The Resilient Pastor

Ten Principles for Developing Pastoral Resilience

Searby

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781498223645
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Ministry is challenging, complex, and costly. Too many pastors and church leaders are getting spread thin, burned out, and walking away! In an ever-changing church culture that includes social media, blurred denominational lines, and an increased demand for relational ministry, many pastors are feeling overwhelmed, becoming discouraged, and dropping out of leadership roles.You may be one of them--but you are not ready to give up. The Resilient Pastor will help you to focus on character development and spiritual formation as a Christian leader, engaging the challenges of ministry with passion and perseverance. You will explore ten principles for developing pastoral resilience and consider biblical examples as well as testimonies from contemporary leaders as you lay the foundation for becoming a resilient leader. This journey through The Resilient Pastor will be worth your time as an individual leader or in a small group context with other pastors.

2

Principle Two

Invest in Mentoring Relationships

He was talented, successful, well-liked, and in demand as a speaker and seminar leader. The church he had planted had experienced rapid growth, and he now led a staff of four other pastors. Why did he need anyone in his life who would give him counsel and advice? Wasn’t he the “mentor” to other young pastors?

His weekly schedule was always packed with appointments or travel to speaking engagements. He communicated clearly and passionately to those who attended the seminars. Many young church planters considered him to be the “expert” and often contacted him after seminars to seek advice and encouragement.

The event that brought him to a time of personal evaluation and deep reflection happened at the conclusion of one of his speaking engagements. It had been a particularly stressful month in his ministry, his youngest child had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and his wife shared with him that she was feeling distance between them. After his last message at the conference, a young church planter who was obviously discouraged came to him and asked, “Jim, who is your pastor? Who mentors you and keeps you on track? I really need someone like that.”

These questions hit Jim like a brick. He knew the true answer was “no one.” Suddenly, he felt almost desperate, knowing that in this particularly difficult time in his life and ministry, there was no one to whom he could turn as a pastor or mentor. He realized how much he had been giving and how little he had been receiving. He knew that his life was out of balance and that his family was suffering and that there was no person in his life who held him accountable or who poured wisdom and counsel into him.

On the flight home that day, Jim confessed to his Lord and made a decision to live differently. He decided to take the next day to spend extended time with his wife to discuss what he had discovered, ask her forgiveness, and begin to plan to live a more balanced life which would include regular meetings with a mentor.

I met recently with a Christian leader of a parachurch ministry who is in his mid-40s. He and I have been meeting together consistently for almost four years. He calls me “coach.” Our relationship is a mentoring relationship. As we prepared to depart, he asked me if I have someone in my life who is a mentor. My immediate response was “yes.” We meet monthly, and his wisdom, counsel, and encouragement are invaluable to me. Over the past thirty-six years I have been in one-on-one or small group mentoring. I have had a variety of mentors. My longest intensive mentoring relationship with a mentor was four years; we usually met monthly. It is my conviction and plan to have a mentor throughout the rest of my life.

Paul Stanley and J. Robert Clinton completed a major study of leaders in which they discovered five characteristics of leaders who “finish well.” One of those characteristics was “they had a network of meaningful relationships and several important mentors during their lifetime.”25 These mentors were able to listen, encourage, challenge, and provide accountability for these leaders. The importance of having a mentor and being involved in a constellation of mentoring relationships (described below) cannot be overemphasized.

The Mentoring Constellation

The presence of mentors throughout a leader’s journey has been shown to be one of the keys to meaningful and effective leadership over the long haul. But this involvement with mentors needs to be expanded to include not just being mentored, but also being a mentor to others.

The term which I will use to describe this involvement is the “mentoring constellation.” I first encountered this term in Stanley and Clinton’s work, Connecting. However, I have found that the origin of the use of the term is from the work of Kathy Kram.26

Many leaders fail to realize the importance of being involved in such a network of relationships until they have experienced a serious ministry or moral failure or until they are extremely discouraged. My encouragement to emerging leaders is that they view their involvement in these relationships as an investment in their lives and ministries. The diagram below (Figure 2) shows four different relationships for the pastoral leader to include in a personal network. Each will be described briefly.

Mentor: Each leader will benefit from an ongoing relationship with a mentor. The mentor is an individual who is respected for spiritual maturity, life experience, wisdom, and particular skill set. The particularities of the relationship will be addressed later (content, agendas, schedule, etc.).

Protégé: Each leader will discover the rewards in being a mentor by serving in that role for a protégé who views him or her as that mature, wise individual who can invest in the protégé’s development. Serving as a mentor will provide an opportunity to invest in the development of future kingdom leaders.

Ally: Peer mentoring relationships are part of this constellation. The “ally” is called an “internal peer mentor” by Stanley and Clinton.27 An ally is an individual within your leadership organization with whom you meet regularly to process what is transpiring within the organization.

Confidant: A “confidant” is called an “external peer mentor.”28 This person is someone who is a peer, but not within your organizational structure. The confidant becomes a trusted friend who will speak truth into your life and has no competing loyalties with the organization.

The concept of the mentoring constellation can be intimidating, especially if one begins to consider what this might mean in terms of time investment. So, the first question to answer is “How can I possibly be involved in this many different mentoring relationships?”

Not all of these relationships require a weekly, or even monthly, investment of time. However, it could add up to four or five hours per month to one’s schedule. You are encouraged to meet monthly with your mentor (1½–2 hours), monthly with your protégé (1½–2 hours), and every four to six weeks with your peer mentors (1 hour). It will be important to evaluate what can be deleted from one’s schedule to make the time for these important relationships. This will happen only if there is a strong commitment to mentoring as a part of one’s leadership development.

The second question to answer is “Why should I make this time in my busy schedule?” My first answer is because it was the model of Jesus. He invested most of his time in a small group of followers who woul...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Principle One
• Principle Two
• Principle Three
• Principle Four
• Principle Five
• Principle Six
• Principle Seven
• Principle Eight
• Principle Nine
• Principle Ten
• Appendix One
• Appendix Two
• Appendix Three
• Appendix Four
• Appendix Five
• Appendix Six
• Appendix Seven
• Appendix Eight
• Appendix Nine
• Appendix Ten
• Bibliography
• Contributors