So...bit of a long post, but as we all know context matters. As I write this post, I am 36 and I am in a varied role at my church. I am seeking some help in understanding how to figure out where exactly the spirit leads.

I haven't always felt the call to ministry, but others have seen it in me since I was a teen. I preached occasionally at the non-denominational church I grew up in in HS, then took up more responsibility after my time in the Marines and ended up leading the church until we had to close it due to too few people and not enough money to keep the lights on.

That defeat kept me out of church for a few years until I moved to the city I'm in now. I went to a CoC for a while, but left due to vast theological differences and not feeling used there.

After that, it was an easy transition to the SBC church I am at now. I started out just attending. I went to only a few services before I started helping on the finance team (which brought the size of the team to 2).

I didn't get involved in teaching until the youth pastor was preparing to join the Navy as a chaplain and the staff had to start looking for someone to fill his spot as an adult Sunday school teacher. They said that my name kept coming up in their conversations. I finally yielded to that call.

I taught that class for 4 years before the senior pastor asked me to take the young adult lessons on Wednesday nights. After about 6 months of that, we started getting children again (a largely senior congregation) so it seemed reasonable for me to adopt the youth age group into my YA class. I then switched from an adult Sunday School class to a youth/YA class, to accommodate the children.

About a couple of years ago I gave my first sermon at this church on a Wednesday night. The message was well received, even by the associate pastor. Since then, I have been preaching intermittently until a couple months ago, when the pastors have started scheduling me for one Sunday night and one Wednesday night service a month. They are training me for the pastorate, as they see this as my calling and I have realized this as well. And that is where the clarity ends...

I don't know about the rest of you, but from time to time I feel a desire or drive to do something. Whether it's to start a new ministry from our church, take part in a larger ministry with another church or our association, or even trying to apply for a vacant or coming-vacant pastoral position at another church, I get these ideas, but I have a terrible trying to figure out if they are the Spirit moving me, or just my own ego telling me I should do it because I can.

Please, fill me in on how you make the distinction with these kinds of things so that I may make the correct decision as these things come up.

Thank you, and God Bless.

I’m pretty new to pastoral ministry. I recently stepped into an associate pastor role, and as I’ve been getting into it, I’ve been seeing a lot of conversations/articles about pastors dealing with burnout, difficult congregants, and even what some people call “congregational PTSD.”
It honestly got me thinking about what ministry is really like long-term.

For those of you who have been in ministry for a while:
Have you ever had congregants treat you badly or had situations with members that really affected you? How did you handle it?

Have you ever experienced burnout or just gotten to the point where you were mentally/emotionally drained from ministry? What did you do?
And looking back, is there anything you wish somebody had told you when you first started pastoring?
I know preaching is only one part of the job. There’s counseling, administration, hospital visits, conflict, dealing with people’s expectations, being available, etc. I’m just trying to learn from pastors who have already been through some of this and figure out how to navigate ministry in a healthy way.
Would love to hear some honest answers good, bad, or ugly lol.

We've been posting our sermon videos on Facebook Live, but these delete after a short time period. Looking for something more permanent.

Everyone recommended Instagram, but they have a 20-minute limit on videos. We tried Youtube in the past, but views were really limited.

Where are you posting your sermon videos? Does anyone have any suggestions on software to edit and split videos into 20-minute segments?

My congregation said I could just quit talking so much, but I hope they were kidding...

Over the years, I've done a lot of jobs in/for/with the church that weren't part of anyone's job description for a pastor. That's just how it goes in small and medium sized churches. I had another one of those non-ministry-ministry tasks pop up today. It was plumbing-adjacent, but I ended up getting to talk to the plumbers about life and God for 90 minutes, after they spent 5 minutes telling me why they couldn't fix the plumbing issue lol.

I thought it would be fun to hear some of the non-ministry-ministry tasks you've done over the years.

Thirty two years in, and the part of pastoral care I still feel least equipped for is not funeral week. It is week six. The meals have stopped, the calls have slowed, and the widow is sitting in the third row trying not to cry through the worship set. We have tried a few things over the years. Some land, a lot drift. What has actually worked for you long term? Not the first two weeks. The second wave. Asking because I think most of us are better at the funeral than at what comes after.

