By Ed Stetzer

This is the fifth and final blog post in a series regarding pastors developing healthy boundaries in their ministry. I’m sharing four key points in the process, thinking of them as four fence posts around a healthy ministry.

I have already shared the first three “posts:” recognize your role in the church, pursue personal health, and guard your flock even from other Christians.

In a church I planted a few years ago, I knew going into it that boundaries were going to be vital as I was going to continue to work full-time at LifeWay Research. So, from the very beginning, my leadership team and I created my job description around those boundaries.

Know Your Boundaries

The fourth post supporting a healthy ministry is knowing what you can and cannot do.

At that church plant there were three things and ONLY three things that I did: I met with the staff/apprentices, I preached about 70% of the time, and I led a small group in my home.

One of the benefits this boundary had brought to the church is that we were very clearly not a pastor-centered church. I was very upfront with my role in that church. I explained I could not do funerals, visits, phone calls, or meetings. This left the door wide open for our congregation to see areas of leadership where they were needed, and to respond accordingly.

Choose Boundaries Based on Your Situation, Church, and Gifting.

The question arises: why are those the three things? Because they were the three things that only I could do. My boundary may not look like your boundary. But, God called me to teach and preach and that is part of what I do.

Leading the small group was a really important component of my job description. It was mission-driven and it included several of my neighbors.

My small group gave me a personal, front-line connection with the people that we needed to reach. It prevented me from developing tunnel vision from just preaching and talking with the staff each week, while reminding me that I could not lead what I did not live.

The other major component that my small group brought me was regular personal interaction. As your church grows, you need to sacrifice some personal interaction. That can be tough because a lot of people go into pastoral ministry because they are passionate and good at gifts like serving, providing personal care, etc.

A person can’t care for people like this for a group much over 100. It’s why the typical median church size in America is under 100 people. Growing a church past that size means being willing to allow some of those close relationships to change and shift along the way.

A small group is a perfect venue to meet that need for pastoral care when your church has grown beyond your ability to provide that for the entire congregation. It’s where real shepherding and friendships can happen.

Being a pastor is a lonely business. You see a lot of people, but you aren’t in community with a lot of people. A small group is an integral part to solving this problem.

Be Clear and Consistent on What You Can and Cannot Do

The key to establishing this boundary is knowing what you can and cannot do. Churches will want you to do everything. You should do something, but you should do the right thing.

Typically, your “right thing” will line up with your gifts. Other areas are where you should bring others alongside you, and build a team. This team is what will truly help you to accomplish what God has called you to do as a leader.

When you establish these four fence posts – recognizing your role in the church, pursuing personal health, guarding your flock, and knowing what you can and cannot do – you will enable and encourage growth in yourself and your church. Without these four, you will more than likely experience ministry burn out and hinder the development of those under your care and the church as a whole.

You must be intentional about the long term viability of you, your family, your ministry and your church. If you are not, your boundaries will be compromised and your schedule will be full, but your body and spirit will be exhausted.

As you seek to lead a multiplying church, we’ve created some Mission Group tools to help you grow as a leader, break through growth barriers, and build rhythms of outreach. We love to serve pastors and church leaders.

This series of articles was originally published at: EdStetzer.com

By Ed Stetzer

This is the fourth blog post in a series (intro, fence post 1, fence post 2) regarding pastors developing healthy boundaries in their ministry. I’m sharing four key points in the process, thinking of them as four fence posts around a healthy ministry.

I have already shared the first two “posts:” recognize your role in the church and pursue personal emotional health.

The next may be the hardest to implement in our culture. Also, I imagine it will generate the most disagreement. However, I think it demonstrates a biblical approach to shepherding of a congregation, rather than turning the church into a place where a group of customers demand that their area of interest is paramount.

The third post supporting a healthy ministry is guarding your flock, even if it is from other Christians.

It may seem ironic, but some of the people from whom you have to most tenaciously guard your church are other believers. If you don’t, the focus of the ministry is to respond to the special interests of customer Christians. And, that means your ministry (and its boundaries) will be focused on keeping customers happy—and no boundaries will exist.

I wrote about this in another blog post entitled, “Why I Have No Problem Helping Issue-Christians to Move On.”

