The Flourishing Pastor

Recovering the Lost Art of Shepherd Leadership

Tom Nelson

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781514001325
• eBook ISBN: 9781514001332
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Christianity Today Book Award—Church and Pastoral Leadership

The Gospel Coalition Book Awards Honorable Mention

Pastoral leadership is in crisis.

It's not just that many pastors feel overwhelmed and stressed out; many have lost their way. With the risk of burnout at an all-time high, what pastors need is not just a new leadership strategy but a new framework for ministry—one that will help them move from survival to flourishing.

In The Flourishing Pastor, Tom Nelson looks to the biblical image of the shepherd leader in response to the contemporary context. If pastors are to lead congregations, then they must first learn what it means to be led by the Good Shepherd. Pulling from his years of experience as a lead pastor and president of a nonprofit organization, Nelson offers pastors and ministry leaders a timely vision for leadership that incorporates in-depth biblical teaching and whole-life discipleship. His wisdom and insight provide a road map for ministry resilience and longevity.

Topics covered in The Flourishing Pastor include:

• Being an apprentice with Jesus
• Pursuing wholeness
• Cultivating a flourishing culture
• Finishing your ministry well

Through The Flourishing Pastor, Nelson invites you to step into a renewed perspective on leadership that nurtures both your spiritual growth and the well-being of those you serve. This book is an essential guide for pastors and ministry leaders seeking to lead with integrity and longevity.

1

A Calling in Crisis

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue in pulpits on Sunday mornings. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods.

EUGENE PETERSON, WORKING THE ANGLES

I met pastor Dave at a local coffee shop. One of Dave’s congregants had connected us, hoping that I might be of some encouragement to his pastor. Though I had never met Dave before, I immediately liked him. He greeted me with attentive eyes, a warm toothy smile, and a firm handshake. After ordering our favorite bold coffee, we sat down at a corner table searching for a bit of privacy, hopeful our words would be muffled by the many conversations near us.

Right from the start as Dave shared his story, I thought, What a great guy. My admiration only continued to build as Dave gave me a snapshot of the many external evidences of pastoral success he was experiencing. As I listened intently, the words that kept bouncing around in my mind were, Dave you are not only a great guy, you are a great pastor. After getting a warm-up of coffee, Dave’s sunny disposition and enthusiastic demeanor changed. It was obvious that something was on his heart, something important he wanted to share. Feeling safe with me, Dave ventured to take a risk to go below the surface, to welcome me under the waterline of his life. Dave looked me in the eye and said, “Tom, if truth be told, while my church is flourishing, I am smiling on the outside, but dying on the inside.”

Dave’s transparency initially took me by surprise, but it was not shocking. Dave is like many pastors I encounter. In one sense Dave is doing well. He is gifted for his pastoral calling. Dave does not have some disqualifying sin hiding in his closet. Dave has a good marriage, he is an involved dad, his church is growing in attendance, and the church budget is financially healthy. From all appearances, Dave would seem a poster boy for a flourishing pastor, but like so many of his peers, behind his pastoral gifting, diligence, and the many accoutrements of success lurks a less impressive world where often hidden forces threaten his well-being and longevity as a pastor. Dave knows that behind his Sunday smiles, he is in peril. He knows he needs to change, things need to change, but what does he do, where does he go, and whom does he seek out?

HOW ARE PASTORS DOING?

Pastors often experience demanding workloads, financial challenges, balancing family demands, exhaustion, and burnout. The Flourishing in Ministry research project funded by the Lilly Endowment completed a study of more than ten thousand pastors from twenty different denominations, representing a variety of racial ethnicities and including both male and female pastors.1 Perhaps most compelling is the number of pastors who expressed serious concern about their daily well-being. “Almost 40 percent of all clergy report low satisfaction with their overall life. . . . And slightly more than 40 percent—41 percent of women and 42 percent of men—report high levels of daily stress.”2 Adding to the high levels of daily stress, pastors are now serving in a broader cultural context that is often less supportive and can be oppositional, even hostile. Henri Nouwen summarized this changing cultural milieu and its effect on clergy. “In this climate of secularization, Christian leaders feel less and less relevant and more and more marginalized.”3 Under the cultural canopy of an increasingly secular age,4 pastors are increasingly viewed by many people they encounter as a kind of mysterious, quaint cultural anachronism. At best, they are hopelessly irrelevant, except for perhaps marriage ceremonies and memorial services. The inconvenient truth is that many younger pastors and more seasoned pastors are hurting and ineffective. They are often inadequately trained, spiritually malformed, chronically discouraged, and woefully prepared to lead increasingly complex institutions and diverse faith communities. They often experience the gnawing fear of inadequacy deep within them.

