[Warning: depending on where you are in your viewing of Ted Lasso, this post might spoiler-y for you.]

For a long time I resisted Ted Lasso. To be honest, it wasn’t that hard. I didn’t have Apple TV, because my spouse/IT support refuses to let Apple devices through our door. But then I got a free trial and, long story short, I will probably pay for Apple TV until I die or it ceases to exist, whichever comes first. There are a lot of good shows on there.

So now I’m all caught up on Ted. You might be, as I am, fascinated by the evolution of the character Nate Shelley from self-deprecating kit man (glorified water boy) to assistant coach with an uncanny knack for game strategy to seemingly evil mastermind and manager of a rival team. Underneath his arrogance and meanness, though, Nate clearly has some unresolved identity and worthiness issues. When he finds himself needing to be more blustery than he feels, he finds a mirror and spits on it. Then he can stand tall and confident.

This habit is obviously not without its issues, least of which is that it’s really unsanitary. But it did make me wonder, what is your hack for settling into your best self, the fullness of your wisdom, the authority vested in you by your training, experience, and role? We all have those moments when we need to stretch ourselves to all the length and height we can muster. Maybe it’s because we are in a conflictual situation. Maybe it’s because someone is trying to go around us. Maybe it’s because we’re in a room full of well-known, well-respected, and/or very charismatic people, and we need to remember that we belong in that space.

Whatever the reason, we need a way to connect to our calling, our values, and all that we bring to the table. A shortcut, if you will, for remembering who we are - an action, a mantra, an image, a literal touchstone.

What is yours?

Mystery/thriller writer Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar series used to be a guilty pleasure of mine. There was a point in the last decade in which I was gobbling up two or three books per week. Then the 2016 election happened, and I took a long, hard look at my reading list. Coben is a great author, but I needed a lot less machismo and a lot more diversity.

I didn’t pick up any more of his books until I needed a quick read last week. I tore through The Boy From the Woods, the first in Coben’s new series. I was cruising along until a character (who bears a lot of similarities to our most recent former president) spouts off a PR plan in response to the release of a video in which he is sexually harassing a woman who might or might not legally be an adult. The character tells his people to put out all of the following messages and more: it’s a training tape about proper workplace behavior, it was a run-through of the woman’s (nonexistent) Me Too screenplay, she was asking for the harassment, the tape was faked.

Again, Coben is a great writer, but I remembered then why I took him off my reading list for my own mental health. The calculating nature of this character was too much for me. How do we work for change in the world when so many people will do anything to preserve their own power?

At the same time I was reading parts of Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity for my DMin ethics class. (Talk about whiplash.) I grabbed onto one of her concepts in chapter 14: everywhere in nature there are fractals, which are patterns that reiterate infinitely, forming versions of themselves at different sizes. What this means is if we are able to live in our integrity, faithfully doing the internal and external work to which we have been called, that work scales up so that we are shaping the people around us and the institutions in which we participate. It might not be very visible - we must have eyes to see the fractals in nature, much less in human interactions - but it is happening as surely as hydrogen atoms bonding together in rings of six when water molecules collide at low temperatures, creating snowflakes made up of variations on a hexagon shape.

So take heart. Root yourself in your values. Use your gifts. Stay true to your call. You are changing the world from the ground up. If enough of us do this, the lie-perpetuators and power-hoarders don’t stand a chance.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.

It is now just over two weeks into the Easter season. If you are a Christian minister who was in the pulpit on Easter Sunday, you could not avoid mentioning the women who were called to be the first Christian preachers.

It didn’t matter which Gospel you used. In Matthew, the Marys are commissioned by both the angel and Jesus to go tell the disciples about Jesus’ resurrection. In Mark, the young man in the tomb gives a similar directive to the Marys and Salome. In Luke, the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus encounter two men in dazzling clothes who announce to them that Jesus is alive, and the women relay this message to the disciples. And in John, Mary Magdalene is the first person to encounter the risen Christ, and he asks her to let the disciples know that he is about to return to God. The details vary from account to account, but in all of them, faithful women are first called to proclaim the resurrection, which is the heart of the Christian story.

