The Importance of Pastoral Well-being

Are our pastors on the brink of burnout? Join me, Todd Rhoades, as we uncover the alarming findings from our 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment in this week's Healthy Church Staff Podcast. The assessment highlights three critical issues: rampant burnout and exhaustion, escalating mental health challenges, and a glaring lack of support systems within many churches. It's a sobering look at the state of pastoral well-being in a post-pandemic world, revealing how the relentless demands of ministry are taking a toll on church leaders' physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

But it's not all doom and gloom. We'll delve into actionable strategies to foster a culture of care within our churches. Learn how recognizing the unique pressures faced by church leaders and promoting rest and renewal can make a significant difference. We’ll discuss the importance of tangible support systems and how encouraging time off can lead to a more sustainable and fulfilling ministry. It's time to move beyond survival mode and help pastors find joy and fulfillment in their roles. Don't miss this essential conversation on creating a healthier church environment for everyone involved.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hey there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm Todd Rhodes and I am one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffcom, also your host here on the podcast. Duh, you're listening to me, I'm just kidding. Today we are continuing our series of findings that we found from our 2024 Church Staff Health Assessment. If you can download a copy of that, it's a pretty hefty download, it's about 85 pages or so over at chemistrystaffingcom slash staffhealth chemistrystaffingcom slash staffhealth. And today, as we are for this week and next week on the podcast, tackling today a topic that's really close to my heart and I'm sure many of yours as well, and that's pastoral well-being. And if there's one thing that really became crystal clear from our 2024 church staff health assessment, it's that pastors and church staff many are struggling. Ministry can be incredibly rewarding but it can also be incredibly exhausting, and the last few years have only heightened that tension. So I wanted to today unpack a little bit about what's going on and how we can make hopefully, a positive change Some of the high-level, top-level findings of the report.

Speaker 1: 1:21

I've got three of them right here. The first one is burnout and exhaustion. Our assessment shows a troubling level of burnout among pastors. Many are feeling overwhelmed by the demands of ministry and that's leading to physical and emotional and spiritual exhaustion. Burnout and exhaustion is one. There are mental health concerns alongside burnout and mental health concerns have also risen to the forefront. The stress and pressure of ministry, especially in post-pandemic world, have taken a toll on mental health. Being well-being of church leaders and being in a state of burnout and exhaustion and feeling the pressure in your mental health is not good for church leaders. Obviously it's not good. But what we find is that when church leaders are exhausted and burned out and when their mental health starts to waver a little bit, those are times where some pastors and church leaders are susceptible to making really bad decisions, and we all know what that can do, not only to our ministry but to our career and to our family.

Speaker 1: 2:33

And then the third high-level finding that we found in this year's assessment is that there really are, in a lot of churches, a lack of support systems. There's a lack of just adequate support systems for pastors in general and staff members. Many feel isolated, without the necessary resources or community to help them navigate their roles effectively. Pastoral well-being, let me say this. It's more than just avoiding burnout. Okay, let me say that again. Pastoral well-being is more than just avoiding burnout. It's really about thriving in your role and finding joy and fulfillment in ministry. Unfortunately, what we're finding is that many pastors are operating in survival mode, which isn't sustainable long-term. The pandemic has exasperated this issue We've talked about that as well and it adds layers of complexity to an already demanding job. But we can't blame everything on the pandemic. Many pastors have just been navigating these challenges for years without proper resources or support.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So what can we do in our churches to help improve over the next year? And again, I don't know that these are—you're going to say, todd, oh my goodness, you just. This is amazing. These are all things that we know we need to do, but in the busyness of ministry, we just we don't take time to do some of these things. And the first one is just really clear we need to create a culture of care and we need to encourage a church culture that values and supports its leaders. And do we do that? Yeah, yeah, a lot of us do that, but we're so busy Everyone is so busy that a lot of times we don't take time to slow down and see how everybody's doing. We need to recognize the unique pressures that all of us are facing and offer some tangible support.

Speaker 1: 4:28

We need to encourage some rest and renewal. We can't go 24-7 all the time. Pastors need time to recharge your staff. It's not just the senior pastors that need a sabbatical or time to recharge. Staff members are going full bore, a lot of them and they need time to recharge. So we need to encourage vacations. I hear all the time of staff members that have four weeks of vacation.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Accrual Encourage. Tell people you got to take vacations, you got to take days off. My son's at a church where they have I don't know if they call it a mental health day or what exactly they call it, but it's one day a quarter. So four days a year, one day a quarter. They say tell us when this is going to be, but just don't show up in the office, don't do anything ministry related. Go take a mental health day. Go take a day where you can do something that you enjoy and get away from the pressures of ministry, and I think that's just absolutely brilliant. It's a really great way to be able to provide something that doesn't cost your church anything, and a day off to do something like that is going to refresh and renew people in such a way that you're going to get that day back in spades, probably. So encourage that rest and renewal. And here's your bottom line for today Pastoral well-being, it's not a luxury, it's an essential for church health and as church leaders we need to be proactive to ensure that our team are well cared for and supported and encouraged.

Speaker 1: 6:03

So here's your call to action Start the conversation in your church about how you can better support your pastor's well-being. Maybe it's instituting a one-day-a-quarter where it's not the same day for everybody. You, just today, I need a day and I'm taking a day and encourage that. It could be as simple as checking in regularly, or as significant as implementing a new strategy for longer-term sabbaticals. Every step counts.

Speaker 1: 6:31

So I hope this is helpful to you and actually I would love for you to download a copy of the Church Staff Health Assessment. You can do that at chemistrystaffingcom. Slash staffhealth. Chemistrystaffingcom. Slash staffhealth. It seems like I'm only highlighting so far this week the negatives. We're going to get to the positives, believe me, because there's a lot of positives as well that we found in our Church Staff Health assessment. But again, you can download it at chemistrystaffingcom and if there's any way that I can help you. We actually have this year a local church staff health assessment which will see how your staff, how your leadership team, how your elder board or your governing board, how healthy they are, and compare that to the national averages. And if you're interested in finding out a little bit more about how that report could help your church as well, you can reach out to me. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, thanks so much. I will talk to you again right here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Step Podcast.