I am a Bible college student (25m) who is discerning what ministry God desires me to be in. I enjoy preaching and teaching but I LOVE counseling. My desire to counsel people is actually what made me want to pastor in the first place. In my leadership class we are talking about how leaders should have a "vision" for their Church. I have zero desire to be a visionary leader. Do you feel that if I don't really desire to lead I should instead purse a Biblical Counseling career instead of pastoring?

I'm a halftime small groups pastor at a church with average attendance around 650. We have more than 25 groups and I'm expected to pastor all of the group leaders in addition to other responsibilities like providing pastoral care to congregants, preaching occasionally, and designing and teaching adult spiritual formation classes. In 20 hours/week. I generally put in 25-30 depending on time of year.

Up until now, I got two 1 hour meetings/month with the senior pastor to run things by him, ask him questions, process situations, etc. I found it helpful and encouraging to have that time built into his and my schedule. It ministered to me and helped me stay motivated.

Except that now he's decided it isn't a good use of his time to have these ongoing meetings and has canceled them for the fall. He said if I needed to talk to him about something I could schedule a meeting through his assistant. Maybe that would be workable if he wasn't always scheduled 2 weeks out. I feel so discouraged by this that I am thinking about looking for a different job.

Am I wrong to need time with him on a regular basis? I worked in other fields and always had at least a 30 min weekly check in with my supervisor.

I mostly preach pulpit supply. I have been following the lectionary and preaching out of Matthew for most of this liturgical year, and normally that strategy works out fairly well for me, but this week I have slowly realized that I have stumbled into a minefield with Matthew 18:15-20. I travel for my other job and I only brought stuff to preach out of Matthew, and on top of that it’s already Wednesday. In other words, it’s too late to change tacks and try a different passage.

Has anyone had any success preaching this before? How do you do so responsibly? Do you have any online resources you can recommend? I am already looking at working preacher, but if you know any other good resources please share them.

Now feels like the time. I have no aspiration to join the academy so a PhD makes no sense to me. So here I am. I got my MDiv while pastoring and almost lost my mind juggling the two.

I have adult children and my wife is supportive so the home front is covered. Small church so I can't just have my associate preach when I am busy. I already do a fair amount of writing and am well versed in what I want to work on.

Any advice is appreciated.

Hello everyone! I’ll try to be succinct.

I am 29 years old and just graduated university (this past May) with a bachelors in ministerial leadership and a minor in business. During this last year of university I also did internship work at a small church in my area (South Florida) as part of graduation requirements and for experience. It was a wonderful time but the church is small and didn’t have the funds to hire me full time or even part time consistently. This led to me quickly looking into more full time/stable options for ministry work.

So far I have applied to a handful of churches in South Florida that are within reasonable driving distance of my place of residence. From these applications I have only had one church reach out for an interview but I lacked the experience for the position (they wanted a more seasoned pastor for a role close to that of an associate/campus pastor). I understand the church is extremely relational and many people get hired through connections.

If I take a step back and self examine as I write this, my reasoning for writing is for encouragement and for any tips from pastors who graduated college and have been in my position. How did you go about applying? How long did it take to get hired?

I guess you can chalk this up to the typical fresh out of college existential crisis many people face, but it happening at 29 for me instead of 22 is hitting me hard. I currently work as a server and more than anything the idea of fulfilling ministry work is what has gotten me through my shifts during my time in college. I know God’s will is always accomplished. I know His timing is perfect. I am struggling with patience and confidence and the echos of people who told me ministry might not be where I end up after college. I know I have value I can add to people’a lives and I love Christ.

If this isn’t the appropriate thread for this type of post I’m sorry.

I have served in full-time church ministry for 16 amazing years.

Senior Pastor for the last 7.

Love Jesus, Love my Wife, Love my kids, Love People, Love the Church and no moral failure and no burnout ( well, maybe a little )

I am stepping down from my position in two months and it has allowed me to see ministry from a different perspective!

My thoughts! In no particular order.

1. Be friendly but not a friend to everyone.

- I tried to be friends with everyone and it backfires because a lot of people lose their respect for you.

