On Pastoral Hardship

I confess that this article originally found its origins in my own exasperations, so please allow me to make both my heart and my thesis remarkably clear from the very beginning: My aim in this brief essay is to uphold the dignity and sanctity of the office of the pastor by critiquing a particular online habit embraced by some pastors that ultimately cheapens and denigrates this same office while doing a disservice to the Kingdom at large.

My request: if you’re not able to read this little article all the way through or not able to give me the privilege of your trust when I say that I’m not referencing any pastor in particular or have a chip on my shoulder toward any denomination or church, then please accept my invitation to peruse elsewhere. I’m not writing to kick up dust or criticize anyone in particular; I’m no firebrand, and have no interest or stake in playing a role like that.

Instead, my goal is to raise a red flag about something that I’ve noticed a lot more lately, which is a troubling pastoral trend of posting some teary-eyed copypasta¹ or slinging some subtle, slumped-shoulder sabbatical suggestion to their socials these days, and it’s amazing to me that it’s even tolerated, let alone venerated. Consider the following examples of what one might find on social media:

• “70% of pastors fight depression constantly. 80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. 90% say they are exhausted all the time. Today, I am carrying the weight of a spiritual war that most sitting in the pews will never see. It’s Monday morning, and while the building is empty, my mind is still full of the critics, the heavy hearts, and the sheer isolation of this office. If you love your pastor, text them today. We are breaking under the pressure.” [Note: these statistics are completely fabricated.]
• “Pastors don’t get a 9-to-5. We get calls at 2:00 AM. We sit by deathbeds while our kids wait for us at home. We carry your secrets, your marital breakdowns, and your financial stresses in our bones, all while smiling on Sunday morning. Yet, it’s so easy to complain about the sermon length or the music. The spiritual exhaustion is a different kind of tired. It’s a tired that sleep can’t fix.”
• “Pastoral ministry is the only job where you are expected to be a CEO, a dynamic speaker, a professional counselor, a financial wizard, and a saint, all for a non-profit salary while your family lives in a fishbowl. The loneliness at the top is a silent killer. Ministry is a battlefield, not a playground. The spiritual warfare is real and it takes a toll on the body. Unless you’ve carried the weight of souls, you have no idea how heavy the air is on Monday morning. We bleed in private so we can lead in public.”

And so on and so forth.² Whether it’s the unsourced data claim that sounds like “98% of us are on the verge of clinical insanity by Monday morning” or the vague paragraphs about “pouring from an empty cup” while heavily hinting at another month-long missions trip to Hawaii to recover and discover their passion again, I think you get the idea. And look, I understand it far more than most would: I pastored for over a decade through some really tough times, and I can tell you for sure that ministry has its unique weights and pastors do need rest. And — it may surprise you to hear this — I think there are actually some rather insightful posts on counting the cost of being a pastor.³ What’s more, I know of some dear friends of mine who are pastors who have suffered greatly in the ministry.⁴ And my point isn’t that it’s a bad thing to reach out for help or take a needed rest, but that the sheer volume of public pastoral whimpering has reached a fever pitch. And it really needs to stop.

HERE’S THE BIG DISCLAIMER

I want to be overly, massively, super clear here about three things I’m not saying. First, I’m not saying ministry is always easy. It’s often hard and sometimes — even for long seasons — very hard. We’re talking heartbreakingly, cripplingly hard in a way that no other calling or vocation can do. Also, I’m certainly not saying pastors don’t need rest. They often do. Why, my own pastor takes several weeks off a year and I’m all for it. I should have done that much more when I was pastoring. And lastly, I’m not saying that pastors don’t need emotional support, a trusted shoulder to cry on, or maybe even a friend to which he can just vent. I needed friends like that in the ministry, and I know from experience just how awful it is to try to minister in isolation. So please — I implore you: don’t distort my essay to convey something I don’t mean to convey at all. Ministry is hard, sometimes uniquely hard, pastors do need rest, and they do need support.

What’s more, I’m well aware that around 35% of pastors in the United States are bivocational.⁵ I, too, was bi-vocational, though by choice (my small church could support me financially and did for about six months until I nearly went stir-crazy not being out in my community, building relationships with others and making extra money to contribute to the church). But I still received, like many of you bivocational pastors, some of the benefits of ministry such as a parsonage, the use of the church vehicle, and other accompaniments inherent to the pastorate. So while the general excoriation may not apply as completely to my bivocational brothers (and in some cases not at all), there’s still plenty to be gleaned, to be sure.

And lastly — just to ensure I’m not misunderstood on that front either — I’m not of the persuasion that pastors should have to be bivocational. On the contrary, I think many shouldn’t be. While Paul clearly had his strategic reasons for doing so (at least most of the time), it doesn’t appear that all pastors in the New Testament (nor the Priesthood in the Old Testament, for that matter) were bivocational. So just as one could easily build a case for a patterned bivocational pastorate in the Scriptures, one could just as easily build a similarly powerful case for a pastorate that does not require the pastor to work outside the church. It all depends on the situation and circumstances.

