“I would do it all over again if I could!”
A 40-year, five-congregation pastor said this to one of Thrive’s ministry consultants a while ago, and it was a blessing to hear. Yes, there had been challenges and difficulties, including a brutal six-month stretch at the start of one of those five calls, but after all of that and in spite of all the struggles he encountered, this retired pastor was still smiling.
How can that be?
What has to be in place for pastors— male and female, from majority and minority cultures—to be able to say something like that? And what enables pastors to say something like that both at the end of their ministry careers and when they are still in the thick of it all, actively serving congregations?
This is an important question for church councils and classes to think about. What is needed in their ministry contexts in order for their pastors to flourish over the long haul? And how can they, council and classis leaders, help to make that kind of flourishing more likely?
Thrive has recently developed two tools to help councils and classes with this. In fulfilling a 2023 synodical mandate regarding the wellbeing of bivocational pastors (see Acts of Synod 2023, p. 966), Thrive has developed, for use with any pastor, an annual pastoral wellbeing check-in and a pastoral transition interview. The pastoral transition interview, in particular, is for use at the end of a pastor’s work in a particular setting or congregation.
Here are the key details:
Annual Pastoral Wellbeing Check-in: This comes with a brief user’s manual, and features a number of key questions to ask pastors every year, questions related to their emotional, spiritual, and relational health. We envision this tool as a key resource for councils who want to care for their pastors. Note: This is NOT a performance review (which is another important resource!).
If your congregation has a pastor then this is a way to ask your pastor what is giving joy, what is producing sleepless nights, what councils are doing that is helpful and what councils are doing that is harmful. This tool is also useful for your council if it is supervising a church planter or a bivocational pastor.
Pastoral Transition Interview: This also comes with a brief user's manual, and features a number of key questions to ask pastors. This time, though, the tool is for use when ministers arrive at the end of a particular ministry, whether because they’ve accepted a new call, decided to retire, or experienced the closure of a congregation.
We envision the regional pastor or some other representative of the classis leading pastors through this conversation so that pastors can speak freely and so that the regional pastor can learn if there are helpful or harmful patterns within the classis that need to be named and addressed.
The use of these two ministry-support resources does not guarantee that pastors will flourish in ministry over the long haul. However, when councils and classes make use of them it will be much more likely that their pastors will be able to smile after 10, 20, maybe even 40 years in ministry.
Additional resources for councils that want to support ministers:
Guidance as Your Pastor Approaches Retirement
Effective Leadership in the Church
Evaluation Essentials for Congregational Leaders
Church Administration and Finance Guide
Additional resources for pastors who want to stay healthy in ministry:
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