And yet, plenty of people still believe that women are not fit for ministry. Even more think they wouldn’t make good lead pastors, even if they don’t say this quiet part out loud. I’ve written elsewhere about how churches can do the work to be ready for a female pastor. But do you know who could potentially be the best ally for clergywomen? Male senior pastors, particularly those with clergywomen in second chair positions (e.g., associate pastor or ministers of specific age groups or programs - I’ll shorthand them all as associate pastors for the purposes of this post). If that’s you, here’s what you can do:

Go by a similar title. By this I mean if you ask to be called “Pastor [your name],” call the clergywomen on your staff “Pastor [their names]” rather than simply their first names (or, heaven forbid, “Miss [their names]”). Encourage church members to address them that way too.

Close the wage gap. I cannot tell you how many churches I know of in which the male senior pastor is making six figures and the women on staff are barely making a subsistence wage. (Yes, there can be differences in levels of experience and responsibility that must be factored in, but not to the tune of an $60-80K disparity.) Find ways to raise the clergywomen’s salaries or sacrifice some of your own to make take home pay more equitable.

Advocate for a parental leave policy. Whether or not you have young children or children at all, ensure there is a just parental leave policy in place at your church. (If you’re not sure what a just policy looks like, contact your judicatory and ecumenical colleagues for examples.) If a new child comes into your family, use the policy in full so that it becomes seen as a parent thing, not a woman thing, to go on this kind of leave.

Collaborate with clergywomen whenever possible. Look for ways to partner with female clergy at your church and other churches. Don’t just limit yourself to teaming up with ordained women, though. Pull women into your church’s lay leadership pipeline.

Share credit liberally with clergywomen when genuine and appropriate. “She did this this thing. Isn’t it great?” “We did this thing together. It is wonderful to have such a great partner in ministry!” On the flip side, support clergywomen when they are attacked by critics and naysayers for illegitimate reasons.

Model good boundaries. Some lead pastors work 60+ hours a week but tell their associate pastors that they don’t want them to overfunction. It doesn’t work that way no matter how good the intention. Senior pastors set the tone for associate pastors’ (many of whom are women) expectations of themselves and churches’ expectations of the entire pastoral staffs. The associate pastors will seem less available, interested, and capable if they stick to the hours they are paid for, and they will juggle an unsustainable load (which can include parenting younger children, caring for aging parents, and carrying the mental load of the household and often that of the church) if they don’t.

Amplify female voices. Welcome your own female clergy and laity into preaching and worship leadership. Invite women outside your church to preach, teach, and lead. Look for gifts in women in your church that they don’t yet see themselves. This creates a culture of call for women. I didn’t see a woman on the chancel for any reason other than singing or making an announcement until I was in seminary. (The first time I did, I sobbed with joy and relief that I wasn’t alone or hearing God incorrectly.)

Be a great reference. Many clergywomen will eventually want to be lead pastors. Talk up your female associate pastors and other clergywomen you know to others before they even begin looking for lead pastor opportunities. (This is especially helpful since some churches now search for a pastor exclusively using informal networks and looking for ministers who aren’t currently seeking a new position.) Give them outstanding recommendations. Celebrate when they leave to take on larger roles.

If I had to boil all this down, I’d simply say, “Normalize women in leadership and share your power.” That’s easier said than done. But some male senior pastors are already doing aspects of this. (Thank you!) And what could be more true to the Gospel in this season that started with women being the first ones trusted and commissioned by the Divine to preach the good news than to support clergywomen’s voices and leadership?

Every year the International Coaching Federation observes International Coaching Week, a global celebration that educates about the value of working with a professional coach. One of the ways ICF does this is by encouraging coaches to offer pro bono sessions to those who haven’t yet experienced the power of coaching. I happily participate because I love coaching, I know coaching offers results, and I get to meet new people!

