Why does pastoring feel so vulnerable?

Spoiler alert: because it is.

Photo of a mature dandelion with seeds ready to be scattered by the wind. by Milan Ivanovic on Unsplash.

It is commonly held, among clergy at least, that pastoring is a much different job than any other. But why is that? Some of it has to do with the nature of the work, of course. I think more of it has to do with the vulnerability that is built into ministry. I have named below some of the sources of that vulnerability. Some of them are unique to pastoral leadership, and some of them aren't. It's the cumulative impact, though, that is the takeaway here.

Even before the pandemic

Pastors’ primary worship community and place of work are usually the same. (Often ministers’ social outlets are bound up with these two as well.) If one falls through, so does the other.

Because pastoring is a high-availability role (making it hard to find time to establish friendships beyond the church), because there is pressure on clergy always to have their lives in order, and because ministers have been taught not to share open wounds with their parishioners, they might not know where to turn when they are struggling.

The pastor’s job is to lead the same people who assess their effectiveness and decide on their pay (even though laypeople are not usually privy to what a pastor does all day), and ministry is not about - or at least not all about - keeping people happy and comfortable.

Pastors’ effectiveness is harder to demonstrate than in other fields. There aren’t helpful quantitative metrics, as the minister has little control over attendance and giving. In the absence of good metrics, many people will turn to the ones that are easiest to count but that don’t tell much of the story.

For this same reason it is hard for pastors to know when they have done enough. That means they are more likely to overfunction (just to make sure!), but all that work can have negative impacts on their physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and mental health.

If pastors have a spouse/partner and/or children at home, those family members might come on Sundays to the minister’s job. Sometimes a pastor’s family forms deep bonds with the congregation, which makes moving on from a context painful for everyone. Sometimes a pastor’s family is burdened with heightened expectations. Sometimes the church is unable to separate their opinions about a pastor’s marriage or parenting from its assessments of the pastor’s leadership.

Rejection - or the potential for it - in pastoral ministry can seem/be very personal: “This congregation doesn’t just dislike what I do. It also doesn’t care for what I believe and how I show up most authentically.”

Pastors can conflate their vocation with a particular role in a particular context, leading them to worry about who they are and what they're doing if they are not the Pastor of [insert church name here].

In this stage of Covid

Church looks so different. Many people have not returned. Pastors have personal grief about all of this, because these relationships are important to them. Congregants are sad as well, and sometimes when people can’t pinpoint or process the cause of their feelings, they turn to blame. Pastors are the most visible, convenient receptacles for that blame.

Church looks so different. Old structures are too cumbersome, but there’s no replacement for them yet. Volunteers are burned out. Still, many people want to return to normal. They crave the familiar, because the pandemic was such a disquieting experience. That means that even more of the work falls to the pastor (also tired and on the edge of burnout).

In this stage of the world

Every word from the pulpit can be put under a microscope. There are some church people who will protest direct quotes from scripture as political or even partisan.

The vitriol from white Christian nationalists - and the violence they stir up - can make pastors of inclusive congregations fear for their own and their church members’ physical safety.

The Church is changing, and for good reason. It has been too concerned with its own survival and not concerned enough with partnering with God to make things “on earth as it is in heaven,” as we recite in the Lord's Prayer. No one knows what the future Church will look like yet, though. Many congregations - and their pastors - feel the strain and anxiety of this prolonged transition.

Pastors don't want to “prop up a crumbling institution," to use a phrase I hear often. They want to do the work of making things on earth as they are in heaven. They are disappointed when their congregations don't have that same vision, sometimes to the point of considering a new field. But then it's hard to know what that field would be and even harder to imagine how to explain how ministry skills would translate. That seeming lack of options makes clergy feel stuck. Whether or a minister would actually ever take the exit ramp, it's important for all people to have a sense of agency.

Many pastors’ housing comes from their church employment in the form of parsonages, manses, and vicarages. If these pastors were to lose their jobs, they likely would not have the savings from ministry earnings to enter a booming housing market with high interest rates. (And renting is currently as unaffordable as buying.)

Many pastors are buried under debt, including seminary debt. This is an existential issue (why did I go for this highly specialized advanced degree?) and a practical one (how will I pay down my debt if my role is downsized to part-time, as is in the cards for many clergy?).

Particularly for ministry pioneers

If a pastor is the only woman/LGTBQ+ person/person of color a church has ever known, there is a learning curve for the congregation no matter how much preparation it has done before the pastor’s arrival. It’s hard simultaneously to lead and to teach a church how to let a minister lead authentically.

If a pastor is the only woman/LGTBQ+ person/person of color a church has ever known, the pastor might feel (and it indeed might be the case, even if it isn't fair) that there is less margin for error.

If a pastor is the only woman/LGTBQ+ person/person of color a church has ever known, the congregation might not be willing to “take a chance” on another one if the pastor’s ministry there doesn’t turn out to be a good fit. That is a heavy burden.

For pastors who are women/LGTBQ+/people of color, the places where their leadership is welcome are fewer and further between, and churches that do “take a chance” on them might be glass cliff situations in which they are set up for a rough time with few resources.

Not all ministers will feel vulnerable in all of these areas, and I might also have overlooked some of the factors that make pastors vulnerable. In any case, I expect all pastors resonate with at least a few of the circumstances named above.

To be clear, it’s not ok for people to attack the most tender parts of pastors’ selves. But vulnerability itself is not necessarily bad, or at least all bad. Jesus, after all, was in many ways a walking example of the importance of being vulnerable. Otherwise, he would not have been born in a perilous situation, subjected himself to temptation before his public ministry began, connected with those who were outcast, riled up people in power, or died on the cross. We know more about God and have our faith and our charge as disciples because of Jesus’ vulnerability.

Pastoral vulnerability does remind us, though, of our need to stay grounded in our relationship with God, connect to others (including people beyond our congregations!), take care of our health, and observe sabbath. When we do these things, we can see God at work in our vulnerability. When we don't, though, we become afraid, resentful, isolated, disillusioned, utterly tired, and in danger of boundary violations.

Where, then, do you feel vulnerable, and who needs to know that, either to help you, accompany you, advocate for you, or simply see you? When we can share from our deepest selves in appropriate ways and relationships and have that gift validated, the vulnerability can strengthen us and our support systems, and we might just catch a glimpse of the divine.