we would devote ourselves exclusively to those things we like to do and avoid those things we really should do but do not want to do. I believe that the Lord has provided competing demands to serve as a series of weights and counterweights to enable us to achieve and maintain equilibrium in our lives and ministries.

Counterweights Stabilize Called People

Life is full of examples of balance. The face of a clock is perfectly balanced. Each hour has its direct opposite, a counterpart exactly six hours away. A circle cannot have fewer than 360 degrees and still be perfectly round. Each point of the circle has a counterpoint exactly 180 degrees away. Every auto mechanic knows that for a tire’s roll to be true, all four tires need to be in balance so the car’s weight is distributed equally. With precision, a mechanic will place balancing weights at strategic points all around the tire’s rim to correct any imbalance.

So it is with the demands that accompany our calling to ministry. Like so many points around the face of a clock, ministry conflicts pull at us every day and surround us with decisions about how to spend our time and energy. We feel like each choice we make threatens the delicate balance and symmetry of our ministry.

But what if what you think of as the delicate balance and symmetry of your ministry is, in fact, already imbalanced? Conflicting demands, or weights and counterweights, create much of the difficulty in maintaining the balance of our calling, but God intends them for our good. We often resent them and resist having to endure the tedious precision of God’s hand when he works on perfecting and rounding out our ministry. The truth is that God will provide all we need to stay in balance and fulfill the demands of our calling, but sometimes he needs to correct our imbalances with weights and counterweights.

Driven people consider this process to be unnecessary, nothing more than a frustrating delay in their agenda to get the job done. Called people, on the other hand, recognize that God had more in mind when he called them to ministry than just accomplishing an agenda. For the Lord, the destination does not always matter as much as the way you make the journey.

When God calls a person to be a shepherd of his flock, God sees the entire picture through the balanced lens of his eternal perspective. We cannot ignore any part of his purposes along the way and consider it to be a successful trip. Therefore, he will remind us of the need to attend to all aspects of the calling. Like the wheels of a car on a cross-country trip, the tires of our ministry will eventually become deformed and misshapen when they hit potholes, deflate with the hot and cold climates of the seasons, and sometimes either wear out or get punctured. It is not the tire’s fault that it encounters potholes, temperature shifts, or nails in the road. It is, however, the driver’s job to pay attention to how his or her tires are responding to those demands. The Lord provides all the assistance we will ever need to keep ourselves in balance for the entire journey if we will be patient and trust him when he calls us aside to place the proper weight at the appropriate points to keep going.

In my own life and ministry, I have tried to determine where my balance is most threatened and which demands generate the greatest struggles. By looking back over the years and noting the points where the Lord applied additional weights and counterweights, I have been able to see consistent wear patterns that indicate where I am most likely to get out of balance. Although there are many others, I will detail six categories that I have found are common to pastors. Each category consists of two pressure points that compete for our time and attention, each generating a strong pull in the opposite direction. As long as the pull remains equal, balance is preserved. But when the strength of the pull, or the weight of the demands, shifts one way or the other, the Lord allow us to undergo a bumpy ride until we allow him to restore our equilibrium.

As you can see from the diagram on p. 35, every area has a counterweight or an opposite responsibility of ministry. Attending to each point with care enables me to enjoy the kind of balanced ministry the Lord desires for me. In each case, I have a preferred point of emphasis, a natural bent. You, too, will likely be able to identify your natural bents and inclinations at a glance. Left to my own inclinations, I would persist in devoting myself to bulking up the strength of my preferences and neglect the building up of my weaknesses. A commitment to balance in ministry will not allow such negligence.

An Uncompromising Vision Balanced by a Teachable Spirit

Defining your vision can produce all kinds of stress. In presenting your ideas about what you believe the Lord has in store for you and your congregation, you are in constant danger of going overboard or slipping off the high wire. If not communicated sensitively and carefully, the way we share our vision can sound like a scheme to embellish our own careers and cater to our own egos. Therefore, as we begin to understand God’s vision for our ministries, we must allow some time to clarify our thinking so that when we share the vision with others, they will hear God’s heart in it and not personal ambition.

If you have never spent much time coming to terms with a clear vision of what the Lord wants to do in your life, I cannot emphasize enough how critical that investment can be. If you are not clear on where you believe the Lord is leading you, you will always feel insecure about your role as a pastor and a leader.

Does the Lord drop visions straight from heaven to every pastor? To hear some pastors tell it, you might think so! More than likely though, a godly vision develops over time as we listen to and learn from others, and as we demonstrate that we are willing to grow in our thinking with a teachable spirit. If you drew firm conclusions about your vision early in your ministry, you will probably struggle when the time comes to expand it. The Lord wants his shepherds to have a firm grasp on a clear vision, but he wants them to balance that firmness with a teachable spirit that always seeks to know more.