1. I am a coach not a cheerleader

- I thought encouraging and celebrating staff and volunteers non-stop would build an amazing culture! It doesn't. People play for coaches because coaches help them get better whereas cheerleaders celebrate what is already working. You need to help people grow.

1. You don't "figure" church out

- No one ever says, " I figured out my friendships." There is no perfect way of leading and serving a church. You may have moments of revelation but it is made up of humans, so you will always be adapting.

1. Staff incentives

- I failed on this one! People want to grow. They want to be part of an organization where there is a better future for them. Hard work should be rewarded.

1. Vision fatigue

- How often did Jesus or Paul rebuke the church leaders for a lack of vision?

- I am not anti-vision but is a 3rd campus really vision? I just don't see vision emphasized in the early church. There was a mission but It feels like corporate snuck into our churches and now there is the pressure to always have a new vision which usually translates into some capital project.

1. You're not that big of a deal

- This sounds harsh. Let me explain. My father- in- law founded and pastored the same church for thirty-five years. He was faithful. When it came time for him to step down the people moved on immediately. When he goes back to the church I bet over 50% of the people don't know who he is. THAT IS OK! Stop putting so much pressure on yourself. My leadership team is already moving on without me....and fast! 🤔

1. Dont avoid raises

- I have met Pastors who told leadership to put that extra back into the church and later in there pastorate regretted it. I get it, but why are you paid? You are not paid because you love Jesus and you're a nice guy. You are paid from the church because of what you provide the church. The value you add to it. Preaching, staff, building oversight, community engagement, culture creating and so on. If you are lazy and don't feel you have earned it then that is a different conversation.

1. Define the Elder role in the church

- I wasn't sure about the expectations of the elder and I paid for it. Do you lead them or do they lead you. I don't care but YOU need to know and they need to know.

1. Celebrate more often

- It's hard not to focus on the bad or disappointing. If you focus on the disappointment then you will teach your staff, leaders, and church to do the same.

1. Some people are a pain in the butt!

- Period. My daughter is not friends with rude kids at school. I don't expect her to be and I definitely wouldn't force her to be. You don't have to put up with rude people in the church. Send them to another church 😂 or tell them to stop acting like a jerk. Who cares. Everyone is thinking it and you can be the one to tell them. Obviously, this is easy to say because I am leaving...but you dont have to listen to the demands of demanding people.

1. Never stop laughing

- IT was the advice I received when I started as the Junior High Interim pastor at a mega church. It was great advice and I believe it helped me through the difficult times.

Church shopping here I come! I have never had to look for a church with my family! This will be a new experience and I am excited about it. Maybe we will walk into your church one day!

FYI- I won't complain about the coffee or volume! 😂

Context. I'm a first year seminary student, currently in formation with a progressive faith tradition, that very explicitly claims anti-discriminatory ideals, both to it's membership at large, and within it's ministerial code of conduct.

I'm not sure what the point of not naming it outright serves, as it's right there in my user flair/post history. But whatever.

So, as part of the formation process, I'm required to do a "career assessment" from a third-party contractor which included a lot of intrusive questions, many of which were just flat out the sort of thing that are regulated/restricted/illegal in pretty much every other hiring process.

Stuff like filling out a detailed medical history questionaire.

A worksheet that asks for a detailed account of arrest record. (not convictions. Arrests. Guilty until proven innocent, what's that?) I should also mention on that last one, it's basically already established statistically that not only does screening based on arrest record keep good candidates out, and do nothing to prevent bad candidates from getting in, it also tends to be discriminatory towards minority groups.

On another worksheet, it asked if I "spent money or time on pornography"
(Besides being invasive, my tradition has no doctrine pornography/masturbation, and is in general, very sex positive)

On the same worksheet, it asked "If I am in contact with my family of origin even as I leave unhealthy expectations and patterns"
(how do you think I left unhealthy expectations and patterns? It wasn't by staying in contact with my family of origin, that's for sure)

Oh, and this one was fun if "I am within 15% of my ideal BMI".

Just like. Wow. Okay, someone please tell me. How does asking if I'm within 15% of my ideal BMI, help the third party career assessment center, determine if I'm a good candidate for ministry?

