A friend messaged me this afternoon…
I call this PPSD. Post Pastoral Stress Disorder.
Here’s a challenge:
Don’t only meet with your pastor when you have something to complain about. In my unscientific research, I’d say that at least 90% of the time when someone wants to meet with a pastor, its because they “need to talk about something.” This “something” almost never means “you are the best pastor ever and I love every thing about this church.”
Get crazy once or twice and initiate a meeting with your pastor without an agenda and get to know them as a person. It’ll probably be amazingly refreshing for them … and hopefully for you too.
Also, when someone says to a pastor: “Can we meet? I need to talk about something”, pastors know this is “congregant code” for “I’m mad / frustrated / upset / concerned / leaving the church / etc .”
I always appreciated it when someone who wanted to meet was up front and just said, “I want to meet because I have to talk to you about _______.” It really relieved the stress of the unknown from the conversation and allowed me to enter into the conversation feeling like I wasn’t about to be ambushed.
Being a pastor is difficult and rewarding work.
Of course, being pastored by a fallible human can also be difficult, but it can also be rewarding. I’m on the other side of it now and I can say that the pastors in my life have been a very significant source of encouragement for me.