Pastors Get to Set Boundaries Too

Strategies for bringing healthy rhythms into a dysfunctional church culture.

MICHAEL MACKENZIE

If I make these changes, I might lose my job,” one pastor told me.

For the sake of being honest, I replied, “Yes, you might.”

I’ve had many versions of this conversation with the pastors I counsel. Many are frustrated, exhausted, and ready to quit. Some haven’t had a real vacation in years. Others are experiencing panic attacks or other symptoms of extreme stress. Their marriages, children, physical health, and personal hobbies have all been neglected. They’ve found themselves working 60-, 70- or even 80-hour weeks.

For the past 20 years, I’ve specialized in counseling pastors—the last 10 years at a retreat center for pastors and ministry leaders. Many of these pastors have realized they can no longer do ministry the way they have been. But they’re also keenly aware of a painful reality: Setting healthy boundaries might not actually be supported by their church. In fact, it might lead to their dismissal.

Before you go

It is all well and good for pastors to work on establishing healthy boundaries, but that is only half the problem. There are two parties in this relationship: the pastor and the congregation. What if a congregation won’t honor a pastor’s healthy boundaries? What if they continue to expect the pastor to be available at all hours, every day of the week? To perform every wedding and every funeral? To lead every program? Then what?

When my wife, Kari, and I had a private counseling practice, we occasionally provided support to young adults who were still living at home but in dysfunctional situations, such as with parents struggling with addiction. The young adults desired to be healthy. I assessed that they could take four potential paths:

1. Try to stay healthy in an unchanging, dysfunctional system.

2. Change the system so everyone is healthier.

3. Leave and get healthy.

4. Give in and take on the dysfunction.

Pastors can be in very similar situations, and in my experience, many take door 3 or 4. They may at first try door 1. But repeatedly attempting to hold healthy boundaries amid persistent pressure not to can eventually be more exhausting than simply succumbing to the unrealistic expectations. So pastors get out, believing that nothing will change at their churches. Or they give up on the changes they’d hoped to make, resigned that this is the way it is in ministry so they’d better get used to it.

Must pastors either get out or give up? No. In many cases, before leaving becomes necessary—or before they’re let go—they can try door 2: getting healthy and taking their churches with them. A pastor can grow into good boundaries and strategically help the church in this process too.

Who can step up?

Often pastors arrive at our retreat center having stayed up late the night before to get the last pieces in place so their responsibilities will be covered during their absence. This last push reveals a common church reality: No one is already trained to take over various aspects of the pastor’s role, so now he or she is scrambling to find folks to do so. The good news is that pastors usually do find people who step up and step in.

Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.” Many pastors have become adept at doing many things. A shift in the church culture can begin as a pastor candidly considers these questions: What if I couldn’t show up next week? What would happen? Who would do what? What can only I do—and what do I need to focus on? In Kierkegaard’s words, How could I focus on intensity and not extensity?

Finding and training others who are willing to fulfill various responsibilities of the pastor is a foundational step in maintaining healthy boundaries. For example, give guidance to an elder who has an inclination toward preaching. Take a congregant with a pastoral heart on hospital visits. Train someone to run the meetings in the pastor’s absence. Not only does this help keep things running when a pastor is away or focused on other tasks, but it can also lead to regular expressions of lay ministry.

Intentionally equipping others to step into some pastoral responsibilities helps the church body grow and mature. It enables the pastor to take some things off his or her plate, it gives lay leaders a greater understanding and empathy for the pastor’s position, and it is a direct intervention against the primary resistance to a pastor’s boundaries. The main reason people resist another’s boundary is because they believe that boundary takes away something they want or need. People in a church push back when a pastor says, “No, I am not doing that,” because they think they’re losing something. This could stem from their own fear, insecurity, laziness, sense of ownership, or even pride in how good the pastor is at a role. But when it becomes clear that someone else can do a given task, people learn they don’t need to fear losing something.

Get it in writing

A core component of a church honoring their pastor’s healthy boundaries is having a realistic written job description that provides clarity about the church’s expectations for that role. A pastor can meet with church leadership to evaluate and adjust the job description, adding specificity when possible—such as detailing the expected weekly work hours, the number of Sundays the pastor is expected to preach per year, or the maximum number of weddings he or she is expected to perform in a year.

One big hurdle a pastor can face is when other leaders in the church (such as the elders or church board) don’t have a full picture of all he or she does. In this situation, a pastor can keep a log for a month, recording all time spent on ministry tasks (including things like text conversations with church members). This log will help other leaders understand the pastor’s struggle in limiting the number of work hours per week and can prompt fruitful discussion on how to prioritize the pastor’s main tasks, such as sermon preparation.

When pastoral responsibilities are limited, specific, and supported and a congregation experiences a refreshed, passionate, focused, and enthused pastor, they see the benefit of the pastor choosing wisely what he or she does and does not focus on.

Let Scripture teach

As pastors grow and deepen in spiritual maturity and health in Christ—particularly in the area of boundaries—they can pass these lessons along to their congregations from the pulpit. This benefits not only the pastors themselves but also all those listening, as it cultivates a wise pace and Christlike priorities in laypeople and church leaders alike.

Preaching on the underlying biblical values that drive good boundaries can take many forms. For example, pastors could preach on biblical themes, like how protecting one’s heart is vital because it is the wellspring of life, or how each member of Christ’s body is called to be a hand or foot or eye and boundaries can help people stay within their callings. Sermons could explore how important prioritizing Sabbath rest is or how our identity in Christ frees us to say yes or no to things. Messages like this can foster a church culture that sets healthy expectations for both church members and pastoral staff.

To further clarify for the congregation what the pastor does and doesn’t do, a sermon on the biblical role of the pastor (especially one provided by a guest preacher) can be effective. It would also be wise to have a leader other than the pastor share the key components of the pastor’s job description with the congregation during a church business meeting.

A worthwhile risk

When a pastor faces the fear that the congregation may not honor his or her boundaries, I believe it’s better for the pastor to communicate to church leadership that the current arrangement is not working and try to help things change rather than simply leaving quietly or waiting to be fired. Setting boundaries, asking to be supported by leadership and the congregation, and delegating roles are the right steps to take—even if they fail.

While I have seen pastors throw a last-minute Hail Mary to set boundaries that were accepted by church leadership and the congregation, sadly, I have also seen the receivers drop the ball. This is just a painful reality some pastors face. Though it’s not guaranteed to be successful, patiently and strategically working to try to change the church culture so that healthy boundaries are valued (including those of the pastor) is good for everyone. It is worth the risk. The pastor being the pastor he or she is called to be, engaging with each one in the flock as they are called to be, will create a beautiful expression of the body as we are all called to be.

Michael MacKenzie is a licensed counselor and ordained pastor. He has counseled pastors and other Christian leaders for the past 20 years and is currently executive director of Marble Retreat. He is the author of Don’t Blow Up Your Ministry.