The Size of a Church is Influenced by Pastoral Behaviour

Research indicates that 90 to 95 percent of ministers begin their ministry as pastors. Following are their most common characteristics. Remember, what they do is not wrong; it is the focus of their behavior, not their hearts.

Primary care giving. Pastors try to be the major care providers for the entire church. When they come across a need they ask, “How will I meet it?” When they ask themselves who the adequate caregivers are, they, like Elijah (see 1 Kings 19:14), feel they are probably the only ones, or at least the best ones.

Overestimated significance. The spotlight on their crisis intervention, hospital calls, and other pastoral acts prevents them seeing the support roles that are essential for effective care. It is one thing to tell a church member that her husband has died. It is another for friends and relatives to live with that widow through the two years of grieving that she needs to surrender her spouse to death. The true heroes are those who supply the enormous amounts of required aftercare.

Driven by expectation. Pastors attempt to meet all expectations by being omnipresent. They feel bound to attend every meeting or program lest they hear the disappointing news, “It just wasn’t the same without you” (meaning, “created a dependency syndrome”). “What do my people expect of me?” and “Am I measuring up?” are their constant driving motivations. As a result, people set the agenda for the pastor rather than the pastors setting the agenda.

Availability. They think in terms of how they can be more accessible to the church. Such ministers convey to the church that they will be available for whatever is necessary. I remember the first time I heard a minister refuse to be available for a parishioner’s funeral. I thought it was an ungodly attitude. He was doing fifty funerals a year and was headed out for a much needed vacation with his family. He said, “Although I will not be here for the funeral and cannot come back from the beach, my associate will conduct the funeral in accordance with the departed one’s wishes. I will see you when I return.” And he left town. I thought, how irresponsible and uncaring can you be? I was operating on the principle that says, “Even if it means interrupting my vacation I will come back and be here so that your dependence on me will be secured.”

Many problems in the pastor’s family stem from this attitude. Always being on call means being less available to one’s own family. The situation is as if the pastor has a mistress called the church and gives the family the leftovers. The wife is at a disadvantage in trying to cope with a husband who has these characteristics, unless she also is a pastor by disposition. If she has a different personality, she is likely to feel mad as a hornet. “If he were literally fooling around on me, I’d confront him,” she says. “But what can I do when the church is my competition?” So she is stuck. The choices are to be angry with her husband, be angry with God, or be self-reproachful. The despair frequently found in the pastor’s family stems from a wife who has decided to turn her anger on herself and lives in a brooding condition of self-disrespect, shame, and guilt.

Pastors almost seem to think, how can I keep them from getting along without me? Although they do not actually verbalize these thoughts, their behavior indicates it. Their motto tends to be, Watch me assure these hospital patients that I’ll be back soon. In other words, watch me do ministry. Because their attention is riveted on this kind of performance, the strokes they hunger for are linked to their performance standards. They regularly reflect on how the people like their sermons and if the people are pleased with their bedside manners.

Role comfort. Although pastors work to the limit of their time and energy, they do not ask for a greater vision than what they can do by themselves. They may be tired, but they are happy: “I’m so grateful to be needed!” I remember many a time going home dead tired. As I would lie down in bed I would say, “Isn’t it wonderful to be this tired and this happy, because I was needed every hour today?” Never mind that my wife would say, “What about my needs? What about our children’s needs? What about the needs of others in the church who haven’t been given the chance to develop the same kind of serving skills you enjoy?”

Much of my activity had stemmed from a need to prove that I was worthy and worthwhile. Pastors experience role comfort when they behave consistently, whether effectively or not. They are comfortable, because they live a ritualized life. In their liturgies of economy, efficiency, and consistency, they avoid uncomfortable questions about whether a different path would lead to greater effectiveness.

Poor delegating ability. When pastors delegate, they tend to specify methods, not outcomes. If a volunteer comes along who is more effectiveness oriented, this person becomes frustrated, because the level of directions is more in terms of how the Pastor requires constant approval of projects in terms of how something is done rather that what is being done. Progress becomes bottlenecked, because Pastors fail to fulfill an oversight role; they are too busy keeping the work close to themselves. They attract people who are willing to forward the pastor’s agenda rather than contribute their own, people who have the gifts of help or of hospitality: “Can I join with you on this, Pastor?” or, “How can I help you Pastor?” Pretty soon such pastors lament the fact that nobody is present with skills beyond those of hanging up coats and opening doors. If these pastors do use administratively gifted people, they position them primarily as advisors to themselves: “If you were me, what would you advise that I do?”

Poor planning. If they do plan, it’s en route to doing. They are frequently caught in an activity cycle: “Here I am again. By the way, what am I going to do?” They find they are too committed to their processes to be able to achieve their overall goals more efficiently or more effectively. Their inadequate planning leads to a shortfall of help which, in turn, leads to their doing ministry by themselves. Caught in such a cycle, they regularly bypass the milestones at which others might join the work.

Individualism. They tend to see the church as made up on individual members. Thus, rather than visualize ministry through the perspective of a work force, they perceive it as something to be negotiated through their relationships with specific persons.

Ignorance of trends. Pastors live in the now of experience. Their assessment of how things are going derives more from whether they experienced any disagreeable encounters in the last few hours than from reflection on worship trends, giving patterns, or achievement of church goals.

They do not easily correlate forecasts with needed action. They sit, waiting and watching as changes occur but unaware of their significance, because they are so busing ministering nose to nose with the sheep. The greatest blind spot of most pastors is their lack of a sense of growth history and attendance tracking. Why? For pastors to measure attendance implies that they might have control of it or responsibility or it. The pastor finds it easier to say, “It is God’s business to bless, and if he chooses to bless, fine, and if not, fine.” Did not Jesus also say things like, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19, emphasis added)? Yet, pastors would rather trade in unseen spiritual realities than in the measurable organisational realities.

Author: Carl George – How to Break Growth Barriers – “Permission to quote/adapt copyrighted materials has been obtained in 2011 from carlgeorge@metachurch.com.”