Sad Plight of the Solo Pastor: Part 1

I feel for pastors where they are the only pastor in their church. You've all heard it. Once again, a church has a major falling out with their pastor and the pastor is pressured to resign. Some in the church aren't happy (they love the pastor!) and strife is created. Eventually, the church may even split.

Then it happens again.

It seems to me that I've heard a lot of stories recently about pastors being fired/resigning/being forced out of their pastorates. Or churches suffering under the leadership of an unjust pastor and who finally gets him out of there. When one hears these stories there are three obvious explanations:

1. It's the pastor's fault. Or . . .
2. It's the church's fault. Or . . .
3. It's both their fault!

Usually if you talk to the pastor, it's that crazy church's fault and if you talk to the church, the messed up pastor was at fault. I'm not saying that these things are never true, but I wonder if there is a third possibility:

It is the system's fault.

For some reason, we have a system where we believe that the church is best served by one leader at the top who bears all or most of the responsibility for leading and serving the church body. Where we got this idea I have no idea. In the New Testament we don't get any indication (that I can see) of professional pastors who do most of the leadership work. Instead we see team leadership. In many of our Evangelical church's we say we have team leadership, but we don't. "Team" is a term thrown about, but not really practiced. Most of the responsibility falls onto one individual. Doug Fields describes it like this:

"Imagine a sports dynasty for a minute - pick your favorite. It's success can't be attributed to one component; several factors combine to it's success. A true dynasty is stronger than its one great player. It must also have supportive key players, a motivating head corch, experienced assistant coaches, a position in the free agency market, a risk-taking owner, a productive front office, and a strong farm system (or luck with the draft). Average sport fans don't consider all of these factors when they watch their favorite team play. Instead they focus on the team's best player and falsely assume that the team's success is due to that great player.

Unfortunately, many in the church view . . . ministry with that same mentality. They look for the one great player ( . . . worker) who can save the franchise (the . . . ministry) and develop a winning team (volunteers) that will attract the fans . . . Once a great player is identified (either hired clergy or volunteers), the owners (church board, selection committee . . .) settle into other pressing affairs withing the organization (church). This type of scenario usually results in a suicide mission for the "star" player. He or she charges in with enthusiasm and practices (works) endless hours trying to achieve success . . . to please the owners. But to please everyone the player has to run (often knowing not where) so hard and so fast for so long that he or she eventually tires and becomes injured (burns out) and has to be replaced (quits or is fired). At this point the owners get involved and looks for another great player to bring the team out of the dumps. The cycle starts all over with no foundation to build on because the last great player felt the burden to win by her- or himself." (Doug Fields, PDYM, p. 15)

I think a system where the church expects the pastor to do/be everything (or even most everything) and the pastor agrees to this is dysfunctional. There are a few examples of talented/character filled people who can do this but they are by far the exception, not the rule. And yet churches never learn. They keep hiring the "wrong" person! The truth is that all potential pastor have both great gifts and great shortcomings. Thus, every pastor coming in is going to be lacking in some of the most essential abilities needed to fill the leadership needs of a church. When a church believes that one pastor can fill even most of their leadership needs and the pastor agrees to try, it's a recipe for disaster. The system, based on unworkable beliefs about solo leadership fails the majority of churches, especially the small ones. And not to say that churches and pastors shouldn't bear any of the responsibility for failed pastorates, they should. But the system is not making things any easier.

May Light increase!