A Letter to the Tired Pastor

For the ones who are still showing up when the showing up has gotten hard.

You did not get into this for the meetings. You got into it because somewhere along the way the gospel got hold of you and would not let go, and you believed — you still believe — that people are worth giving your life to. I want to say something to you that the schedule rarely lets anyone say: thank you, and you are not alone, and the tiredness you feel is not a verdict on your faithfulness.

Ministry has a way of quietly rearranging your loves. It begins with God and people and ends, if you are not careful, with metrics and management and the low hum of always being slightly behind. The crisis you carry is not always dramatic. More often it is the slow erosion of joy, the prayer life that has thinned to logistics, the Sundays that arrive faster than your soul can keep pace with.

So let me name a few things plainly. Your worth is not the attendance of your church. The Lord did not measure His ministry by the crowds, which came and went, but by His obedience to the Father, which did not. You are permitted to be a person and not only a function. The same grace you preach to others on Sunday is not suspended for you on Monday.

Rest is not a reward you earn after the work is finished; it is a discipline that confesses you are not God. Sabbath is an act of trust — a weekly sermon you preach to yourself that the church belongs to Christ and can survive your absence. The pastor who cannot stop is not strong. He is afraid, and the fear is worth bringing into the light.

Guard the friendships that have nothing to do with your title. Find the few people who know you as more than the office you hold. Keep a prayer life that is yours and not borrowed from sermon preparation. Tend the marriage, the body, the ordinary work that no one applauds. These are not distractions from the work. They are what keep the work from consuming the worker.

And if you are near the end of your rope, hear this: the Shepherd has not asked you to be the shepherd of shepherds. He keeps the flock. He keeps you. Lay it down at His feet tonight, not as defeat but as truth, and let Him carry what was always His to carry.

You are loved by the One you serve. That was true before your first sermon and it will be true after your last. Rest in it.

— Sunny