Resources abound if we are willing to listen. Other pastors, church members, books, tapes, seminars, and many sources of dream-building materials exist to enable us to grow our vision beyond our own limited perspectives. Don’t be afraid to admit that you do not have all the answers. Even the most clearly defined visions can stand refinement if we are willing to ask good questions and listen with openness and a teachable spirit to the responses.

Fixed Priorities Balanced by Flexibility to Respond

Isn’t the problem of balance solved if you just figure out your priorities and then live by them? Pastors whose lives get out of line obviously never defined their priorities.

Have you ever heard anyone say something like that? Unfortunately, stating our priorities seldom takes into account all the possible scenarios we will face on any given day. No matter how well we have defined our priorities, issues arise that do not fit our carefully defined categories. I know that when I review my schedule and make the necessary adjustments to get my life back in line with my stated priorities, no sooner do I get the schedule written down, than something comes along that makes it all but impossible to keep!

It is true that you cannot expect to accomplish much toward your life dreams and vision if you do not set forth some working priorities. Some things just have to be viewed as more important than others and treated that way in the amount of time and attention we give them. Lives without priorities cannot maintain any balance whatsoever and only succeed in generating a sense of futility because we never seem to get anywhere we are trying to go.

With that said, have you ever met anyone who impressed you with their methodical, disciplined set of priorities but lacked spiritual vitality? Perhaps they succeeded in ordering their priorities but forgot that living for Christ is walking by the Spirit, not checking off today’s list of things to do.

The counterweight to fixed priorities has to be flexibility. The Lord may have something more in mind for us today than maintaining a rigid schedule of accomplishing important tasks. Sometimes the Lord drops some unplanned events into our routines just to see if we are willing to adjust our own agenda to be flexible enough for his.

Along the way to do what God has given us, other opportunities often arise. This forces us to decide between what we were planning and what might be a better choice. In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus commends the one who delayed his own journey long enough to respond to the wounded traveler. Two others, a priest and a Levite, chose to ignore the unplanned interruption and kept moving toward their destination. All three had set out to make a journey along the same road, but only one was willing to lay aside his original plan to respond to a more immediate need. Jesus praised his actions as the good and right way. Sometimes in our lives as pastors, unexpected crises arise and we have to determine if they are from the Lord or simply a distraction. Inflexibility, even when justified by lofty priorities, can get in the way of the unique moments of special blessing that come with divine interruptions.

How flexible are you? Granted, some people are so flexible that they throw out their priorities at the first sign of something that appears to be more promising or more urgent. Others are so determined not to be distracted from their plans that they would not recognize the voice of the Lord if he shouted to them in a closed room.

Our priorities are only valuable as the Lord assigns value to them. When he has something else in mind, we need to be flexible enough to pay attention. The form of his redirection may be a permanent change in our priorities or just a momentary response to an immediate need. It could be a gentle nudge as he impresses us to take action, or it could be a major calamity that crashes broadside into our lives.

How can we tell the difference between a temptation to compromise our priorities and a calling to respond to a sovereignly appointed ministry opportunity? There is no grid of questions to ask, no priority discernment test to take, and worse, no rule-book or policy manual that offers a definitive answer. The key is a balanced walk with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. A heart that has learned to listen to the quiet stirrings of the Lord has a desire to hold plans loosely with an open hand so that the Lord can replace our agenda with his at any given moment.

This may sound like overly spiritualized mysticism, but, in fact, it reflects the biblical teaching of walking in the Spirit. As the apostle Paul wrote, If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). Godly priorities come from the Lord as he orders our days. Consequently, they can and should be adjusted by the Lord, which helps keep priorities and flexibility in proper balance.

Spiritual Vitality Balanced by Administrative Duties

Many churches frustrate themselves and their pastors by creating a false division between ministry and running the church. With the best of intentions, different church members through the years have actually told me, Pastor, you take care of the ministry part, and we’ll run the church. Just because you’ve been to seminary and know about theology and the Bible doesn’t qualify you to be involved in the administration of the church. While that may be true, behind such thinking lies an assumption that practical matters such as budgets and buildings are not addressed in the spiritual realm. It is also misguided to assume that administration and ministry are best kept separate for the sake of efficiency.

There are two common responses to the ministry versus administration dilemma. One is to say, Amen! to the parishioner above, and concern yourself only minimally in the running of the church. But to maintain balance, we need to develop good administrative skills. On the other hand, if our primary calling is to shepherd the flock of God as a pastor, we should not jump into the administrative arena with more gusto than good sense, assuming we will be a frontrunner for the CEO of the Year award.

No matter which side of the dilemma we fall toward, if we are not careful, our week will be consumed by everything but the main ministry the Lord called us to. Between the management of the church and the ministry of the Word, the struggle for balance never lets up. Few can honestly say they have mastered it.

The nagging fear that we are out of balance in this area is compounded by the number of conference speakers and authors who tell us how much time they require to prepare their biblically challenging and spiritually vital messages. We hear great preachers either say or imply that unless we spend twenty or more hours a week in sermon preparation and spiritual nourishment and growth, we cannot expect God’s hand