While there are a host of external and cultural factors contributing to a lack of pastoral flourishing that require attention, perhaps more insidious and ultimately perilous are the internal dimensions navigating the pastoral calling itself. It is not just that many pastors feel over their heads and stressed out, many have lost their way.

LOST SHEPHERDS

I really enjoy officiating at weddings. I plan every detail carefully and meticulously, checking and rechecking the exact time and place of the wedding. Being late to a wedding is a nightmare I have revisited during restless nights. Recently that nightmare presented itself to me as I got in my car and headed to a wedding destination some forty miles away. The wedding venue seemed out of the way on the map, but it was not far from where I lived, so I thought I could navigate my way there with no problem. About halfway to my destination on increasingly remote backcountry roads, I became more and more confused as to my location. I wasn’t sure where I was, and I was even more confused as to where I should be going. I picked up my smart phone. Much to my dismay, I had no cellular service. I had no GPS, nor could I call the wedding venue. At that moment, a pit emerged in my stomach and anxious thoughts tormented my mind. I was lost. I looked at my watch. Would I be late for the wedding? What would the wedding party do? How would I explain my tardiness to the bride and groom? I pulled over on the side of the road and shot up a desperate prayer. A car soon approached, and thanks to its local driver I was given directions that got me to the wedding venue just in the nick of time.

As a pastor, being lost is not only unpleasant, it can be quite perilous. Being lost attempting to get to a wedding venue is one thing, but being lost in the pastor calling is more consequential. While the image of a lost sheep is rather common; less common in our social imagination is a lost shepherd. Sheep are not the only ones who get lost, shepherds do as well. Shepherds and the sheep suffer for it.

The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel speaks timeless truth across the terrain of time. In losing their way, Israel’s leaders have abandoned their vocational stewardship to care for the sheep. Perhaps they lost their first love, faced their glaring inadequacy, were simply overwhelmed, or over time felt great fatigue. Whatever contributed to their getting lost, they clearly were neglecting their vocational stewardship and blatantly taking advantage of their positions of power at the expense of the people they had been called to serve. Ezekiel lays down the gauntlet of indictment, pointing to leaders who have lost their way:

Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. (Ezek 34:2-4)5

While Ezekiel’s literary imagery is embedded in an agrarian context, his prophetic message must not be missed for our time.6 Confronted with our own inadequacies, exhaustion, and pastoral disillusionment, we can abandon our shepherding calling and get perilously lost. If you are willing to be brutally honest, perhaps the prophet Ezekiel’s forceful words describe the painful reality of your heart. When shepherds become lost, neither they nor their flock flourish.

THREE PERILOUS PATHS

Pastors can get lost in their callings in many ways, but they often unwisely pursue three particularly common and perilous paths. I like to describe them as the celebrity path, the visionary path, and the lone ranger path. Let’s take a closer look at the pastors who follow these paths.

The celebrity pastor. When I travel and speak, usually the first thing I encounter when I arrive at a conference venue is the green room. The green room is where pastors and musicians hang out before they go on stage. The green room has a good purpose—providing a quiet place for preparation without interruption—yet often the accoutrements of success and the exaggerated image of a celebrity brand lurk in its distorting shadows. In the green room there is often jockeying for prominence and the stroking of oversized egos. The green room culture regularly reinforces a distorted telos of pastoral success rather than pastoral faithfulness—much more about furthering a brand than furthering the kingdom, more about amplifying a person than exalting Christ. The green room often promotes a toxic celebrity Christian culture. Fame, applause, and celebrity status is a very intoxicating substance even for pastors, wooing them down a perilous path. A pastor’s secure gospel identity in Christ is easily hijacked by the fickle applause of a crowd.

