Six Ways Pastors Struggle: You Are Not Alone

Pretending pastors don't struggle is a recipe for disaster.

When pastors go into ministry, we don't leave behind all of the struggles that define the human reality in which we live. Like others, we struggle with any number of things each day—interpersonal relationships, our marriages, as parents, with our health, with our self image.

And for some pastors, our struggles can go in one of two directions—either we hide them and try to deal with them in isolation, or we openly share that we, like everyone else, have a lot on our minds.

The unfortunate reality is that too many of us choose the former option. This is not necessarily because we don’t want to share, but because we either don’t know how, or we don’t feel safe. It is not easy to preach a sermon on healthy marriages even as our own is hanging from a thread. Nor is it easy to talk about the impact of sin when we are wrestling ourselves with our own addiction to porn, alcohol, technology…you pick your poison.

As a pastor, let me share six unique ways that pastors struggle. My hope is that this short list will allow both leaders and their congregations the opportunity to begin to ask, “How can we change our situation?”

First, pastors struggle with identity.

Pastors generally have three identities they need to balance: their perceived religious identity, their cultural identity, and their own identity. I remember some years back going over to a neighbor’s house. We didn’t know them well, but they knew I was a pastor. When we first came over to their house, they said it was like Jesus was visiting the house.

Well, I assure you that there is a big difference between Jesus and me! Yet because of my religious identity, this was how they perceived me. It was as though I had ...