The inspiration for the post came from an incident after a service at Grace Church, the church I planted and pastored while I worked full-time at LifeWay Research (something, by the way, that I could only do with a lot of boundaries).

I basically encouraged a first-time visitor who was clearly well-versed in Revelation prophecies (and enjoyed sharing his interpretations with everyone he met) to move on from our church and find another that was going to best meet his passions and beliefs.

Now, let me clarify my thinking behind my actions. If someone in my congregation came up to me after the service saying, “I’ve been doing some reading and I have some questions about prophecy. Could we talk about it?” I would take some time right there for discussion. But that clearly wasn’t the case.

This guy was obviously a pro. He actually told me that his friends call him the “Prophecy Terrorist.” This was his introduction—The Prophecy Terrorist. He didn’t have questions. He wanted to get inside my church to find someone who would give him the attention he desired. He wanted me to meet with him so he could debate me—and convince me.

And, I have boundaries. I don’t do that. And, I shepherded a congregation at that time that also had boundaries. We did not need the “Prophecy Terrorist” distracting us from our mission.

You may not have met the “Prophecy Terrorist,” but I bet you’ve met other issue-driven Christians. There are “issue Calvinists,” “issue Charismatics,” “issue homeschoolers,” “issue political Christians,” and the list goes on and on.

Your church is not a public square for people to debate and opine. It’s a place that you are to guard and shepherd. You create boundaries—both personally and congregationally.

People won’t like that, but if you allow your church to be a gathering of special interest groups, then your ministry will be built around keeping them happy. Or, keeping them apart. And, promising them attention that you then spend your life trying to fulfill.

There is a better way, though not everyone will like it.

Creating a healthy boundary for your church means knowing who you are as a church, where you are, where you’re going, and what that means for people who are outside of that. Your church is not the place for issue Christians who want to dominate your time to be given the freedom to do so. Save that time for counseling the hurting, not arguing with the agenda-driven.

On the other hand, I will welcome and talk to “issue non-Christians” all day long. If someone came up to me and said, “I’ve been reading Deepak Chopra and thinking about some deep thoughts.” I would sit down and talk with them in a heartbeat about what Jesus has to say about Deepak.

There is a big difference between the two.

Issue Christians want to get inside so they’ll have someone to give them attention, and it destroys the boundary. Issue non-Christians need to be brought inside so that they can hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The most important reality is that “Prophecy Terrorists” and other issue Christians are not going to stop walking with Jesus because they’re not in my church. They will find a place—probably a church (and a pastor) without boundaries.

If it is in your church, however, I’m guessing there are a lot of people who are going to be driven out, including some who need Jesus.

Boundaries are set up by shepherds. That’s the term that the Bible uses several places in Scripture. You must be a shepherd. Your church is not a voluntary society of opinion givers and special interest groups. It’s a body that needs to be in community with one another—served and led by shepherds, pastors, and leaders, focused on a common mission.

So, this is a touchy ministry fencepost, but an essential one. You and your church must recognize that the mission is more important than special interest groups. Your church needs boundaries so that it is focused on its mission and won’t be distracted from that. You need boundaries so that you won’t spend your time trying to keep “issue Christians” happy and placated.

Those boundaries will cost you a few people, but they will focus your church in powerful ways and free you to do ministry about the hurting that otherwise will be overlooked.

In the conclusion of this series, I will explain the fourth and final ministry fence post: know what you can and cannot do.

This series of articles was originally published at: EdStetzer.com

By Ed Stetzer

In the introduction to this series, I talked about how your schedule is not the primary problem that leads to burn out, rather it was not setting healthy boundaries in your ministry. Last time, I said the first “post” in your ministry boundary fence is to recognize your role in the church.

For the second post, we have to understand that unhealthy pastors create unhealthy boundaries.

Look, it’s nice to be needed. When people in the church look to you for everything and you do it, they’ll think you’re awesome. Wanting others to think you are awesome isn’t necessarily bad. It can be perfectly normal. The enjoyment of deserved praise, however, can quickly snowball to an unhealthy dependency upon praise.

Your congregation is not naturally going to help you with this. In most church contexts, many look to the pastor as a “distributor of religious goods and services.”

