Musings on Spiritual Matters

I believe a lot of preachers feel over worked.  I was reading Eugene Peterson autobiography recently, and he mentioned this problem.  He felt that he was a hurried minister.  It was not always so, but it happens more as a minister is a at a certain congregation.  I have known of minister to leave good works with good congregation just because of the desire to lighten the load.  The preacher who was highly successful in the congregation leaves just because it was so demanding to be there.  As time went on, the duties just increased.  It was just hard to deal with everything.  The problem is that when preacher feel overworked, they do not function well.  It can cause numerous problems, and yes so preacher feel over worked and barely work.  But there are a lot of cases preachers are operating in a unhealthy way because of stress and demands.  When a preacher is working too much, he will act out.  Here are some suggestions.

1. Cannot handle criticism.   Yes, so preachers cannot handle advice or anything negative, but sometimes the preacher is so tired that “just another feedback” kills him.  If you notice that your preacher cannot handle normal feedback, something is wrong.  It might not be overworking, but there is a good chance it is.

2. Seems to lost the fire.  Sometimes a preacher will come in and be “fired up.” But  after a few years, it seems that he is just going through the motions.  If this is the case, there could be stress involved.  A break is an important need.  A elder must insure that he is not getting overwhelmed by the congregation.

3. Gaining weight.  Yes, I should not mention this, as this is a huge preacher for a lot of preachers, but preacher cannot use sinful habits, so eating is the addiction for a lot of preachers.  We eat away the stress, and preacher will stop working out because they are so busy.  If you notice your preacher packing on the pounds, trust me, there is an issue somewhere.

4. Quality of work.  If he was preaching great sermons, and now they are just sermons, there is a chance that he is just staying afloat.  He might have even turned to the internet to get his sermons.  If the sermon seems canned it might be.

Hope these help as it is important to catch this before it becomes a even deeper problem.

Related posts:

1. Kindness or Book, Chapter, Verse
2. Hiring Practices
3. Refresh Preaching
4. Crosby or Ovechkin Preacher

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This entry was posted by Matthew on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 10:50 am and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.