Pastors and Killer Expectations, Part 1: Where Do They Come From?

A 2001 Barna study shared the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion: “Church-​goers expect their pas­tor to jug­gle an aver­age of 16 major tasks. That’s a recipe for fail­ure — nobody can han­dle the wide range of respon­si­bil­i­ties that peo­ple expect pas­tors to master.”

That was one of the most inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics I found while doing research for my book, Fallen Pas­tor: Find­ing Restora­tion in a Bro­ken World. That sta­tis­tic reflects what I believe many pas­tors feel is the cause of killer expec­ta­tions — the con­gre­ga­tion or a con­trol­ling group of church lead­ers. What I dis­cov­ered in writ­ing was that blam­ing one side was incom­pat­i­ble with what was really going on in today’s churches.

Before I wrote my book, I thought I knew a lot about high expec­ta­tions for pas­tors. I had prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, but it was noth­ing com­pared to what I learned after study­ing sta­tis­tics and inter­view­ing fallen pas­tors. If a pas­tor does not under­stand expec­ta­tions rightly, mis­per­ceives them, or does not have the right cen­ter, he stands the dan­ger of burnout or worse.

It’s impor­tant to under­stand where high expec­ta­tions come from, where they should come from, how to under­stand them and how to take it all in. In this post, I’ll address where expec­ta­tions come from, and at the end I’ll throw in a curve­ball for those who stick around and read the whole thing.

Where do high expec­ta­tions come from? Whether you’re a pas­tor, plumber, archi­tect, ambas­sador to Korea or stay at home mom, you have a set of expec­ta­tions you deal with. Spe­cific to this post, if you’re a pas­tor of a con­gre­ga­tion of 20, 200 or 2,000, those expec­ta­tions are very real and if they get out of con­trol, they can become overwhelming.

Expec­ta­tions come from many places. First, there are con­gre­ga­tional expec­ta­tions. What does the con­gre­ga­tion expect out of their pas­tor? What did the pul­pit tell the pas­tor when he was hired? Have those expec­ta­tions changed as the church has grown or declined in atten­dance? Does the church set­ting make a dif­fer­ence? Is the church’s set of expec­ta­tions based on Scrip­ture, bylaws or any writ­ten stan­dard that can be mea­sured quan­ti­ta­tively? Do church expec­ta­tions come from a lead­er­ship coun­cil or the entire congregation?

All of these ques­tions can help sort out where con­gre­ga­tional expec­ta­tions come from. I had a friend in sem­i­nary who pas­tored a rural church that voted on whether to keep him every year. It had been in the bylaws since a pas­tor had fallen over six decades ear­lier. I know of churches who pass out pas­toral sat­is­fac­tion sur­veys on occasion.

Expec­ta­tions also come from within the pas­tor. These are typ­i­cally the strongest expec­ta­tions pas­tors wres­tle with. Pas­tors who are per­fec­tion­ists are rarely sat­is­fied with the job they are doing. These men often work long hours with the idea in mind that they are never quite ful­fill­ing every need in the church. Some­where in their brain, they per­ceive unmet needs among the con­gre­ga­tion that they could be fix­ing or mak­ing bet­ter. They are hard work­ers, but with­out a sys­tem of checks, these men expe­ri­ence tremen­dous burnout.

Pas­tors can expe­ri­ence sev­eral things that can warp their view of expec­ta­tions upon them. One is pas­toral com­pe­ti­tion or self-​competition. A lot of guys love to talk about num­bers. When pas­tors meet, they may not say it, but they intrin­si­cally mea­sure suc­cess by the num­ber of peo­ple in their con­gre­ga­tion or total bud­gets. While many give lip-​service to the idea that, “I’d be happy preach­ing to one per­son each Sun­day,” there seems to be an innate drive to move for­ward to the next big thing. Even if they aren’t com­par­ing num­bers with other pas­tors, a lot of young pas­tors are taught a busi­ness model of church where mov­ing on to the next big posi­tion is just a nat­ural progression.

Of course, this isn’t always true. There are always excep­tions and we all know of men who are con­tent with the con­gre­ga­tions they serve. The point here is that this drive from with­out or within can lead to a warped view of suc­cess and high expectations.

The final place expec­ta­tions come is from God. This is where proper expec­ta­tions should come from. God has a high expec­ta­tion for those He calls. 1 Tim­o­thy 3:1 – 7 is the most com­mon pas­sage quoted when list­ing the moral qual­i­fi­ca­tions for an over­seer: “The say­ing is trust­wor­thy: If any­one aspires to the office of over­seer, he desires a noble task. There­fore an over­seer must be above reproach, the hus­band of one wife, sober-​minded, self-​controlled, respectable, hos­pitable, able to teach, not a drunk­ard, not vio­lent but gen­tle, not quar­rel­some, not a lover of money. He must man­age his own house­hold well, with all dig­nity keep­ing his chil­dren sub­mis­sive, for if some­one does not know how to man­age his own house­hold, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent con­vert, or he may become puffed up with con­ceit and fall into the con­dem­na­tion of the devil. More­over, he must be well thought of by out­siders, so that he may not fall into dis­grace, into a snare of the devil.” (ESV)

There is dis­cus­sion over some of the spe­cific ideas in this pas­sage, but for the most part, it is agreed that God expects His lead­ers to have a cer­tain level of moral­ity and moral lead­er­ship. Ulti­mately, God’s stan­dard is the great­est stan­dard. Any idea out­side of Scrip­ture attrib­uted to the pas­tor should be dis­cussed and agreed upon between pas­tor and church lead­er­ship. Any unspo­ken or assumed expec­ta­tions can be harm­ful for both parties.

The warped view of high expec­ta­tions (whether from con­gre­ga­tions, from within, or both) can be seen in one of two exam­ples, although there are surely more.

If con­gre­ga­tions or lead­er­ship have expec­ta­tions that are too high, unspo­ken, or unre­al­is­tic for the pas­tor, he can become frus­trated in his duties. Despite his nor­mal duties of teach­ing and preach­ing, he can become over­whelmed with a myr­iad of other tasks. He can become party to this as well if he takes on tasks with­out ask­ing for help or com­mu­ni­cat­ing clearly to his peo­ple. Pas­tors who believe they can or should do every­thing will expe­ri­ence a large amount of frus­tra­tion, lead­ing to poten­tial burnout.

Some­times, churches are unaware they are adding to these high expec­ta­tions. Many peo­ple mean well or are unsure of how to approach the pas­tor but can say things that come across as hurt­ful to the pas­tor: “Our old pas­tor didn’t do it like that,” “You only work one day a week, surely you can do more,” “Why haven’t you vis­ited more peo­ple?” “There sure haven’t been many peo­ple here lately.” Peo­ple often mean well or aren’t think­ing when they make state­ments like this, but need to be aware of the weight their words carry. Most pas­tors spend all week con­cen­trat­ing on the church and the duties he per­forms and takes his job very seriously.

Now, for the curve­ball. I’ve mostly been talk­ing about how pas­tors get burned out when expec­ta­tions are too high, but there is another issue at stake. The other prob­lem that can occur is when the pas­tor per­ceives high expec­ta­tions on the other end of the spec­trum. The high expec­ta­tions become ado­ra­tion as he ful­fills them and acco­lades begin to pour in every Sun­day. If his set of expec­ta­tions are not from God and he fails to be hum­ble, dan­ger can lie ahead.

Over the past cou­ple of years, I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view sev­eral fallen pas­tors who allowed this to hap­pen. The church appre­ci­ated the fact that the pas­tor was ful­fill­ing the high expec­ta­tions through long hours and hard work (some­times at the expense of time at home) and was prais­ing him each week. The pas­tor begins to com­pare the high acco­lades from the peo­ple at church to his mar­riage rela­tion­ship, which is an unfair com­par­i­son. Often, the pas­tor would say to his wife, “How come you can’t appre­ci­ate me like the peo­ple at church do?” Much more about this in a later post.

High expec­ta­tions hap­pen to every­one, but under­stand­ing their source is of great impor­tance. Pastoral/​Church com­mu­ni­ca­tion about cor­rect expec­ta­tions can pre­vent church dis­ap­point­ment, pas­toral burnout and can also pro­mote proper church health and focus on Christ’s com­mu­nity and everyone’s role within it.