The congregation feels that they have chosen you, and that they are regularly “paying” for you. As a result, they have certain expectations of what you should do. Those expectations can include things like personal visits to every sick person. If it is not done, people may get mad or claim their spiritual walk has been compromised.

The second post supporting a healthy ministry is to pursue emotionally healthy boundaries.

In order to create proper boundaries, pastors must be healthy and confident enough to be able to say, “No,” when other people want you to say, “Yes,” even when they don’t understand why you have to say, “No.”

Once when I was serving as an interim pastor, a long-time family in the church asked if I could talk to little “Johnny” so that he could receive Christ. I very calmly and kindly answered, “No.” The parents were confused as to why I would not meet with them, but I explained that I did not want to take that opportunity from them.

They protested again, explaining that he had questions. Really, he was eight. Was he struggling with the ontological argument for the existence of God? I expressed that I was confident the questions would be basic, which they should be able to answer since they had been sitting in a great church for fifteen years.

If people need to go through you, as the pastor, to meet Jesus, their understanding of the Gospel is rather limited.

Unfortunately, Johnny’s parents didn’t see it that way. Actually, they saw it in a way that resulted in calling two small groups worth of people explaining that the interim was the, well, a yankee devil.

Within two weeks, however, they found me after church and thanked me for not robbing them of the opportunity of praying with their son. It doesn’t always work out that way, but in this case, the boundaries created a really special moment for this family– but they never called back the families they complained to two weeks before.

Creating boundaries is hard for everyone, but necessary for longevity in ministry.

At the end of the day, pastors must not allow the people in their congregation to bring cultural expectations to their boundaries. Instead, they must allow the Bible to inform their implementation of healthy boundaries. The Bible does command and describe what pastors should do, and most boundary making is unrelated to those biblical commands, but is rather driven by church-culture expectations.

The properly established boundaries create a much healthier pastor and church. Part of the health of the church comes from the third post, which we will examine next – guard your flock … even from other Christians.

This series of articles was originally published at: EdStetzer.com

By Ed Stetzer

In the first post of this series, I began a discussion on the importance of pastors establishing healthy boundaries in ministry.

As it’s an area in which I have personally struggled, and one in which I continue to grow, I’m passionate about sharing what I have learned in order to help others not make the same mistakes that I did.

In the next four blog posts, I will share keys to establishing these boundaries. Think of them as four fence posts surrounding a healthy ministry.

The first “fence post” supporting a healthy ministry is to recognize your role in the church.

You, as the pastor, are not ultimately responsible for the church. While you do have some, only King Jesus bears the final responsibility.

When this boundary is ignored, the church ends up being built around the pastor, who then actually becomes part of the problem rather than the solution.

At my second church plant, we had grown to a congregation of about 125 after 18 months. While this might seem like a positive development, it became a bit of an Achilles heel for me. The attendance numbers became my driving force from week to week.

I would actually take time every Saturday to personally call all of our regular and occasional attendees and encourage them to be at church the next day. I was convinced that if I didn’t call everyone, the church would fall apart the next day. Because my identity was so wrapped up in our weekly attendance, if the church numbers collapsed the next day, my life, in effect, would collapse with it.

When pastors misunderstand their role like I did, they tend to put all their focus on some predetermined view of success rather than those things they are biblically called to, such as shepherding and equipping.

Thankfully, a combination of my wife and a pastor friend in another town lovingly pointed out to me that I needed to make some changes. It resulted in my resignation. Well, sort of.

I actually got up one Sunday and “resigned.” (Yep, I used air quotes.) I told my congregation that I was going to resign as the sole shepherd and caregiver of the church.

I apologized for not creating proper boundaries and explained that I was restructuring. Using some very 90’s language (which wasn’t too terrible because it was the 90’s), I explained that I was going to move into a “rancher” role, while appointing “shepherds” who worked there. It was a big step of growth, both for the church and myself.

Although moving to a decentralized ministry model was a good step, it was a hard step. The next boundary “post” we will examine speaks to the difficulty of creating healthy boundaries: the pastor has to be healthy enough to create the boundary.

This series of articles was originally published at: EdStetzer.com