Sunday service is over. If you are a pastor, this means you probably have a mixed bag of emotions. You may have this feeling of exhilaration as well as feeling completely exhausted. For some, Sunday mornings are filled with victories, testimonies, amens, and a deep sense of accomplishment that the Kingdom of God has been advanced. But, if you are one of those pastors, I am thrilled for you, but 20 years of working with pastors has taught me that you are in the minority. Which means many of you who are ministry leaders reading this are on the other side of the spectrum.
One on hand you feel privileged to be a part of what God is doing, but on the other hand, you don’t necessarily feel like you see much happening. You enjoy serving the people God has entrusted to you, however, there is also a sense of frustration toward the people you serve. This frustration could be from the constant criticisms you receive about things you feel are minors in the scope of ministry. Or, you have a deficit of volunteers that you can’t seem to figure out how to fill because the people in your congregation just don’t seem to want to give their time. Maybe you go through your service on Sunday and you give it your all, but by Sunday afternoon you simply feel like you can’t get it right and your Sunday afternoon is filled with discouragement and frustration.
I don’t know how your Sundays go or what emotions you go through, but pastors are statistically some of the most isolated, frustrated, and desperate people. Partially because every Sunday we are expected to speak life, hope and truth into the lives of our people, but we desperately need someone to speak life, hope, and truth into us.
Today, if you are a ministry leader I want to encourage you. You may not be knocking it out of the park every Sunday, and the Lord knows all of us have room to grow and be better, but I am sure you are not doing as bad as you think you are.
I coach pastors around the country and there is a wide number of challenges they are all facing, but so many of them feel as though they are failing their people, their families and God himself. In almost every one of those situations it comes down to pastors not having a support structure around them that holds them up when they are down.
Do you have someone in your life outside of your family that is holding you up and supporting you?
When you are frustrated and facing challenges in the ministry, do you have someone outside your church you can bounce things off of, troubleshoot, or even vent without judgment?
This is one of the primary purposes of Modern Inklings. Our foundation is in ministry and serving God’s people and we have a passion to support, equip, and encourage ministry leaders because we know the challenges of being a pastor.
We want to invite you to be a part of the Modern Inklings community today. If you would like support and encouragement, be a part of a community of other ministry leaders who are interested in helping one another in our shared mission of advancing the Kingdom of God.
Maybe you don’t need encouragement and things are going awesome for you. Then join the community to be a voice of support for your fellow brothers and sisters in ministry.
We need God’s empowerment, grave and love to be effective in ministry, but we also need a community of support and encouragement to help us to push on when things are tough. Let’s join together to help each other.
Field Notes 