Even before the pandemic, I, like many of you, had begun thinking about how the Church needs to shift in order to be Christ’s body in the world. The twenty-first century has offered Jesus followers new awareness around individual and collective power (both having and lacking it), big questions to ask and challenges to overcome, and an increased number of tools for connecting with and on behalf of others. Covid-19 stripped us down to the studs, allowing us to see what is essential in a faith community. And now we as the body of Christ are moving through lingering exhaustion, fighting an illness that keeps popping back up (though thankfully with more ways to mitigate it now), and wondering which way to go next.

I don’t think any of us has answers about specific models of church. I know I don’t. But I think the characteristics of a flourishing church in 2023 are coming into focus. This month I will be sharing my thoughts on them via an alphabet of the evolving Church.

This week: letters A-E.

Accessibility. This is about equity, which involves providing well thought-through accommodations to those with various needs (e.g., mobility, sensory) so that they can participate fully in congregational life. It is also about being very intentional in the welcome of newcomers, who might be joining onsite or online, who might not know a soul in your community, who might have not been in a church since the day they were deeply wounded by it, or who might not have any vocabulary or framework for what worship, formation, or congregational life look like.

Breath. In the attractional model of church that many of us still cling to (whether we admit it or not!), the emphasis is always on doing more. Offering more programs so that more people will come. Plugging newcomers into more activities so that they will feel more integrated. Not only has the attractional model proven itself not very helpful, especially for smaller churches, it also leaves a lot of people feeling run ragged. I think one of the pandemic’s big shocks to our systems was that most things stopped. We realized we had either forgotten how to breathe or realized we had even less time for it when work and caring responsibilities collapsed in on each other. We’re still recovering. One of the best things Church can do now is to resist the pull back to lots of programs and instead create space for thought, prayer, and rest - not just for now, but permanently.

Care. This is about checking in on the people in our faith communities, particularly those who are hurting or vulnerable or homebound. It is also about caring for the world beyond our church property. All around us there is great need. The Church is not meant to be set apart, tending only to its own. Being Christ’s body involves going where that need is and listening, giving tangible help, and working against the systems that put people at a disadvantage - through no fault of their own - to begin with.

Development. Learning and growing aren’t just for kids. So what are we doing in our congregations to form faithful followers of Jesus across every age cohort? This is not about implementing more programs. (See “breath” above.) It is about a way of being. What do our rituals say about what we believe about God? How do we discern when a big decision looms? How do we approach our work in committees and teams as worship? How do we encourage people to explore and tell their faith stories, looking for where God has been at work in the process?

Embodiment. We are people that worship a God who breathed life into our nostrils and called us good, and who came to us in human form when we needed more information and interaction than God could give us from on high. When Jesus headed back upstairs, entrusting us to his ongoing work, we became his hands and feet here on Earth. All of this is to say that God loves bodies, and so should we! We should honor our bodies’ - and others’ - requirements of rest, food, movement, and medical care. We should respect what our bodies - and others’ bodies - are telling us about who their inhabitants are on the inside. We should give thanks for the variety of bodies. We don’t have treat our bodies as regrettable meat sacks that temporarily store our brains and hearts. They are beautiful vehicles for getting out into God’s good world and sharing the love of Christ.

Next week: letters F-J.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.

When I started my Doctor of Ministry program over a year ago, I thought I’d read fewer books of my choosing. Happily, that has not turned out to be the case! Here are some of the books I read in 2022 that I highly recommend to others. About half were published this year, and the rest came out in recent years.

Fiction

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This story about a woman making her way in the male-dominated world of science - and building her own family of people who understand and care about her along the way - felt really relatable to me. (So did the main character to this Enneagram 5.)

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang. This was a beautiful, tender novel about complicated family and friend relationships made even more so by the main character’s ties to multiple cultures.

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford. This story illuminates the power of trauma that is transmitted across generations in often invisible, incomprehensible ways.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. I loved the main character’s commitment to all words, but particularly the words that mainstream dictionaries leave out: the words specific to women’s experiences and that and those of the working class.