If you are a minister and have never been coached by me, I invite you to sign up here for a free 30-minute session by phone or Zoom that will take place May 8-11. You are welcome to share this link/post with others who might be interested as well.

Why should you try coaching? It is leadership development that is completely customized for you and your context. It takes place on your schedule. It engages your own wisdom, experiences, and resources, meaning you will be more invested in taking the steps to move forward that come out of coaching. And coaching can address almost any professional or personal topic. If there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be, coaching can be effective in that gap.

I look forward to talking with you soon.

One of the most helpful classes I took early in my coach training was about change, transition, and transformation. (The class content built on the work of William Bridges, who was an expert in these areas.) Often we lump the three terms together, but they are actually quite different:

• Change is a shift in our circumstances. It is external. We can choose it, or it can be forced upon us.

• Transition is a response to change. It is learning to see things differently as a result of our shift in circumstances. Our insides work to catch up to what is going on outside of us.

• Transformation is a wholly new way of not just seeing things differently but being in the world differently. We are fundamentally altered because we have so fully embraced change.

We do not go directly from change to transformation. There is that transition time in the middle in which what was is now in the rearview, but what is yet to come and whom we are yet to be are still in the future. Think of this neutral zone as a bridge between two realities. One of the functions of bridges is to carry us over water or roads. Not having solid ground underneath feels very precarious for a lot of people, including me. Yet there we are, left having to move forward, not just stay parked in the middle of that bridge - even if we can’t fully see what’s on the other side.

In our lives we have all found ourselves on the bridge at one time or another, prompted by a move, a job change, a birth or death close to us, or an injury that has altered how we move about the world. In 2020 people all across Earth found ourselves in a neutral zone. There was a sudden call to go from all that was familiar into lockdown. If we got out of our house, we needed to mask and physically distance. If we brought anything from the outside into our home, we were told, at least at first, to wipe it down for pathogens. Schools ended the year abruptly. Churches moved community online. Nothing felt familiar anymore. We couldn’t hug our people. We couldn’t go to the places we wanted. We couldn’t observe milestones in the ways we were used to. And how long would we be in this profound disorientation? The epidemiologists were saying from the start of Covid’s spread that – optimistically – we were in a 2-3 year event, though many of us, including me, could not hear that for a long time. We just reacted to a drastic shift in circumstances. But when weeks turned into months, we adjusted our way of thinking: ok, we are now in a global pandemic. There is no quick fix. We will do what we must in order to get through this, one day at a time. Our seeing realigned with our doing. To some extent we are still in the latter part of the Covid neutral zone. The virus is very much still with us, and we don’t yet know what a world where we are fundamentally changed by our pandemic experience will look like. Thankfully, we have a lot more knowledge and tools now to blunt its effects.

As a result of Covid and so many other changes in the world, many of us individually and collectively are in our own neutral zones. Maybe we’re doing things differently because we have to. Maybe we’re even seeing things in new ways because of our shifted circumstances. We’re still on that bridge, though. So what do we need to get to the other side?

• Celebrate what was without getting stuck in it. What is the legacy that you are taking with you into the neutral zone that can help you navigate it well? What are the values to which you will stay true, no matter what the future looks like?

• Cultivate your noticing that that God is working in, among, and through you. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but we never leave­ God’s compassionate presence and the hope of communal salvation that Jesus offers.

• Assess the tools at hand. Every person, every group, every congregation has a wealth of gifts that put you in position to cross the bridge. Maybe they need to be redistributed, but you have – and are – enough.

• Ask lots of questions. ­­What if…? I wonder what…? When we stay in that stance of thoughtful and playful curiosity, or even faithful doubt, creativity and possibility are available to us.

• Trust in and mutually support one another. The neutral zone is not the place to get stranded or to strand others. This is a bridge best navigated together.