So I hope to have been clear with my disclaimer: I believe pastoring can be a very demanding calling, and I believe that pastors should be treated just as well as anyone else in any other calling. I don’t think pastors are required to go without breaks or vacations like anyone else, and I don’t think they should be underpaid. Nor do I think they should be unappreciated. Nor do I think they shouldn’t have hobbies (my pastor loves sports and plays a lot of golf and I’m downright glad he does). Nor do I think that they should be bereft of creature comforts or amenities that the rest of us get. Nor do I think that…well, you get it. I hope.

With that under our belts…

That being said, I do want to address this pestilent pox of publicly posted pastoral poutiness by way of three separate approaches. First, the practical approach, followed by the historical approach, and lastly, the spiritual approach.

First, let’s get practical. And to do that, we’ll start with a reality check: Pastor, you are largely a white-collar worker throughout the week. Your “trenches” consist of an air-conditioned room, a desk, some bookshelves, a nice PC or Mac, and a Keurig machine, all likely provided for you free of cost. You get paid to study a Bible you love, talk to people on the phone, answer emails, craft powerful sermons, and visit people who are more often than not actually quite glad to see you. And since we’re making up statistics, I’ll try my hand at it: for at least 90% of non-bivocational pastors, this is your general reality. And it’s a really, really good one.

But let’s keep going: most of the men (and plenty of women) in your congregation work a full 40 or 50 hours a week doing back-breaking physical labor, mindless customer service work, or high-stress corporate endeavors just so that you, the pastor, can sit in that comfortable office or visit folks in their homes or hospitals. So you’ll forgive me if I object to you calling your occupation the “trenches” any more than other occupations are; this is, in fact, an insult to the working class sitting in the pews making sure you still have a roof over your head and a car to drive and a suite of hobbies in which to indulge. To be sure, your occupation is a mentally taxing and spiritually draining one, and it is indispensably important. But at the same time, your job doesn’t invariably or necessarily tax you any more than anyone else’s job taxes them, either, even if it is often a different kind of strain and drain. The point is that your “battlefield” isn’t necessarily any more perilous or difficult than the battlefield of the very same parishioners who are paying you to whine on social media.

Now, I fully understand the toil involved in pastoring a flock in addition to properly researching, preparing, and finally delivering a sermon to God’s people up to three or four times a week. It’s a lot, and it often involves large degree of mental fatigue, battling insecurity, and sometimes dealing with some pretty difficult people, as well as a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking. I really do get it. But let’s not act like this is some sort of torture. This is your calling, just like Bob is called to the oil rig or Diana is called to J.C. Penney; we all have to work hard. You are not an exception. So hopping online and making sure everyone else knows just how hard you have it is — well, at least it would be in any other industry, anyway — in very, very poor taste. Gross.

Now let’s look at the practical economics of the average situation. Bob and Diana are bringing home the median household income, paying full federal taxes on every dime of it, and rightly and obediently (and joyfully, we hope!) surrendering a good bit of that money to the church. Meanwhile, the pastor’s full-time compensation package is often reaching comfortably into the high-five or low-six figures, heavily insulated by a federal tax-exempt housing allowance and other personal tax exemptions in addition to benefits and other church perks. Pastor, that’s just fine that you make that much money, and I’m all about pastors being worthy of double honor,⁶ but I sure do hope you can see why I believe that passive-aggressively making a weepy case on Facebook for Bob and Diana to feel bad for you and notice you more is a level of chutzpah that would make even Michael Scott of The Office blush.⁷

As an aside, there are a good number of non-bivocational pastors haven’t ever done anything but be a pastor. And that’s genuinely fine as far as that goes, and bully for you if that’s your situation, but the resultant reality is that these particular pastors will — quite naturally — inevitably lack a frame of reference for what it’s like to, well, not be a pastor. This particular station in life unfortunately shelters this classification of pastor from 1) the fact that their jobs actually aren’t necessarily that much more stressful than anyone else’s, even if their stresses are unique to the ministry, 2) the fact that they often actually have it far better than they think they do, and 3) the fact that they almost certainly have it better than most people in the very churches they pastor in terms of job flexibility, benefits, fulfillment, work-life balance, and other factors. So while it’s not a bad thing to never have done anything but be a pastor, I think a certain heightened awareness of such a privilege is needful in these cases.

Lastly, let’s dismantle the popular myth that pastoral ministry holds some sort of monopoly on emotional fatigue or carrying heavy burdens. Yes, dealing with messy human lives is draining — been there, done that, and have the t-shirt. But this is far from unique to the ministry. ICU nurses work 12+ hour shifts on their feet, school teachers manage classrooms full of kids who come from broken homes, police officers deal with trauma that’s unspeakable, and the list goes on. The difference is that when an ER doctor loses a patient, he doesn’t hop on Instagram to write a sob story about how emotionally drained he is to fish for a text from his other patients. He washes his hands, deals with the grief, and walks into the next room to do his job. Does he need support? Yes (and probably from his pastor!). Does he need a break and a vacation? Absolutely! So then why is the ministry singled out as this soul-crushing endeavor when it is far from alone in this regard? Here’s the rub, and you might not like it: Secular professionals understand a basic rule of maturity and professionalism and resilience that seems to evade today’s modern Western pastors: you do not get to demand pity or pats on the back from the very people you are being compensated to serve.

Well, okay then

The next approach is historical. This is a brief point, because I don’t think it requires a whole lot of convincing. And to make this point, I will humbly ask you to picture with me the Apostle Paul, confined (possibly actually chained) to the dark underbelly of some Roman house, or possibly prison. He pulls out his phone, snaps a selfie holding up his restraints, hops on Instagram, and posts the following pathetic prose:“Honestly so exhausted rn guys. Dealing with a lot of critical attitudes and spiritual resistance today fr fr. Praying about taking a 3 month sabbatical to guard my spirit against burnout. #SpiritualWarfare” …Yeah, that just wouldn’t happen.

You see, Paul — like every other minister of the Gospel worth his salt — counted his afflictions and sorrows to be a net positive in nearly every way, not the least of which was the opportunity to suffer like Jesus, allowing us to identify with and share in the fellowship of our Divine Savior and Brother in a way unique to those who do the work of the Gospel, pastors or not. From Apollos to Aquinas, and Whitefield to Warfield, you simply don’t see the level of sissification and self-pity in our forbears as you do today.

Okay, so you all know how I feel about AI if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time.⁸ But my goodness, I am pleased as punch with how this example came out after I asked Gemini to help me out with an idea:

Oh, it’s just perfect. PERFECT, I say. John Wesley, who happens to be a theological and pastoral hero of mine, was a veritable giant of the faith, traveling 250,000 miles on horseback and preaching 40,000 sermons in his lifetime. But he wouldn’t ever have posted anything like this — no, this is a joke, and it’s funny because it would have been so wildly, wholly against his character and scruples and maturity to post something so dramatic and attention-starved like this.

The point is clear, I should think: none of the disciples, Paul, or any of the early church leaders sat around and posted on X or made little videos with sad background music on TikTok to raise awareness about how challenging it was to be a pastor, and they didn’t have anywhere near the amenities, pay, toys, or perks that today’s pastors have. Why? Because these men were grown-ups. They didn’t need everybody to know just how hard it was. They just did the work. This doesn’t mean they didn’t struggle. It doesn’t mean they didn’t need help at times. It doesn’t mean they never needed to take time away and rest. But it does mean that they just worked and suffered and took the good with the bad like the rest of us do in our daily lives.

What I mean in all of this is that our spiritual forefathers, pastors or not, were not so addicted to emotional validation that they had to fly the flag of their afflictions for all to see. And my goodness, did their troubles and hardships dwarf ours. If anyone could be excused for whining a bit, it would have been them. Why, the early American circuit riders died so young from exhaustion and malaria that they weren’t even eligible to buy life insurance!⁹ No, they were too mature for this sort of nonsense in most every way, including spiritually. Which leads me to my third and final approach.

OK, we’re in round three of three

Scripturally, a spiritual response to true biblical suffering and endurance is a quiet one. You’ll remember that Jesus told us to wash our faces when we fast so that our suffering isn’t obvious to others.¹⁰ And if you’re acquainted with Scripture at all, you’ll know that time would fail me to copy and paste all the Scriptures that tell us to “do everything without grumbling” (Philippians 2:14, NIV) or the command to “consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2, NIV), and on and on it goes. If Bob the oil rig tech or Diana at J.C. Penney are expected to do their jobs without complaining in order to protect the testimony of Christ, why on earth would the pastor get a free pass just because his job has a different description than theirs? In fact, I’d submit that, if anything, the shepherd is held to a stricter judgment (see James 3:1 for this)!

For a minute, please consider the following lines from the viral self-pitying post I linked much earlier in the article, the one entitled Pastoring is Weird: It reads, “I’ve publicly honored people who chose to slander me,” and also “I’ve done hours of counseling with people who later deleted me.” Pastor, did you ever consider why you’re publicly proclaiming this complaint? Is it perhaps because it feels like a safe way to settle scores with people who’ve hurt you? Listen, this is nothing more than performative martyrdom used as a weapon. By broadcasting your personal hurts from snubs to betrayals to those unfortunate enough to endure your prose, you’re making sure that everyone knows that you’ve been hurt but — like the saintly saint you are, you saint — you’re enduring it. Round of applause, everyone.