Underground Airlines by Ben Winters. What if the Civil War had never happened? This novel posits what this country would look like in a world in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated sooner.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. This tale alternates between past and present, revealing both the matriarch’s big secret and her resilience in the face of unimaginable challenge.

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. If you’re a book lover looking for a good read on grief, this is it. Strangers and friends share the names of classic works that help the characters both escape from and process what they’re facing. In the process, they build connections they come to depend upon.

Non-fiction

Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia by Natasha Lance Rogoff. I feel like this book was written just for me. Post-Cold War Russia? Sesame Street? It’s a fascinating read and provides great insight to the political and economic realities in Russia during the mid 1990s.

All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: Hope - and Hard Pills to Swallow - About Fighting for Black Lives by Andre Henry. This was an eye-opening read about one Black man’s realizations about how deeply ingrained racism is and how many of his close relationships with white people could not stand as he began to see this. The book is a call to action for Black people to trust themselves and their experiences and for white people to examine our complicity in oppression.

It’s Not You, It’s Everything: What Our Pain Reveals About the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life by Eric Minton. Do you have low- (or high) level anxiety all the time about the state of the world? This book does a great job of explaining why.

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear. If you haven’t yet read this book, do. Its encouragement and practical steps to design tiny habits based on the kind of people we want to be (rather than out of an external goal) are immediately usable.

Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game by Abby Wambach. One of the best books on leadership I’ve read, especially for women and girls. You don’t have to be a sports person to get a lot out of it.

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown. This book offers us language, based in research, for everything we feel. When we can recognize and express how we feel, we can better connect with others.

This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley. READ THIS BOOK. I recommend the audiobook (read by the author) in addition to the print version. There is so much beauty, depth, and wisdom on a range of themes.

What did you read this year that you loved?

"Whatever the case, it’s hard for those who keep showing up to acknowledge that we might not ever sit in the same pew or gather around the same fellowship meal or Bible study or communion table again with those who are missing. We have shared life with these people, and we grieve the loss of their participation." Read more about how some people aren’t returning to church and what your congregation can do in response at the CBF blog.

Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash.

A couple of years ago, one of my coachees introduced me to the work of culture writer Anne Helen Petersen. Petersen helps her readers think about the systems that are often invisible to us but that we all swim in every day. She also shares thoughts about how to live day-to-day in the midst of those (often harmful) systems even as we advocate for their overhaul. (I recommend her Substack here as well as her books on reconfiguring work and on Millennials and burnout.)

One of Petersen’s interests is creating sustainable communities of care. In the United States care infrastructure is piecemeal at best, and caregiving for children and older adults is undervalued and either underpaid or unpaid. That leaves many people - especially those of us in the sandwich generation - scrambling and harried much of the time, with little space to tend to our own needs for rest and relationships beyond work and caregiving, much less room in our schedules for errands or (dare to dream!) play. We need people we can count on for help, but reaching out is so hard. Petersen names some of the barriers as our identities as helpers, our pride in being self-sufficient, our feelings of overwhelm (which of the many pressing to-dos do we ask for assistance with?), and not having a solid friend network or family nearby because of the multiple moves we’ve made for work.

In a recent post Petersen proposes an “emergency/tough times guide” (here’s her template) in which we name the things that would be most helpful to us when we’re feeling stretched too thin. In her piece she also names ways to use the guide. In addition to the options she presents, I want to offer some thoughts on how you could tailor a communal care guide for you or for your church:

• Craft the prompts for church staff and possibly even key lay leaders and ask them to fill out the form along with you. What personal or ministry support does each person need? What helps individuals feel seen and appreciated? Decide and communicate before distributing the form who will have access to the repository of responses. Access might be based on how vulnerable the questions ask respondents to be, how much trust there is in the system, what roles those with access play in the church, and how willing those people are to provide the requested assistance.

