Pastors who lead local churches have one of the hardest leadership challenges I see in both corporate and non-profit roles. In reality their customers are both their volunteer work force and financial investors all at the same time. No corporate leader faces those challenges and pastors feel that tension every day. This post by Chuck Lawless is excellent:
“If you read church history at all, you’ll learn that men as faithful to God as Martin Luther and Charles Spurgeon struggled with bouts of at least heaviness, if not depression. I’m convinced more church leaders than we know face these battles. Here are some reasons we do, followed by a simple suggestion when we struggle:
Our calling is a calling of God. We’re blessed to have that calling, but we still answer to the Creator of eternity. That’s a weighty reality that sometimes gets really heavy.
We work with life and death. In fact, we work in the light of eternity, reminding people of life and death matters. Just that fact can pound on our shoulders.
We live with our own sin. No church leader I know wants to be hypocritical in front of church members, but all of us know our own sin issues. Our desire to be leaders of integrity increases the burden of our own sin.”