At the heart of the celebrity pastor is what Saint Augustine aptly described as disordered love.7 Lurking behind a smiling stage presence is an inordinate narcissistic love of self at the expense of love for God and others. Instead of living before an audience of One, the celebrity pastor lives before an audience of many. Most on his or her mind is how well they are performing in the eyes of the crowd. The crowd need not be big nor the stage prominent for the celebrity pastor to emerge. Celebrity is not necessarily tied to the size of the audience, but rather the size of ego longing to be stroked. A megapastoral ego is not only found in some megachurch contexts. They can be found in all sizes of churches. Big frogs live in small ponds too. And with the advent of online services and social media, the reach of any pastor can be far and wide. The perilous path of the celebrity pastor now lurks online and in the virtual world of our interconnected global information age.

For many pastors, preaching to the gathered church is a highly important and significant aspect of their pastoral calling. I do not want in any way to undermine the high importance of stewarding well the weekly communication of God’s Word to a congregation. Neither do I want to minimize the crucial importance in growing in the craft and skill in preaching if that is an essential aspect of a pastor’s primary job description. As a pastor who has had the humbling privilege of preaching to a congregation for more than thirty years, I also know firsthand some of the unique heart temptations that pastors face in the preaching enterprise. At soul level, preaching puts the pastor in a very vulnerable space where our sense of self-worth can become closely connected to the affirmation or criticism of our Sunday listeners. While pastors can preach passionately about the peril of idolatry, ironically at the same time pastors can be wrestling with the idolatry of their own preaching. Pastors’ hearts are idol factories too, and our preaching can become an idolatrous Sunday performance. The untold secret lurking inside the heart of many pastors is an ongoing struggle with envy of other pastors who have greater preaching skills and larger congregations. Pastors are often ranked internally and externally as successful by their upfront communication skills. Conference speaking opportunities and placement among plenary speakers along with sizes of honoraria also reinforce a success pecking order, stroking egos as well as eliciting envy from other pastors.

Many parishioners and faith communities encourage pastors down the perilous path of celebrity. I will never forget a particular time I was invited to speak at a multiday conference to be held at a church in another state. The church was both generous and gracious to pay for my family to join me. We arrived from the airport and pulled up to the church in our rental car. A big sign in bold letters greeted us. It read, “Let Tom Nelson Wow You!” At that point, my two children burst out in uncontrollable laughter. All of us in the car knew that the church congregation was going to be sorely disappointed. They had invited the wrong speaker. Transparently, I am anything but a “wower,” yet I find that many well-meaning congregants and church leaders fuel the Sunday wow factor, reinforcing the perilous celebrity path. Is it any wonder that pastors’ roller coaster mental and emotional state of being on Monday is inextricably linked to the comments—both positive and negative—surrounding their Sunday performance?

The disordered love of the crowd’s applause is intoxicating and impairs pastoral flourishing. David French rightfully notes that celebrity pastors receive the “false blessing” that all celebrities do: “celebrity itself has its own charisma.”8 That is, people act differently around celebrities in exaggerated laughter, spellbound fascination with every word, and it produces a reality that is, “both exhilarating—as it feeds the ego—and exhausting.”9 And under the influence of this kind of applause, blurred vision hides the deceitfulness of the heart while bolstering the confidence in one’s own virtue.10 John the Baptist’s maxim deteriorates into, “I must increase.”11 Though the disordered love of the crowd’s applause produces an impressive celebrity platform, it doesn’t take interest in compelling Christlike character. Equipping the church, then, inordinately focuses on the Sunday gathered church—the pastor’s platform—failing to more fully equip the scattered church for their Monday world.

Jesus is interested in something different. His restorative and commissioning words to Peter calling for a reordering of heart loves are both timeless and timely, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (Jn 21:15). A toxic celebrity culture is wreaking havoc in pastors’ lives, their families, on the church, and on its witness in the world. The heavy weight of pastors’ highly visible public platforms is much more than the depth of their ill-formed character can sustain. Jesus shatters any glimmer of celebrity leadership, reminding us the greatest among us will not be ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Chris Brooks
• Introduction
• Part One: The Shepherd
• Part Two: Integrity of Heart
• Part Three: Skillful Hands
• Acknowledgments
• Discussion Guide
• Notes
• Scripture Index
• A Word to Pastors
• Praise for The Flourishing Pastor
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright