What Elders Should Understand About Ministers
This article gathers reflections from church leaders on what elders may not fully understand about ministers. It highlights the pressures of ministry, the personal stakes involved, and the importance of elders empowering and encouraging ministers.
- Ministers often carry workloads and pressures that are difficult to see from the outside.
- Elder support and encouragement can deeply affect a minister’s effectiveness and well-being.
- Healthy elder-minister relationships require trust, empowerment, and shared commitment to the church’s direction.
By Darrel Rowland
Seven Things Elders May Not Understand
- Most ministers are unequipped for management and economics.
- Ministers need support to be successful.
- It is the elder’s role to make the church and minister successful.
- A minister has a vision for the church, and the elders must support that vision or get it changed lovingly.
- The minister has problems just like everyone else.
- Ministers are trained to “be in charge.”
- A compliment from an elder means more than one from someone else.
—Bob Russell (retired), Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, KY
The Minister’s Workload and Pressure
Primarily, what elders (probably) don’t understand about ministers is the workload, the pressures, and the time commitments it takes for the minister. Days off are always subordinate to funerals, wedding rehearsals, tragedies, crises, etc. Many people work Monday through Friday, clock out, and go home and don’t think about their work until Monday morning. This is not an option for the minister. Knowing that several will hear him preach produces a “hit a home run” mentality. This adds tremendous pressure to come up with a new, good, inspirational sermon fresh every week. Because we are in a people business, we must meet people when they are available, which many times means nights and weekends. Therefore, our families could suffer. I think it could be difficult for an elder to understand “why isn’t the preacher in the office 8 to 5.”
—Robin Hart, Northside Christian Church, Wadsworth, OH
What Is at Stake for Ministers
Elders can forget that much more of a minister’s life and future are at stake with the direction of the church. If a minister’s relationship to his church goes sour, it is more than a huge disappointment. It has marital, family, and financial implications. It can change the course of his ministry career. Even the most committed and engaged elder never has quite as much at stake as a minister, even if the elder has been at the church for 40 years, and the minister only four.
—Eddie Lowen, West Side Christian Church, Springfield, IL
Empowering Ministers to Lead
Elders may not understand the pastor’s need to be empowered to lead. He has to be given rope [and] the wide boundaries to make decisions that impact the organization and people. Unless an elder team understands that, they’re just disempowering the leader, rendering him ineffective—they emasculate him really, in terms of his leadership.
—Greg Marksberry, Heritage Christian Church, Fayetteville, GA
Darrel Rowland is public affairs editor of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch and an adult Bible fellowship teacher at Worthington Christian Church.
Related Articles on Elder-Minister Relationships
READ ALL THE ARTICLES ON THIS TOPIC written by Darrel Rowland:
“Two Elders Now Ministers Talk About Elder-Minister Relationships”
“Elders & Ministers: Speaking the Same Language”
“Should the Minister Be One of the Elders?”
“What Elders Don’t Understand About Ministers”
“What Ministers Don’t Understand About Elders”