• Develop a form that everyone in your church can fill out on a rolling basis. This equalizes all the participants, makes it ok to ask for help, and reveals the care that would really benefit individuals or family unit so that the church can, well, be the church to each other. You can decide whether the responses will be available to anyone who fills out the form or to a specific team of caregivers committed to meeting needs as they are able.

• Develop a form in two parts for everyone in your church. In the first part takers name needs, and in the second part they share ways they could help others (e.g., taking people to appointments, making phone calls to people who are homebound, providing after school care for children of working parents). Everyone can see responses to both parts of the form, so they know whom to contact to give or receive care.

• Create a clergyperson-specific form, distribute it among your pastor peers, and give all the takers access to the responses. There are certain personal and professional needs that only another minister can understand and fulfill, and the guide could open up conversation about what mutual support could tangibly look like.

None of the options above is perfect. The forms would have to be designed thoughtfully in order to meet the intended aim of building an organic, sustainable care structure. But I think there’s something in here worth considering, a means of acknowledging our needs and others’ and working toward helping one another in ways that make a real difference.

Pastors are humans, and we minister alongside humans. We talk about our dependence on God and our interdependence with one another. Yet we can be so hesitant to acknowledge what is hard in our lives and request help accordingly. Perhaps this communal care guide can lower our resistance to know and be known by each other more deeply and share our burdens in appropriate and relationship-building ways.

Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash.

In its report “Twenty Years of Congregational Change,” Faith Communities Today reported in 2020 that 44% of all US congregations averaged 50 or fewer attendees each week, with another 25% falling into the 51-100 attendee category. I would not hesitate to hypothesize that the numbers of churches in these size ranges have grown in the past two years. What this means is that there likely is a growing number of churches led by part-time pastors.

This reality presents some challenges, of course. It is becoming harder for pastors - and particularly associate pastors - to find full-time congregational ministry positions. They might need to piece together multiple jobs in order to bring in the income they need to pay monthly bills and to chip away at student debt. They are harder pressed to secure benefits such as health insurance, which typically come only with full-time roles. (I’m happy to get on my soapbox about why insurance should not be tied to employment, but that’s a conversation for another time.) It can be complicated to align the work schedules of two or more jobs.

But even as the numbers trend toward smaller churches with reduced financial resources, there are some real opportunities here. I am privileged to know some pastors who are purposely and purposefully serving in part-time pastor roles. I have learned a lot from them about the beauty of multi-vocational work. (I highly recommend that you check out Rev. Rachel McDonald’s substack “My Other Job.” She has taught me a lot!) Here are some of the advantages to part-time pastorates:

Pastors’ identities are separated from their congregational ministry positions. In this season of discernment and pastoral turnover, I’m hearing an amplified version of a theme that has often run through coaching conversations: Who am I if I am not the leader of [insert name of church here]? Ministers’ sense of self easily becomes intertwined with their roles at particular points in time, making the thought of vocational change - even welcome change - an existential threat. Having more life outside of the congregational context helps pastors sort out who is the person and what is the role.

Churches and pastors can cultivate more intentionality around work and rest. When pastors are paid for twenty hours a week, both they and their congregations must think more about what is essential for the pastor to do - and not do. This practice can lead to more focus on mission and values rather than all the tasks that get lumped under “other duties as assigned.”

Pastors’ income is not wholly dependent on one source. This offers pastors freedom not just in a financial sense but also in allowing them to take more faithful risks in preaching and teaching. This gives them permission to offer the gentle challenge that can lead to significant spiritual growth.

Laypeople can discover and use gifts they never knew they had. When pastors lay down some responsibilities, that creates space for others to take them up. There are no doubt others in your church who can deliver a good word from the pulpit. Pastoral care can become congregational care. People can tap into their convictions and connections to initiate new ways for fellow members to serve. This is the priesthood of all believers at work!

Pastors’ relational networks expand. Many pastors lament that they don’t have time or energy to make friends or serve the community outside of their ministry role. With more time available, they can meet a whole new demographic of people at another job. They can have interests and hobbies that have nothing to do with church. They can establish friendships with peers who are not clergy. They don’t have to be The Pastor in every space.

