9 Important Truths to Being a Healthy Pastor

1.      As a pastor, you don’t have a job; you have a calling. You are not here to punch a clock or meet a quota. Your role is different from just about anybody else on the planet. In ministry, don’t mistake a job for a calling.

2.     Your calling is not to fix people. You want to burn out in ministry? Try to fix people and attempt to make everyone like you.

3.     As a pastor, you are important, but you are unnecessary. God can work in people’s lives without you. God doesn’t need you. When pastors become entitled, it’s when they start believing that God needs me to do his work. Instead, God graciously chooses you and invites you to participate with him in people’s lives. Live into that grace-filled invitation from God as you serve.

4.     Your primary calling as a pastor is not for your people to know you; it’s for your people to know God. The greatest compliment you can receive from others is, “My pastor helped me know Jesus more and love others.” Help people do that. 

5.     Your primary ministry is the ministry of presence. Your words are important. But your life is more important than your words. Your job is to give a full-bodied yes to God and others – and teach others to do the same.

6.     You should not be available to everybody all of the time. Stanley Hauerwas wrote: “Most pastors are a quivering mass of availability.” You do this and you will burn out and, in the process, make your family hate you. Jesus said no to a lot of people. If he can say no, then you can, too.

7.     You will fail. You need grace just as much – if not more – than the people entrusted to your care. You are a person, a human, a daughter, a son of the most High God before you are a pastor. Without an understanding of your desperation and dependence upon God and his grace, you will be an unhealthy pastor.

8.     Living out our calling faithfully requires giving up the desire to clamor for attention, fame, or notoriety. “Are you seeking great things for yourself? Don’t do it!” (Jeremiah 45:5, NLT). Henri Nouwen, in his classic book, In the Name of Jesus, shared that three temptations - to be powerful, to be relevant, to be spectacular - will always be present. We must resist these.

9.     Always remember that ministry is meeting people where they are and journeying with them to where God wants them to be. Ministry is not a journey taking others to where we want them to go; it’s journeying with them to where God desires them to be. Therefore, we must learn to pay attention to God and respond appropriately - and teach your people to to do the same. That is the essence of ministry.

All is grace.