Five Ways to Help Your Pastor to Rest
In recent weeks we have been considering the concept of rest – its vital importance physically, its Christ-centred blessing spiritually, and its hope-engendering power eternally. As this series of articles draws to a close, it seems fitting to think about how church fellowships can encourage their Pastor to be a person of rest, a servant of Jesus who knows how to repose in his identity in Christ and to avail of the grace of downing tools and taking time off.
Often, when an article on pastoral pressure or the realities of pastoral employment appears online, there can be a degree of pushback on what appears to be special pleading. Do all workers not need rest? Why single out serving pastors and their need for holiday when members of the congregation are likewise stressed and overstretched? Does this not feed the self-pity to which pastors can be prone?
Aside from the unhelpful hardness of such an approach, it is good to remember that the church’s ’employment’ of a pastor is often their only full-time appointment, and so the duty of care of the congregation will naturally rest on this man. It is also helpful to bear in mind that the church is to model for the world what compassion and care look like, rather than to mimic the business practices of the wider culture. The employment of a pastor and fair treatment of him is a golden opportunity for the church to show forth the biblical model of rest that the previous parts of this series have highlighted.
For a church concerned to help their Pastor to rest, we offer the following five injunctions:
1. Celebrate your Pastor’s rest periods
I once spoke with an elderly pastor who shared an experience with me of an occasion when he and his family were due to take a holiday. A church member, clearly somewhat irked that the pulpit would not be occupied by their minister for a few weeks, offered his view that a minister shouldn’t rest because the devil never takes a holiday. My pastor friend’s response was as quick as a whip: ‘Well, maybe that’s because he doesn’t have a body like mine!’.
The comment that this one discouraging church member made is, thankfully, rare. Most congregations have no problem with their Pastor enjoying a well-earned break. What can get lost, however, is the communication of this reality. It is easy for eldership teams and whole congregations to unconsciously celebrate the fruit of a Pastor’s work, while never making a mention of the importance and blessing of rest.
Celebrating a Pastor’s period of rest does not mean that the church membership need to bear him down the aisle on their shoulders on the eve of vacation, but some simple things can greatly help. At the most basic level, the church can announce its Pastor’s period of leave and make clear what points of contact will be available to the congregation in his absence. They can also encourage their pastor not to return from holiday straight back to a ‘pulpit Sunday’, encouraging him to ease into the study on a Monday rather than wrestling his way into a sermon on a Sunday right at the end of his leave. Even if this means providing an additional Sunday at the end of his break where he can attend but not participate, this is a small price to pay. Praying for your Pastor’s leave while he is on it can also be a wonderful way of keeping the importance of rest for gospel workers front and centre for church members.
By whatever means, make your Pastor feel like rest and holiday are not granted begrudgingly or that taking leave is taking some kind of liberty. Free him to be refreshed, release him to be renewed, and let him know that you are glad that he can have this time away.
2. Remind your Pastor that limits feed worship
Often, the issue with regard to rest in pastoral work lies not with the congregation’s expectations of its minister, but with the minister’s expectations of himself. Aside from holiday periods, it can be hard for your Pastor to give himself permission to enjoy periods of inactivity, or other activity away from his responsiblities.
Operating as he does from a place of calling and conscientiousness, it is easy for your Pastor to fall into the fallacy of indispensability – the thought that things simply cannot run effectively without his constant labour. In many small church settings this idea may well be true – your Pastor is pivotal in keeping things running because of the size or age of the congregation he is responsible for.
Even in environments where the Pastor is bearing significant responsibility for the gospel work he is involved in, it is still important that he embraces the fact that he is a limited being. No one can get very far into midlife as a Pastor without recognising that they are a limited person with limited powers and that fatigue becomes a more obvious reality the more miles there are on the clock. No Pastor can handle everything all the time all at once, and that limitation is not a symptom of weakness but an opportunity for worship.
The church has One who never slumbers or sleeps, but that isn’t its Pastor. Helping your Pastor to recognise that, far from letting the Lord down, embracing limits feeds worship. It helps your minister to remember their humanity, and it points him and the whole congregation to their all-sufficient Saviour and Sustainer. Rest is the ready acknowledgement on the part of your Pastor that the congregation’s health does not ultimately rely on him but on Christ.