Churches’ ministries are not as built around programming. A lot of churches are still solidly buying into the attractional model: if we have a great [children’s ministry, youth ministry, etc.], people will come. Maybe, if you’re a megachurch. But most people are looking for relationships, not one more thing to add to the calendar. Having a minister who doesn’t have work time to start and staff programs takes off this pressure to overschedule and properly reorients planning toward mission.

Pastors can flex different muscles. Related to several of the points above, pastors have made themselves (or allowed others to make them) one-dimensional. But God made us all much more complex and contradictory than that! When pastors are part-time, they can try new things or use skills that don’t get called upon in ministry. This faithfully un-flattens them.

I have a lot of hope for the Church and for its impact on the world in the coming years. I don’t think the future of the Church, though, lies necessarily in bringing in waves of new members and their wallets. The part-time trend will only grow, and it’s much better to be proactive in moving from full-time to part-time staffing structures than to hang on to old ways of leading and being until the coffers are depleted. If you want to read about how to make this shift well, I highly recommend G. Jeffrey MacDonald’s 2020 book Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

In many churches, this is the time of year when annual reviews of staff take place. For some pastors, these conversations are the only times they hear what is and isn’t working from their congregants’ point of view. That makes reviews somewhat nerve-wracking for clergy. They wonder: What surprises await me when that conference room door closes? 

Here’s the thing, though: Your pastors want feedback from you! Click here to read my thoughts on how your perspectives can be shared in ways that are most useful for your ministers and, by extension, your church.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash.

Every December I offer a “round up” special to former, current, and potential clergy coachees: I will round the amount left in your professional expense line item up to the next session value. This is my way of helping you make sure you don’t leave any of your hard-earned money on the table at the end of the calendar year. Here’s what you need to know to access this special:

• If you are a prospective coachee, I welcome you to schedule a discovery call so that you can ask any questions you might have about coaching or the way I approach it.

• Contact me about your desire to use the special by noon your time on Friday, December 30.

• There is no minimum number of sessions you must purchase.

• If you are a current coachee, the session(s) you purchase using the offer will be added on to the end of your coaching package.

• You can use this special to pay now for sessions that start at your convenience, whether that’s immediately or after the busyness of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

Those are the nuts and bolts. Let’s get to the good stuff, which is why you might want to explore coaching. The Church and world are in major transition, which means many ministers want to discern what this means for them and their congregations, re-think and re-tool their leadership, and take good care of themselves and the people they love in sustainable ways. Coaching can help you move ahead in all of these open questions. In fact, coaching is one of the best uses of your professional development funds because it

• is done remotely,

• takes place at your pace and on your schedule,

• is geared toward reframing your particular situation in helpful ways,

• helps you make positive steps forward, and

• can be completely customized to your goals, leadership style, and context.

Invest in your 2023 with 2022 money. Contact me or schedule a discovery call to activate the round-up special by December 30.

Take heart! Though there are many challenges for pastors right now (as outlined in this piece), there is also much to celebrate. Click here to read the second article, which focuses on all that is good, based on my recent survey of clergy.

Photo by Carson Masterson on Unsplash.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” This is true for individuals, and it is true for churches. There is

a time to wait on God and a time to take action with God;

a time to question and a time to rest in faith;

a time to experiment and a time to commit;

a time to revitalize and a time to close;

a time to listen and a time to make a statement;

a time to gather and a time to send out;

a time to look backward and a time to look forward;

a time to play and a time to study;

a time to take on and a time to let go;

a time to physically distance and a time to embrace;

a time to nourish others and a time to be nourished ourselves;

a time to protest and a time to re-group;

a time to work and a time to take Sabbath;

a time to grieve and a time to hope.

There is a time for all of these things. What season does your church find itself in?

Photo by Vegan Oazïs on Unsplash.

Recently I surveyed pastors about what their biggest challenges and greatest joys are in this season of ministry. This article on the CBF blog about the challenges and ways to address them is part one of a two-piece series based on those survey results.

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash.

When I entered seminary in the fall of 1999, I was there to train for ministry. I was not on the lookout for a spouse. And yet, in my final year, I found myself falling in love with a United Methodist pastor from Alabama. When Matt was commissioned for service in his conference, we were not yet engaged. Three years later, though, we were newlyweds when Matt underwent his interviews for ordination.

I attended the interview retreat as moral support. I was shocked to be called into Matt’s actual interview with the Board of Ordained Ministry. The Board asked us what we would do about baptism when we had children, since I was ordained to ministry in a believer’s baptism tradition and the United Methodists practice infant baptism. “Well, if we have children [red flag #1 for the Board], we’ll have that conversation then [red flag #2].” Luckily, in spite of my obstinance/honesty, Matt was approved for ordination. But the summons to his interview, much less the question posed to me, was an early signal to me that life as a clergy spouse came with some land mines.

A few months ago Matt stepped away from pastoring a congregation, at least for a season. As we planned for a year and a half for his leave, which was prompted by the challenges of Covid, 20 years of ministry without a break of more than a week at a time, and other factors, I could not wait to throw off the weight of all the projections that come with being the minister’s wife. Some people relish the role of being married to a pastor. I do not, though I delight both in being clergy myself and being a spouse to Matt.

Since I now feel like I have space to talk more freely, I thought I’d share a bit about my experience. I don’t speak for all clergy spouses, though I expect many could relate with the struggles of being:

Silenced. Ministry is one of the few jobs in which the pastors might (though this should never be assumed) bring their families to work. That makes the stakes higher for everyone in the pastor’s family. If the pastor runs afoul of the congregation, the pastor’s family loses a faith community. If the pastor’s spouse and/or kids “act out,” that causes trouble for the pastor. For me this has resulted in the need (felt, if not actual) to keep my cards close to the vest.

Hurt. People sometimes feel like the pastor and family are fair game for any kind of criticism. I’m not talking about the constructive kind, which is good and necessary for a minister to grow. And it is a special kind of pain to watch an embattled pastor navigate conflict, knowing that you as the spouse can’t do anything to make things better.

Weighed down with expectations. I don’t think many churches (that Matt would serve, anyway) still hand the curriculum for the children’s Sunday School class over to the pastor’s wife on the first day. Other stated and unstated suppositions still lurk, though. Some are benign, like that I would bring a dish to a church potluck. (I am not the cook in our family, and no one needs to take a chance eating what I would make.) Some are more insidious, such as that my work should always be eclipsed by Matt’s.

Vocationally hemmed-in. Being married to an itinerant minister who serves at the pleasure of the bishop has meant we’ve gone where Matt is appointed, and then I adjust vocationally. (Other clergy families, even United Methodist ones, navigate this differently, and I celebrate that!) This has resulted in two narratives that are both true: 1) that Matt’s job security has given me the freedom to develop my ecumenical interim work and coaching practice (which is the story I lean into on my better days) and 2) that I have had to create a portable ministry so that I don’t have to struggle afresh to find my vocational footing every 3-4 years.

Lonely. Pastors have to set boundaries with parishioners for their own ethical integrity. Clergy spouses often end up doing the same to protect their clergy spouses and/or themselves for reasons related to many of the challenges named above.

I give this window into clergy spouse-dom because it doesn’t have to be so hard. Churches can support pastors and their families, and when this happens, everyone wins. Pastor, spouse (and kids, if applicable), and congregation are all energized by love and trust, and a longer and more fruitful mutual ministry together becomes possible. Specifically, here is what churches can do:

Treat your pastors fairly. This is basic stuff that goes for all pastors, whether or not they are partnered or have kids. Respect their time, come alongside them, pay them a just wage, tell them you appreciate them every once in a while, bless their need for breaks, and give them useful feedback. This allows these pastors to be fully human and more present to their loved ones.

Remember that spouses are our own people. When we speak, we speak for ourselves. Clergy shouldn’t have to deal with blowback because church members are clutching their pearls at something the spouse said or did.