The good news is that we don’t have to transform ourselves. We just have to open our hearts and our minds to God’s invitations, being confident that when we do, God will work in us in ways that don’t just fundamentally alter us but also the world around us.

 Photo by Modestas Urbonas on Unsplash.

“When [your former pastor doesn’t set boundaries], the incoming minister will have a shorter tenure than necessary, because it’s hard to compete with a beloved predecessor who won’t go away. So, the cycle of the departure of the pastor, the interim time, the search for a new minister and the installation of that leader begins again. This is costly to a congregation in terms of energy and money. It particularly lessens momentum in fulfilling its mission.

“So how can we all make this transition easier?” Click to read my thoughts on the CBF blog.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash.

I'm really proud of my mom.

For a long time she has been feeling restless in her congregation. She greatly respects the pastors. She feels seen and loved by her fellow members. But a primary reason she joined this church was because my dad, who died a year and a half ago, was comfortable there. Now he's gone, and the theology and worship style don't fit her. She knows everyone there approaches her as a widow, which she is, but she's a very active one who doesn't want to be reminded constantly of her loss.

So Mom has been visiting around, and she thinks she's found her place. Having ministers for a son-in-law and daughter, though, she knew she shouldn't ghost her former congregation. She texted one of the pastors and asked to meet with him. Here's what she said during that conversation:

She gave thanks for the gifts of the ministers and the church's care for her. These pastors were so attentive to her and to my dad during some really rough years. Their support was essential, and she told them so.

She explained why she was leaving. It had nothing to do with conflict, and it was a hard decision. But she worships best through traditional hymns. She is more able to engage in Bible study with a particular theological bent. This congregation doesn't offer either.

She noted that she even though the congregation was no longer a fit for her, she celebrated that it was a great fit for others. It's wonderful that some people experience Jesus through praise hymns! Everybody worships differently.

She asked the pastor what she should do about her church responsibilities. She doesn't have major leadership responsibilities, but she does have some congregational care commitments. She didn't want to leave anyone in the lurch.

I thought this was a very healthy approach. For the record, I am the proud of the pastor too, who was my pastor when I was a youth. He told Mom that he wants her to find the church where she can heal and worship and grow, wherever that might be. Then he blessed her on her way. I think all ministers, at our best, can pastor people in this way as they leave our direct care.

These are the kinds of conversations that ministers and church members need to have. So many laypeople drift away, knowing they need something different for their current season of life but not wanting to hurt their pastors' feelings. But here's the truth: uncertainty and ghosting are much more painful for ministers than honesty and vulnerability. And departing laypeople don't get the closure they need to be able to get deeply involved in a new faith community.

I want to encourage both pastors and members to be open to - even to invite - some discomfort for everyone's benefit. Then each party can authenticity bless the other for the diverged journey to come.

Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash.

I have previously written about how much Tricia Hersey’s book Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto has spoken to me. (Here is the list of simple rest practices I developed for Lent after I read it.) This rest is faithful. It is what we need for our own wellbeing. And it is a tool for liberation. Last week I expanded on these thoughts with a piece at Baptist News Global. Click here to read “The rest we must have.”

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.

With the start of Lent, many pastors are looking ahead to some hard-earned rest after Easter. Here’s a resource I created last year that can help you plan ahead to get the most out of your time away.

If I had to bet, the week after Easter Sunday (followed closely by the week after Christmas) is the most common period for pastors to take vacation. You will have accompanied your congregation from the wilderness to the foot of the cross to the empty tomb. That is quite a journey. You’ll be ready to rest.

Having a vacation to look forward to is a great start. But have you ever felt like it’s just as much work to get ready to be away as it is just to keep on plowing ahead? Have those extra tasks worn you out so much that you’re just returning to baseline, not even close to refreshment, when vacation is over? You’re not alone.