3. Treat your Pastor like a whole person
All of us tend to treat those who help us in any area of life as though that role is the centre of their identity. Those in the pastorate are not excluded from this way of viewing one another. In a busy church, it can be easy for members, even fellow elders, to have a one-dimensional view of the Pastor, seeing him as a function more than a person.
This is dangerous at all kinds of levels, but not least in terms of its potential damage to the one treated in this way. Your Pastor is a whole person, with the same range of interests and needs as every other church member. Taking time to really get to know him, to work out what makes him tick, what is life-giving for him when he is taking time off, what enthuses and energises him can help him to feel valued for who he is and not just what he can do. Crucially, never make your Pastor feel like necessary time off is neglect of the church or that they must ‘cover’ or explain why they have taken a rest from their labours.
I knew a Pastor of a previous generation who felt so self-conscious when he was taking time off that he wore his shirt and tie to B&Q so that no one would think he was idling! This is an extreme example, and it is most likely that the issue here was with the Pastor’s own self-image, but that instinct can be strong even if it does not go to such lengths. Help your Pastor to know that you are glad that he has interests outside of the church, and never joke that time away from his main responsibilities in some way suggests he has an easy life.
4. Clarify for your Pastor what ‘on-call’ means
Pastoral work is one of the few remaining occupations which can carry unlimited ‘on-call’ responsibilities. In addition to the routine demands of weekly preparation and visitation, there are myriad contingencies that can change the complexion of a day or even a whole week. Deaths, sudden illnesses, or family crises on the part of church members can drastically alter a Pastor’s week and create pressures that he does not resent, but that he does have to manage.
Permanent on-call routines are not healthy for a Pastor or for family life, and elders and church members must clarify and qualify what the expectation is in terms of pastoral availability. A pastoral emergency cannot wait, everyone will understand this, but setting up rhythms where the on-call contingencies are removed from the Pastor is a vital step. Where other elders are available, they should be encouraged to rotate the on-call work between them so that there are some periods when the Pastor knows that he cannot be called away from rest or family time. A weekend ‘baton’ phone which is shared among the elders and which church members are encouraged to call if an issue arises, can be a lifeline to your Pastor, enabling him to step away from his own device without fear of missing a call or failing to meet a need.
By whatever means, consider how to give your Pastor protected time that cannot be broken and that is not subject to ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’!
5. Don’t allow holidays to be your Pastor’s only non-pulpit days
Finally, there is vital work to be done in allowing your Pastor to simply and regularly worship on a Lord’s Day without other responsbilities. As someone who now preaches in a variety of churches rather than in a settled pastorate, I have noticed an encouraging trend, at least in Irish Baptist churches: there are whole Sundays on which the Pastor is relieved of all pulpit duties but is still in attendance at the local church he serves. This is a wise way of helping a Pastor to code rest into their schedule, and it is also an important means of him being fed from the Word of God on a regular basis.
On an older model, being at church for the Pastor meant being ‘on duty’ – either preaching or leading or both. This is not only limiting to gifting in the local body, but it also creates a negative and restless connection for the Pastor between the congregation and his occupation. The busyness of the pastoral role becomes the only lens through which he can see the gathered life of the church, and the congregation in turn come to see him as someone who gives out truth but never visibly receives it.
Churches can serve Pastors (and their families if they are married and/or have children) by working hard to schedule visiting speakers on a regular basis that allows the Pastor to simply come to the church building and worship with his brothers and sisters. For me, best practice in this regard is for the Pastor to have one full Sunday per calendar month where he does not preach, does not lead and does not assume any other responsibilities in public worship. The small outlay in bringing along a visiting preacher, or the rewarding investment of enlisting preachers from the congregation, will pay dividends in terms of your Pastor’s longevity and ministry health.
Andrew Roycroft serves as Managing Editor for Grace Publications. He holds Masters degrees in English Literature and Theology from Queens University Belfast. Before entering the world of publishing full-time, Andrew served as a pastor for 24 years in Northern Ireland. He is married to Carolyn, and they have two teenage daughters.
