Ten Best Ways to Ruin Your Church Staff, No. 9

We continue the “Ten Best Ways to Ruin Your Church Staff” to avoid for those pastoral leaders who want to keep and develop quality staff ministry colleagues, (For those pastors who want to get rid of troubling church staff, then this is the way to do it!). Today, no. 9: Neglect your own spiritual and personal growth.

9. Neglect your own spiritual and personal growth. You can only influence your staff as spiritual leaders to your congregation to the extent that YOU are growing in your own spiritual life. Congregations love overfunctioning staff, they do not mind asking staff to sacrifice their families and health on the altar of the church. The pastoral leader must set the example for stewardship of one’s vocation and personal life. Modeling ways to invest in your own personal and spiritual growth, professional development, and self care can empower your staff to follow suit.

Additionally, here are three facts that pastoral leaders often forget related to neglecting their own care and needs:

1. When you don’t study, we can tell.
2. When you’re not spiritually centered, we can tell.
3. When you don’t feed yourself, we starve.

It took me ten years after I graduated seminary to find my first church position. One factor was my determination to only accept a ministry position that was a good “fit.” The second was that it took me that long to find a pastor who I could see was still working on his personal growth. In the course of ten years interviewing with congregations and their pastors I had not met one pastor who gave evidence of personal growth over time, participated regularly in professional development, or was able to articulate plans or activities related to a commitment to personal and spiritual growth. The stewardship of ministry, and of one’s life, is key to effective pastoral leadership.

From, Perspectives on Congregational Leadership: Applying Systems Theory for Effective Leadership, by Israel Galindo. See the new Perspectives on Congregational Leadership blog site.