Too, please consider the irony here: a pastor puts on his best sad face and sighs as he types, “Ya’ll, we pastors bleed in private so we can serve others in public. Pray for your pastor.” Hey, news flash: if you’re literally broadcasting your “private bleeding” to thousands of Facebook friends, it isn’t private; no, it’s a performance. You’re sacrificing ministerial integrity on the altar of public recognition under the guise of “hey, pray for your pastor” to slake your childish lust for attention and pity. Whatever happened to “take it to the Lord in prayer” and “tell it to Jesus alone” like all your favorite hymns wisely and Biblically advise?

Public whimpering on social media isn’t “vulnerability” or merely “asking for prayer.” No, it’s a subtle demand for narcissistic validation and an emotional guilt trip directed at the congregation because you’ve convinced yourself — bereft of any evidence whatsoever — that you have it harder than everyone else. No, you can miss me with that. That’s spiritual immaturity and it reeks of carnality and self-centeredness. Instead of pointing others to Christ, you’re directing everyone to look at you.

Pastor: find your solace in Christ. Find your comfort in Christ. Find your attaboys, your applause, your pity, and your approval, and your consolation in Christ. I do not deny that you need these things — most of us do — but you’re looking in the wrong place if you’re subtly asking for them on social media. To know and be known is among the greatest needs of humanity, and that includes your struggles and difficulties, too — but I am imploring you to direct your complaints and sorrows to Christ and the inner circle of support that he’s provided you instead of the digital fora of social media.

Hey, Big Guy — Sun’s Getting real low

Listen, the real tragedy of these posts is that they completely reverse the taxonomy of Christian leadership. Jesus told us to wash our faces when we suffer so that our pain remains hidden in the secret place with God the Father. Paul boasted in his shipwrecks and beatings and imprisonments to magnify the sufficiency and merits of Christ, not to fish for attention and emotional validation from a digital crowd.

Pastor, when you use a public forum to passive-aggressively list the ways your church members have failed, vent about counseling sessions that ended up fruitless, or complain about how awful and brutal your life is from the comfort of your paid-for parsonage or air-conditioned office, you aren’t being biblical (or convincing); you’re being carnally narcissistic. You are using the sacred office of the shepherd to demand that the sheep comfort you, and it’s a total abdication of spiritual authority. If anything, your main priority should be, just like Paul’s priority was, showing the church that you’re there for them, not the other way around. Be man enough to not need everyone to know about the difficulties you experience.

Of course it’s hard. Of course it involves hurt. Of course you need rest and relief and a shoulder to cry on. We all do, and pastors are at the top of that list. Leading people is really hard sometimes. But Bob at the oil rig and Diana at J.C. Penney aren’t exceptions to needing that, either. So you, sir, don’t get to sniffle and sob and make cute little lists on social media about how hard it is to be a pastor while 1) thinking your struggles are greater than your flocks’ struggles just because they’re often different, 2) enjoying many perks and amenities that will forever be out of the reach of the people paying you to enjoy them, and 3) ultimately harming the testimony of the joyful sufficiency of Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Whether you’re a pastor or a parent, pauper or prince, personal trainer or payroll processor, don’t waste another moment trying to figure out how you can better advertise the difficulties of your calling under the guise of “awareness” or “asking for prayer.” That’s slimy and immature, and it’s completely contrary to the joyful acceptance of your vocation before God, hardships and all. Let’s be people characterized by gratitude, joy, and humility, even when the going gets rough. Especially when the going gets rough.

In summary: don’t pity your pastor. Instead, pray for him. Pray that God would strengthen his hands for the work, sharpen his mind for the Word, and hold him up in those inevitable encounters with difficult or even traitorous people. That is Biblical and good.

1. Defined here. ↩︎
2. Here’s a fantastic example of the pitiable humblebrag with the performance-as-vulnerability theme and the get-out-of-jail-free-card at the end of “Hey guys — I get to do this.” Puuuuke. ↩︎
3. Here’s one I think is actually really well done. ↩︎
4. And you know I have too, if you know any of my story. ↩︎
5. Chaves, Mark, Anna Holleman, and Joseph Roso. 2025. Clergy in America. Durham, NC: Duke University, Department of Sociology. ↩︎
6. I Timothy 5:17 reads, “The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching.” (NIV) That word “honor” here means financial compensation in general. ↩︎
7. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. and Mrs. BOB VAAAANCE!” ↩︎
8. See my brief rant here. ↩︎
9. William A. Powell Jr., “Methodist circuit-riders in America, 1766-1844,” and early archival data summarized by the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History (umc.org). ↩︎
10. See Matthew 6:16-28 for this. ↩︎