Respect the clergy spouse’s needs. Our lives do not have to revolve around a congregation we do not lead. We want to work. We want to have friends who don’t know us as Pastor’s Spouse. We want to feel free to go to church somewhere else sometimes or always. We might even want to sleep in on the occasional Sunday morning.

Don’t expect more of clergy spouses than you would of anyone else. If you think spouses should do more, there should be a formal position with pay involved. If you think spouses should be better, remember that we are human.

See and value clergy spouses. We have our own gifts and callings that we want to exercise to their fullest.

Support and encourage our desire to expand our connections. Our desire to make friends outside the church is not a criticism or rejection of those in the church. We just need to jump out of the fishbowl sometimes.

Offer help with clergy kids, without judgment. Whatever you think about the pastor or spouse, please love our children, even and especially when they are acting out. (It is stressful to bring your child to your own or your spouse’s workplace!) Show interest in them. Engage them in conversation. Invite them to sit with you. Support the need for their care during meetings and classes.

Someone who is currently a clergy spouse can’t say all these things I’ve shared with you. It’s too touchy. But since I now can, I hope my experience sheds some light on what it’s like to be a clergy spouse and how your church can more fully support clergy families.

Photo by Janno Reyes on Unsplash.

If you know me well, you will find it hilarious that I have written a piece on anything Hulk-related. (I had - have? - a terrible fear of the Lou Ferrigno Hulk.) But I found the Disney+ series She-Hulk irresistible as a way to share what it’s like to be a clergywoman. You can read my thoughts on the parallels on Baptist News Global.

Often we think of hospitality as simply greeting guests or handing them plates of food and glasses of sweet tea. Really, though, it’s much more than that. True hospitality draws people into ever-deeper layers of engagement, up to and including inviting them to share power with us. Read more about the many layers of hospitality here on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month, but like all Hallmark observances, this observance really points toward the need to value who your pastor is and what your pastor does all the time. Recently Rev. Joanna D’Agostino, pastor of Lakewood Congregational Church in Ohio, told me about the ways her congregation supports her. She graciously agreed to guest write a post about what this care looks like, what it means to her, and how other churches might show appreciation to their leaders. Below are her good words in response to my questions.

On a recent call with Laura, I was sharing about some of my frustrations with ministry and church, time-management and focus, and just the heaviness of it all. But I felt the need to clarify to her, “I have so much support from my church.” Ministry is really hard, but it’s a game-changer to be a part of a church that values my health and my clarity of call and recognizes that we are in Covenant with one another. I’ve felt this at both churches I’ve served over the course of 10 years of ministry, but I don’t think I’m in the majority in that regard. 

What are a few specific ways your congregation has shown that it values your ministry?

Small ways: They laugh with me. We’re silly together. It’s really in the little things – we have a bust of William Shakespeare that our custodian moves to a different, unexpected part of the building every week or so, just for fun. Recently someone put googly eyes on it, which makes it even funnier. We have a pretty robust musical theater ministry, which means every once in a while someone pops into the office with some costume elements they picked up at the thrift store. We test them out, and we just laugh.  

I have occasionally talked about the fact that I played the bassoon through college, but stopped playing when I graduated because I didn’t own one. Recently a church member, who is the band director at a local high school, came into worship and handed me a bassoon reed (it’s a double-reed instrument) and said, “You now have a bassoon on loan in the music office. We expect you to play in the church talent show.” (Yes, we have a church talent show!) So, now I’m trying to learn how to play again. It doesn’t seem like your traditional understanding of “support,” but it reminds us to find joy. Always find joy. 

Larger ways: They pay me well. It feels so obvious that justice-oriented churches should pay their pastors well. Unfortunately, it isn’t a given. I know budgets are tight and times are hard. It’s not always simple. But the reality is many pastors don’t know how they’re going to pay their energy bill, and it is really hard to do good ministry from a place of personal scarcity. In many ways, that’s a whole different blog topic, but I guess I’ll just say this: It is worth the budgetary stretch to pay your pastors well. (P.S. I’m not trying to say I’m making millions over here; just that I have enough.) 

They trust me to make decisions about my time. I’ve heard a lot of pastors talk about their congregants critiquing their schedules: that they’re in the office too much or not enough; they don’t attend enough meetings or need to do more home visits; they should work on their sermons more or be more visible in the community. Time management for pastors is incredibly challenging. Ministry is in the interruptions– and there are so, so, so many interruptions. And on top of that, many of those interruptions are confidential, so we can’t explain why our focus for the day changed so drastically. Especially in a small-staff church, the work of a pastor falls almost entirely under “other duties as assigned.” We might have a plan for the day, but one interruption can send it off the rails. The point is – hearing critiques from church members about how we spend our time is really just salt in the wound that leads pastors to feeling so deeply misunderstood and underappreciated for the hard work of prioritizing when everything feels important. 

I’ve rarely met a pastor who wasn’t working hard. It means a lot to be surrounded by people who really believe we’re doing the best we can.

What difference does that support make for how you show up as a pastoral leader? 

The churches I’ve served have helped me to see that I can lead from a baseline of grace. That means I don’t have to show up perfectly every time. Not every sermon is going to be out of the park. Some days I’m going to be in a bad mood. I show up knowing that the worst case scenario is that “tomorrow is another day to try again.” The worst-case scenario is that someone will come to me and say, “You know, I had a bad day too. You’re not alone.” Sometimes the most beautiful pastoral care moments flow from just being human with other humans. 

And, to return to the point I made about laughing: perfection isn’t very funny anyway. Messing up is funny. Being a human with other humans is funny. And humor is so very, very full of grace. 

What advice would you give to a church wanting to show appreciation to a minister, particularly in this season when pastoral burnout is rampant?

1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Choose your battles. A bulletin typo isn’t the hill to die on, I promise.

2. When was the last time you asked your pastor how they’re doing? Not, “Good morning, how are you?” but a real, genuine, “How is it with your soul?” Ask it. They might cry. The answer might not be what you want to hear. But I cannot overstate the importance of just letting pastors (or anyone, really!) know we genuinely care about their well-being.

3. I remember once when a colleague asked two questions that I have carried with me: 1. What brings you the most joy in your ministry? 2. Does your congregation know that? I really think it’s easy to lose track of why we’re in this work to begin with. It’s especially easy to lose track of it if we haven’t let our congregation know. If you’re a congregant, my advice is: ask your pastor about their call story. Ask them about where they see God in their ministry today. Ask them what brings them joy in ministry. If you’re a pastor you might need to offer some prompting: tell your call story. Tell your church where you saw God this week. Tell them why you’ve dedicated so much of your life to this messy human institution. Because when we begin to tell stories about discipleship and grace and joy, we start to remember why church matters, and that’s where the Spirit thrives. 
   

[Since this is one of my favorite resources I’ve created, I like to share it annually in time for congregations to distribute it before November 1. Enjoy!]

Sometimes I wish All Saints’ Day could be more than, well, one day. Our lives are shaped by so many people who have gone before, whether we knew them personally or not. I think we could all benefit from reflecting on their influence and considering what parts of their legacies to carry forward.

Since All Saints’ Day is November 1, and since we are already inclined toward thanks-living during November, I have put together a month-long prayer calendar with daily prompts to remember a departed saint whose impact has been significant. This calendar is available as a copier-friendly PDF. Feel free to share the calendar on social media, print it for your church members or yourself, or use it as your November newsletter article.

Even as church life and ministry are challenging right now, I am very hopeful. One of the reasons is because I believe that all of the turnover in pastoral positions will lead to more congregations looking in different places for new kinds of leaders. I write about this phenomenon as an opportunity for congregations in the latest issue of CBF’s Fellowship Magazine. You can read the article by clicking here and navigating to page 24.

Photo by Katerina Pavlyuchkova on Unsplash.

One of the challenges that pastors are facing right now is how to decide what tasks to do and when, especially since the sheer number of them (partly a holdover from Covid times, partly the generalist nature of ministry) feels so daunting.

Recently one of my coachees introduced me to the Eisenhower Matrix. It was developed by President Dwight Eisenhower as a prioritization tool. It offers a way to sift responsibilities into quadrants according to importance and urgency, thus making it more useful than a to-do list, which makes it look like all actions have equal weight. Here’s an example:

Note: You don’t have to put steps in the same boxes I did. Importance and urgency will vary by minister and ministry setting.

Once you put your to-dos in the boxes, then you can make an action plan. Take care of the pieces that are both important and urgent. Delegate the urgent but not important ones. Plan for blocks of time to address the important but not urgent. Don’t even bother with steps that are neither urgent nor important.

You could use this matrix daily or weekly to help you figure out what you actually need to get done, not what your straight to-do list or other people say you need to accomplish. If you get stuck at any point in sifting the jobs or implementing the matrix, that’s useful information too.

For some of my coachees the matrix has resulted in some big picture vocational awareness and for others it’s made their roles feel more manageable. So if you are drowning in work, give this tool a try and reflect on what you learn.

Some churches that have long had a full-time pastor are beginning to imagine what it would look like to laser-focus the pastor’s time, energy, and responsibilities. If your congregation is in this space, check out this article I wrote for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog about things to think about during this staffing model transition. And, spoiler alert, while this change might be challenging, really beautiful, faithful outcomes are possible.

Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash.

I recently wrote a blog post for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship about the importance of playing, not just praying, together. You can read the article here, but the gist is that play has all kinds of benefits in congregational life. In individuals, it opens up neural pathways for creativity. Between individuals, it starts or solidifies relationships. Within communities, it strengthens connective tissue and builds agility. And besides all of that, play is fun!

The aforementioned piece spoke more to play at a congregational level. I want to offer a few ways to incorporate it into smaller and more focused groups such as meetings, because we've all sat in meetings where conflict simmered, energy tanked, or the ideas just weren’t flowing. Play can help with all of these challenges. Here, then, are some ways to bring it in:

Divide people into pairs and ask them to tell each other a story about a time… You can fill in the dots with any prompt. Sometimes it might be more silly, other times more serious, depending on the purpose and timing of the storytelling.

Play a few rounds of Pictionary or Charades. You can do this at the beginning of a meeting to set the tone or later to open up hearts and minds before introducing an agenda item.

Ask people to draw, sculpt (using Play Doh), or build (using Lego) an idea or a response to a question. The people in your meeting will access a different part of their brains than if you asked them to respond in words, meaning you might get more information and from a bigger range of people than the normal conversation dominators.

Pray in color. Prayers don’t have to be spoken. Set aside time for people to color (on a blank sheet of paper or on a coloring sheet. The room might be silent, or there could be music playing or someone reading scripture. (Find more ideas here.) Also, encourage people to doodle freely during the whole of the meeting.

Have a dance break. Kids get recess. What do adults get? Nothing. What do we want? A dance party! Put on an up-tempo song and invite people to move their bodies however feels comfortable. This is a great way to amp up energy.

Build a story together. One person starts with “Once upon a time…” The next person adds the next bit, another builds on what the previous two people said, and so on. You can instruct people to jump in with phrases or single words. This game can offer levity and get people working together and listening to one another.

Have an emergency play bin handy. You can put anything you like in it: bubbles, art supplies, Play Doh, fidget toys, building toys, puzzles, minifigures, and more. Advertise that it’s in the room and available for use whenever anyone would like to use it. Alternatively, open it up when needed for everyone to get out an activity that will help them engage more fully with the purpose at hand.

These are just a few ideas. You probably have many more to add. That’s great! The important thing is to ramp up joy and innovation and especially to connect to one another in new ways.

Photo by Vanessa Bucceri on Unsplash.

Some of my coachees have found the categories used in this article helpful for picking apart why everything feels so big and unwieldy right now. I hope that this piece also offers some useful suggestions on how to focus on fewer tasks right now until we can all rebuild some capacity and momentum. Click here to read on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by Jené Stephaniuk on Unsplash.