That’s why I have created a vacation prep sheet. It prompts you to record your hopes and intentions for your time away, then to sift and break down what you need to do beforehand in order to live into them. This sheet can be helpful to you the week before vacation, but it will be even more useful if you start using it further out. Feel free to download the sheet for your own use or to share it with others. Happy rejuvenating!

Recently I read Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, who is popularly known as the Nap Bishop. Hersey makes the case that all of us are caught up in grind culture, which is a hyperfocus on productivity around which our entire lives are oriented. Grind culture feeds and feeds on many modes of dehumanization: white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, individualism, and more. It makes us think that we are what we produce. It causes us to see rest as a reward that we can only claim when we have worn ourselves down to a nub. It keeps us stepping on one another to get ahead. And it is killing us physically (as seen by our collective sleep deficit) as well as mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

Hersey says that our response to grind culture’s demands that we do more must be to rest. Rest includes but is not limited to sleep. It can be anything that helps us slow down, replenish, and reconnect with ourselves, one another, and God. It can be lengthy, but it can also be a series of shorter breaks. I often hear from coachees that they struggle to find time for rest. That is largely because of the overlapping issues named above, and it is partly the result of grind culture’s drain on our creativity. It’s hard to come up with ways to rest that fit the moment when we are already so very tired.

With that in mind, I have developed a list of practices that offer rest. I stopped at 40 because that is the number of days in Lent, not counting Sundays. If you choose, you can take on a rest practice each day as a Lenten observance. Let me be clear, though, that I don’t intend these practices as 40 more to-dos to pile on your already-full plate. (That would defeat the purpose!) They are intended simply to give you ideas for some easily accessible breaks if you don’t have the mental space to come up with a means to get some much-needed rest. Click here to download the list. Feel free to print and/or share it.

Stay tuned for an article that elaborates on how rest doesn’t just cause us to feel better and more present but also equips us to push back on dehumanizing forces.

“Back in the 1990s, when I was a teenager, youth ministry was relatively straightforward. My peers and I met for junior high and high school Sunday school and then attended worship. We came back on Sunday evenings for a less formal worship service and youth group (which often involved outings such as laser tag, mini golf or a scavenger hunt, plus the requisite pizza dinner) and on Wednesday nights for churchwide supper and seventh -12th grade Bible study. The youth schedule largely aligned with the adult schedule, and attendance was pretty consistent week-to-week and across Sunday mornings and evenings and Wednesday nights. 

This is no longer the world in which we live. Extracurricular activities associated with school spill over into all the times formerly considered off-limits for non-church obligations. The definition of regular church attendance has changed rapidly – and continues to morph –  as much social, academic and work life is lived online more so than in-person. For all of these reasons and more, the model of youth ministry must also evolve.” Click here to continue reading this article on the CBF blog.

Photo by James Baldwin on Unsplash.

When I started my Doctor of Ministry program over a year ago, I thought I’d read fewer books of my choosing. Happily, that has not turned out to be the case! Here are some of the books I read in 2022 that I highly recommend to others. About half were published this year, and the rest came out in recent years.

Fiction

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This story about a woman making her way in the male-dominated world of science - and building her own family of people who understand and care about her along the way - felt really relatable to me. (So did the main character to this Enneagram 5.)

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang. This was a beautiful, tender novel about complicated family and friend relationships made even more so by the main character’s ties to multiple cultures.

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford. This story illuminates the power of trauma that is transmitted across generations in often invisible, incomprehensible ways.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. I loved the main character’s commitment to all words, but particularly the words that mainstream dictionaries leave out: the words specific to women’s experiences and that and those of the working class.

Underground Airlines by Ben Winters. What if the Civil War had never happened? This novel posits what this country would look like in a world in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated sooner.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. This tale alternates between past and present, revealing both the matriarch’s big secret and her resilience in the face of unimaginable challenge.

