Resilience in Pastoral Ministry: Navigating the Challenges of the Call

The Call and Challenge

Pastoral ministry has been one of the most fulfilling callings of my life. I entered North Park Theological Seminary in 1988, graduated in 1992, and got ordained to word and sacrament in 1994 before serving full time in pastoral ministry. While ministry has been lifegiving, there were, at times, challenges that come with any call to ministry. I left pastoral ministry in 2018 with a new call to North Park. In my new role, I get the privilege of walking alongside adults who are presently in ministry while completing their MDiv or MACF. One thing that has been evident through listening to students is that pastoral ministry is still a fulfilling call for people, but the challenges in ministry have increased significantly from when I was serving a local church.

Jill Foley Turner from the National Christian Foundation, recently wrote that pastors are showing signs of distress in their call. She writes:

“…between 2015 and 2023, significant measures of pastor wellness showed danger signs. In 2015, 24 percent of pastors reported excellent physical well-being. But in 2023, that same number was just 11 percent. In the same time period, those reporting excellent mental and emotional well-being plummeted from 39 to 14 percent. Pastors feeling they had excellent overall quality of life dropped from 42 to 19 percent, and pastors who believe they have “true friends” decreased from 34 to 19 percent. Over the same period, pastors who ranked the respect they feel from their communities as excellent fell from 22 to just 7 percent (Turner, 2024).”

This is just one of many statistics one can find on the internet about the state many pastors are experiencing in the past ten years in their call. While the challenges are complex and layered, how can a pastor remain in their call in a healthy way alongside of the challenges they experience?

Cast Down

One of the modules I teach at North Park is a theological reflection module. I have used Psalm 42 as the guiding passage for the students to theologically reflect on what is going on within us as leaders and God’s partnership with us in ministry.

The author of this specific Psalm begins in lament while remembering being a leader of God’s people in verse 4 where he states he led God’s people into the house of God. Even though this is true, he is experiencing deep distress AS a leader of God’s people. Specifically, he uses one phrase repeatedly to describe his distress. In verses 5, 6, and 11, he uses the phrase cast down.

Dr. J. Nathan Clayton, Associate Professor of Old Testament at North Park Theological Seminary states this about the phrase cast down:

The Hebrew verb for “cast down” is shiach, which only occurs in Psalms 42-43 in this hithpolel stem and is glossed as “to be in despair (to melt away).” The Septuagint translates shiach with perilupos, an adjective meaning “very sorrowful.” And, interestingly, that is the same Greek term underlying “with sorrow” in Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane in Matt 26:38, “my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

The idiom in the refrain of these two psalms has to do with a deep depressive state—something about being brought down to dust, almost to death. So in Psalm 42-43 the psalmist is longing to meet God, expresses feeling overwhelmed and forgotten, but also pleads for vindication and honestly hopes for the return of God’s joy—while (through the refrain) also honestly expressing a kind of “self-talk” about experiencing inner despair, intense sorrow—in distance from God and in yearning for the renewal of proximity to God. A final thought: in the refrain shiach is in poetic/synonymous parallelism with hamah, which can be translated as a kind of growling/murmuring/disquieting in discouragement of the soul.

In his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23: Discovering God’s Love for You, Phillip Keller describes how sheep can become deeply distressed and the term shepherds use, ironically, is cast down.¹Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23: Discovering God’s Love for You (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 17. Because sheep have heavy wool at the top part of their body and have very small, thin, and spindly legs on the bottom part of their body, they can be in danger of becoming cast down. Their wool can collect sticks, mud, parasites, etc…which makes them more top heavy than they already are. If a top-heavy sheep were to lay down and accidentally roll over, the weight of their wool will make it impossible for them to right themselves. Laying upside down, they are in danger of predators that may come their way, and they can begin to panic. While they kick and squirm to try and right themselves, the blood flow from their legs can descend into their stomach cavity. This creates a toxic situation for them, and their lives are at risk. The only way a cast down sheep can be saved is by shepherd that sees them, goes to them, picks them up, and puts them back on their feet.

The Weight of Ministry

The weight of pastoral ministry can, if one is not paying attention, cause any pastor to become deeply distressed or cast down. Whereas Jesus tells his followers in Matthew 11, his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, the challenges in ministry can be extremely weighty even though Jesus tells his followers his burden is light. What are we to make of this?

The book of Galatians is one of, if not the first book, to be written in the New Testament. Paul as the author is attempting to help this early church navigate the challenge of a growing tension between Gentile converts and Jewish Christians. This was an incredible challenge for this infant church and movement. If not navigating well, it could spell disaster for them. Toward the end of the epistle, Paul states in Galatians 6 that this church should carry one another’s burdens (v. 2) but that each person must carry their own loads (v. 5). Apparently, Paul is making the distinction between a burden and a load and what each one should consider when caring for one another.

Discerning the difference between a burden and a load is paramount during any challenge a leader may experience. There have been times in the past in pastoral ministry, I unconsciously was handed someone’s load, and I carried it because I perceived doing so was ministry. However, it became clear that my attempt to carry their load hindered them from the lifelong growth that would come from them trusting the Lord with whatever they were carrying. You or I have never been asked to carry others loads…just their burdens.

Using the metaphor of sheep becoming cast down, when we carry what is not ours to carry, we can become overwhelmed and weighted down by all the things the people we care about and minister to are carrying. Jesus is the one that can carry whatever we carry and whatever anyone else is carrying. By carrying someone’s burdens, I am acknowledging that life is heavy for them and can, and will, point them to the one that is capable. This is easier said than done! There are situations where the people we minister to WANT us to carry more than just their burdens, and this is where discernment is necessary.

In conclusion, my time in each seminary (North Park Theological Seminary – MDiv and Fuller Theological Seminary – DMin) provided me with tools to discern how best to minister to others without becoming cast down myself by the weight of ministry. Lord, have mercy!

Endnotes

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  Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23: Discovering God’s Love for You (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 17.