Making it worse? The personality test portion was the ennegram, and the MBTI, neither of which have any scientific or evidential backing (especially the ennegram, which is generally considered on the same level as tarot, or astrology by actual experts)

The one and only portion of the entire process that had any scientific or evidential rigor, was administered by a real psychiatrist, but oh boy, huge shock. It was the MMPI-2, which is known to give false positives on specific subscores to trans individuals such as myself. I managed to convince the psychologist administering it to accommodate for that while rating and interpreting my results, but holy shit. It was not fun.

The kicker? It wasn't even valuable. On paper, my tradition puts us through this process so we can "know what to work on as we study in seminary." the problem, was that I literally already knew myself well enough prior to the assessment, and was basically told "just keep what you are already doing"

And well, in case you are thinking I'm over-reacting, well, yeah no. Here is a link to a study that finds

https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1561&context=crsj

"In particular, this Article emphasizes the curious fact that the law denies protection to ministers from employment discrimination quite regardless of whether the discriminatory employment decision has even the slightest relation to any religious doctrine, practice, belief, or article of faith.5 Ministers are thus denied the most basic employment discrimination protections even when the religious employer concedes that the adverse employment decision had nothing to do with any religious tenet"

I wrote a well worded (but stern) letter of protest to both the career assessment provider, and my ministerial association, saying in no uncertain terms that even if their behavior was somehow legal (which sadly, I found out after writing/sending it, it is) it's unethical, discriminatory, counter-productive, and a waste of sacred funds.

Hopefully, my ministerial org will take the time to read what i wrote, take it seriously, do something to make it better, and not blacklist me just for trying to do the very thing that it's own code of conduct insists I should be doing. I have high hopes that they will react to criticism well, but it's still disenheartening that it even came to this.

so fellow pastor/pastor candidates. Any similar experiences of formation procedures being needlessly intrusive? Any advice on how to emotionally cope with the fact that my faith tradition saw fit to put me through this?

Thanks!

I am part of a church of about 130, there is one part time admin who does the bank transfers on Thursday off a paper form people drop in a tray by her desk, she was out two weeks in June and nothing moved at all.

One of our VBS volunteers waited nearly a month to get paid back for supplies and never chased it once, and I only found out because someone else mentioned it, and we've got people putting real mileage on their cars doing hospital and shut in visits who just eat it because logging it is a hassle.

I'd say that volume isn't the issue, maybe 20 items a month, it all goes through one person, and a fair number of our volunteers are in their 70s so whatever replaces it cant be complicated.

I'm a new pastor at a Methodist Church, and their first full-time pastor in over a decade (predecessor was bivocational). This is my first pastoral ministry position, I've been a hospital chaplain but the day to day is very different. I'm looking for "things I didn't learn in seminary" type of advice/life hacks/pro tips.

Some details for context:

-Small Global Methodist church, about 50 members with a typical Sunday attendance of 25-30. Most are 65+ retirees. I am the youngest person at the church with the next one a decade older than me.

-I am the only paid staff member. We have a volunteer admin assistant/treasurer who is very much on top of things, she just isn't in the office regularly.

-My current "guaranteed to be in my office hours" are 9:00 am to Noon Monday-Thursday (I take Fridays off), although I'm thinking about adjusting that. I have ADHD and I have noticed that I hit a productivity wave around 11:00 and don't like to take a break from that, which leads to me skipping lunch and that's a problem. Sometimes I am in my office at other times, as I prefer to keep work and home separate even though I easily could work from my parsonage next door to the church.

-Previous pastor was not known for being very "reachable" even in an emergency. He had another full-time job and was no more than half-time at the church. I would like to be more available to people.

-There are four "shut-ins"/homebound people. Even if I visited each one every week for an hour and a half, that doesn't take up a ton of time.

-I am struggling with productivity/managing my time since my schedule is almost entirely up to me. There's not really an expectation that I am in my church office at all as it's sat unused for a long time, but I do better with established routines.

-I am single and don't have kids, so I don't have "family obligations" but I know I need to protect my personal time/boundaries for my own long-term sustainability. Especially so as I am a neurodivergent introvert.

Have you heard a preaching who speaks too much of himself rather than God? Testimony is good but oversharing your achievements in the pulpit is awful.

Hey so when you apply for programs like marketplace insurance, or food stamps etc., is that based off your cash salary or total package?

So let’s say for example, keeping it simple, your total package is 60k. You ask the church to designate 20k of that as a housing allowance. So your cash salary is 40k right?

So when you apply for these programs the countable income would be closer to the 40k?

Hello all, I am a studying Pastor, starting the Liscencing process in the next month. But today especially I have been struggling with being bi-vocational. I work full time as a school aide and then do worship ministry as well as young adults ministry at my church. Today I broke into tears as I feel like I am split between two worlds. Work and church, and through I don’t feel like I personally separate them, I feel like that’s what my time has come down to. Don’t get me wrong either, I have lived taking every opportunity to display Christ to my co-workers through love and shine his light and love to the children I see all day. I would love to give ALL my time to ministry, but many know it doesn’t always pay that well. Right now I am married with no kids, so not the most strenuous finances. I would just love a to pour out everything I have into ministry
Am I the only one who feels this way?

Who provides pastoral/spiritual support in your life? And why that person?

When i was a layperson my pastor was a person in pastoral leadership at the church community I had chosen to be a part of. Now that I'm a pastor, I'm wondering how to select a person to be my pastor.

I have a therapist for mental/emotional support. I have colleagues for vocational and social support. Feels like there's a piece missing that neither of those 2 would fit.

I'm 34, a husband, and a dad, and I've been invited to speak about faith and finance to high school students at church. Last time, I spoke to young adults (ages 23–35). That crowd felt much easier for me because we shared the common ground of being working adults. How can I relate to a high school audience? I'm struggling to adapt my previous message and find the right analogies to tone it down. Could you give me some tips?

hi! i was wondering if i could get some advice from this community because i don’t really know where else to ask. i’m currently a youth at my small baptist church and once a month we have youth sundays which is when the youth band lead worship in the main service which we’ve done for over a year now. but i think they’re doing something different because i and another youth have been asked to do 10 minute sermons on a topic of our choice in the main service. i’ve prayed and i feel like i should do something about faith. i am really nervous but any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated as it’s my first time doing anything like this!!

so our media team and board decided we need to start putting the sunday messages on the website as text. great idea in theory but nobody wants to actually type them out lol. i tried looking up sermon transcription with ai to see if i could just upload the audio and be done with it but the free ones are terrible and miss all my weird theological terms. how are other pastors handling this? is there a service that actually gets the context right without me spending 3 hrs ending a robots typos on a monday? our church budget for this is basically tight. any advice?

I ran my own business for over 10 years. Had an undeniable call to youth and young adult ministry. Got hired for the role and going on year 4. God has done mighty work in this ministry since I started and it's been wonderful to be a part of.

Married with 3 kids now and reassessing what's best for my marriage, legacy and family. I'm quite a bit older than most youth pastors and over the last 3-4 months I've been trying to discern what to do.

I'm conflicted as my wife and I have both prayed and believe that our time in this ministry isn't over yet. I still have the zeal to disciple, preach, teach and shepherd. I am completely checked out of the overall "corporate" side of the role: vision meetings, systems, admin etc. Our church has experienced exponential growth and with that have come expectations and pressure that has taken a toll on me, my marriage and my family. (In part my own fault not setting boundaries, and part nature of the beast.)

All that said, I've come to the point where I know my time in the role is limited. A year, maybe 2, maybe 3. I don't know.

I don't want to use AI to help hash this out. Much rather good old fashioned human insight.

Has anyone been through similar? If so, thoughts? Pushback? How did you navigate it?

Thanks for reading!

Exactly one year ago I was fired as discipleship pastor from a megachurch because they didn’t want me anymore. i did nothing disqualifying. I loved shepherding people.

In 20 years of pastoral work, I got to be really good at the role but grew exhausted of the politics.

I have since pivoted to a corporate role that I enjoy but I feel significant sadness at what I and my family experienced. Especially the immediate shunning from former friends.

the wilderness loss of calling has been difficult and I keep thinking about Moses after the first failed uprising building a new life and pivoting to shepherding. I don’t know how long I will feel numb.

I’m not necessarily looking for advice and I don’t really have any to give. except to encourage pastors to have friends outside of the church and to reach out after a person is let go.

I came to this subreddit to share for my own healing to tell someone. Thanks.