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. If you’re a book lover looking for a good read on grief, this is it. Strangers and friends share the names of classic works that help the characters both escape from and process what they’re facing. In the process, they build connections they come to depend upon.

Non-fiction

Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia by Natasha Lance Rogoff. I feel like this book was written just for me. Post-Cold War Russia? Sesame Street? It’s a fascinating read and provides great insight to the political and economic realities in Russia during the mid 1990s.

All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: Hope - and Hard Pills to Swallow - About Fighting for Black Lives by Andre Henry. This was an eye-opening read about one Black man’s realizations about how deeply ingrained racism is and how many of his close relationships with white people could not stand as he began to see this. The book is a call to action for Black people to trust themselves and their experiences and for white people to examine our complicity in oppression.

It’s Not You, It’s Everything: What Our Pain Reveals About the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life by Eric Minton. Do you have low- (or high) level anxiety all the time about the state of the world? This book does a great job of explaining why.

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear. If you haven’t yet read this book, do. Its encouragement and practical steps to design tiny habits based on the kind of people we want to be (rather than out of an external goal) are immediately usable.

Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game by Abby Wambach. One of the best books on leadership I’ve read, especially for women and girls. You don’t have to be a sports person to get a lot out of it.

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown. This book offers us language, based in research, for everything we feel. When we can recognize and express how we feel, we can better connect with others.

This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley. READ THIS BOOK. I recommend the audiobook (read by the author) in addition to the print version. There is so much beauty, depth, and wisdom on a range of themes.

What did you read this year that you loved?

A couple of years ago, one of my coachees introduced me to the work of culture writer Anne Helen Petersen. Petersen helps her readers think about the systems that are often invisible to us but that we all swim in every day. She also shares thoughts about how to live day-to-day in the midst of those (often harmful) systems even as we advocate for their overhaul. (I recommend her Substack here as well as her books on reconfiguring work and on Millennials and burnout.)

One of Petersen’s interests is creating sustainable communities of care. In the United States care infrastructure is piecemeal at best, and caregiving for children and older adults is undervalued and either underpaid or unpaid. That leaves many people - especially those of us in the sandwich generation - scrambling and harried much of the time, with little space to tend to our own needs for rest and relationships beyond work and caregiving, much less room in our schedules for errands or (dare to dream!) play. We need people we can count on for help, but reaching out is so hard. Petersen names some of the barriers as our identities as helpers, our pride in being self-sufficient, our feelings of overwhelm (which of the many pressing to-dos do we ask for assistance with?), and not having a solid friend network or family nearby because of the multiple moves we’ve made for work.

In a recent post Petersen proposes an “emergency/tough times guide” (here’s her template) in which we name the things that would be most helpful to us when we’re feeling stretched too thin. In her piece she also names ways to use the guide. In addition to the options she presents, I want to offer some thoughts on how you could tailor a communal care guide for you or for your church:

• Craft the prompts for church staff and possibly even key lay leaders and ask them to fill out the form along with you. What personal or ministry support does each person need? What helps individuals feel seen and appreciated? Decide and communicate before distributing the form who will have access to the repository of responses. Access might be based on how vulnerable the questions ask respondents to be, how much trust there is in the system, what roles those with access play in the church, and how willing those people are to provide the requested assistance.

• Develop a form that everyone in your church can fill out on a rolling basis. This equalizes all the participants, makes it ok to ask for help, and reveals the care that would really benefit individuals or family unit so that the church can, well, be the church to each other. You can decide whether the responses will be available to anyone who fills out the form or to a specific team of caregivers committed to meeting needs as they are able.

• Develop a form in two parts for everyone in your church. In the first part takers name needs, and in the second part they share ways they could help others (e.g., taking people to appointments, making phone calls to people who are homebound, providing after school care for children of working parents). Everyone can see responses to both parts of the form, so they know whom to contact to give or receive care.

• Create a clergyperson-specific form, distribute it among your pastor peers, and give all the takers access to the responses. There are certain personal and professional needs that only another minister can understand and fulfill, and the guide could open up conversation about what mutual support could tangibly look like.

None of the options above is perfect. The forms would have to be designed thoughtfully in order to meet the intended aim of building an organic, sustainable care structure. But I think there’s something in here worth considering, a means of acknowledging our needs and others’ and working toward helping one another in ways that make a real difference.

Pastors are humans, and we minister alongside humans. We talk about our dependence on God and our interdependence with one another. Yet we can be so hesitant to acknowledge what is hard in our lives and request help accordingly. Perhaps this communal care guide can lower our resistance to know and be known by each other more deeply and share our burdens in appropriate and relationship-building ways.

Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash.

In its report “Twenty Years of Congregational Change,” Faith Communities Today reported in 2020 that 44% of all US congregations averaged 50 or fewer attendees each week, with another 25% falling into the 51-100 attendee category. I would not hesitate to hypothesize that the numbers of churches in these size ranges have grown in the past two years. What this means is that there likely is a growing number of churches led by part-time pastors.

This reality presents some challenges, of course. It is becoming harder for pastors - and particularly associate pastors - to find full-time congregational ministry positions. They might need to piece together multiple jobs in order to bring in the income they need to pay monthly bills and to chip away at student debt. They are harder pressed to secure benefits such as health insurance, which typically come only with full-time roles. (I’m happy to get on my soapbox about why insurance should not be tied to employment, but that’s a conversation for another time.) It can be complicated to align the work schedules of two or more jobs.

But even as the numbers trend toward smaller churches with reduced financial resources, there are some real opportunities here. I am privileged to know some pastors who are purposely and purposefully serving in part-time pastor roles. I have learned a lot from them about the beauty of multi-vocational work. (I highly recommend that you check out Rev. Rachel McDonald’s substack “My Other Job.” She has taught me a lot!) Here are some of the advantages to part-time pastorates:

Pastors’ identities are separated from their congregational ministry positions. In this season of discernment and pastoral turnover, I’m hearing an amplified version of a theme that has often run through coaching conversations: Who am I if I am not the leader of [insert name of church here]? Ministers’ sense of self easily becomes intertwined with their roles at particular points in time, making the thought of vocational change - even welcome change - an existential threat. Having more life outside of the congregational context helps pastors sort out who is the person and what is the role.

Churches and pastors can cultivate more intentionality around work and rest. When pastors are paid for twenty hours a week, both they and their congregations must think more about what is essential for the pastor to do - and not do. This practice can lead to more focus on mission and values rather than all the tasks that get lumped under “other duties as assigned.”

Pastors’ income is not wholly dependent on one source. This offers pastors freedom not just in a financial sense but also in allowing them to take more faithful risks in preaching and teaching. This gives them permission to offer the gentle challenge that can lead to significant spiritual growth.

Laypeople can discover and use gifts they never knew they had. When pastors lay down some responsibilities, that creates space for others to take them up. There are no doubt others in your church who can deliver a good word from the pulpit. Pastoral care can become congregational care. People can tap into their convictions and connections to initiate new ways for fellow members to serve. This is the priesthood of all believers at work!

Pastors’ relational networks expand. Many pastors lament that they don’t have time or energy to make friends or serve the community outside of their ministry role. With more time available, they can meet a whole new demographic of people at another job. They can have interests and hobbies that have nothing to do with church. They can establish friendships with peers who are not clergy. They don’t have to be The Pastor in every space.

Churches’ ministries are not as built around programming. A lot of churches are still solidly buying into the attractional model: if we have a great [children’s ministry, youth ministry, etc.], people will come. Maybe, if you’re a megachurch. But most people are looking for relationships, not one more thing to add to the calendar. Having a minister who doesn’t have work time to start and staff programs takes off this pressure to overschedule and properly reorients planning toward mission.

Pastors can flex different muscles. Related to several of the points above, pastors have made themselves (or allowed others to make them) one-dimensional. But God made us all much more complex and contradictory than that! When pastors are part-time, they can try new things or use skills that don’t get called upon in ministry. This faithfully un-flattens them.

I have a lot of hope for the Church and for its impact on the world in the coming years. I don’t think the future of the Church, though, lies necessarily in bringing in waves of new members and their wallets. The part-time trend will only grow, and it’s much better to be proactive in moving from full-time to part-time staffing structures than to hang on to old ways of leading and being until the coffers are depleted. If you want to read about how to make this shift well, I highly recommend G. Jeffrey MacDonald’s 2020 book Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

In many churches, this is the time of year when annual reviews of staff take place. For some pastors, these conversations are the only times they hear what is and isn’t working from their congregants’ point of view. That makes reviews somewhat nerve-wracking for clergy. They wonder: What surprises await me when that conference room door closes? 

Here’s the thing, though: Your pastors want feedback from you! Click here to read my thoughts on how your perspectives can be shared in ways that are most useful for your ministers and, by extension, your church.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash.

Every December I offer a “round up” special to former, current, and potential clergy coachees: I will round the amount left in your professional expense line item up to the next session value. This is my way of helping you make sure you don’t leave any of your hard-earned money on the table at the end of the calendar year. Here’s what you need to know to access this special:

• If you are a prospective coachee, I welcome you to schedule a discovery call so that you can ask any questions you might have about coaching or the way I approach it.

• Contact me about your desire to use the special by noon your time on Friday, December 30.

• There is no minimum number of sessions you must purchase.

• If you are a current coachee, the session(s) you purchase using the offer will be added on to the end of your coaching package.

• You can use this special to pay now for sessions that start at your convenience, whether that’s immediately or after the busyness of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

Those are the nuts and bolts. Let’s get to the good stuff, which is why you might want to explore coaching. The Church and world are in major transition, which means many ministers want to discern what this means for them and their congregations, re-think and re-tool their leadership, and take good care of themselves and the people they love in sustainable ways. Coaching can help you move ahead in all of these open questions. In fact, coaching is one of the best uses of your professional development funds because it

• is done remotely,

• takes place at your pace and on your schedule,

• is geared toward reframing your particular situation in helpful ways,

• helps you make positive steps forward, and

• can be completely customized to your goals, leadership style, and context.

Invest in your 2023 with 2022 money. Contact me or schedule a discovery call to activate the round-up special by December 30.

Take heart! Though there are many challenges for pastors right now (as outlined in this piece), there is also much to celebrate. Click here to read the second article, which focuses on all that is good, based on my recent survey of clergy.

Photo by Carson Masterson on Unsplash.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” This is true for individuals, and it is true for churches. There is

a time to wait on God and a time to take action with God;

a time to question and a time to rest in faith;

a time to experiment and a time to commit;

a time to revitalize and a time to close;

a time to listen and a time to make a statement;

a time to gather and a time to send out;

a time to look backward and a time to look forward;

a time to play and a time to study;

a time to take on and a time to let go;

a time to physically distance and a time to embrace;

a time to nourish others and a time to be nourished ourselves;

a time to protest and a time to re-group;

a time to work and a time to take Sabbath;

a time to grieve and a time to hope.

There is a time for all of these things. What season does your church find itself in?

Photo by Vegan Oazïs on Unsplash.

Recently I surveyed pastors about what their biggest challenges and greatest joys are in this season of ministry. This article on the CBF blog about the challenges and ways to address them is part one of a two-piece series based on those survey results.

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash.

If you know me well, you will find it hilarious that I have written a piece on anything Hulk-related. (I had - have? - a terrible fear of the Lou Ferrigno Hulk.) But I found the Disney+ series She-Hulk irresistible as a way to share what it’s like to be a clergywoman. You can read my thoughts on the parallels on Baptist News Global.