Episode 18 - Five Signs You Might Be A Plastic Pastor - And What To Do About It

Sickness has befallen the 200churches staff this week!! We had to skip our usual Monday blog post, but we are back with our weekly 200churches Podcast.  We are in our fifth month hosting this podcast for pastors of smaller churches, and we have learned a lot in the process, about podcasting, but most importantly, about pastoring in a 200church.  60% of the churches in America are under 100, so there is a large group of pastors who lead, shepherd, and feed smaller churches all across America, and this podcast is for you!

This week we are on the topic of plastic pastors. I bet you never even knew such things existed did you? Well, they do, and sometimes you or I actually fill the role quite nicely. That is not the goal, so today we want to share with you five signs of plasticity in pastoral ministry, and then some suggestions as to how we can find our way back into our own skin, and be the kind of pastors our churches really need.

Here is the outline of our podcast today, but as always, there is much more material in the audio podcast…

Five signs that you’re a plastic pastor and how to get back into your own skin:

1. Your spirituality is more professional than personal

• You “prepare” messages and lessons for others and not yourself
• You “pray” more for others and not for yourself
• You live in the third person, always handling the Bible and Biblical truth for someone else, and not for yourself

2. You spend too much time serving God and not enough time simply seeking God

• You prepare for the Sunday show – the morning sermon
  
• You are always on call for others
  
• Your allow yourself to be overwhelmed with the bottomlessness of ministry
  
• You are way out of balance in doing for God instead of being for God
  

3. You neglect cultivating the important relationships in your life – you neglect the
    relational side of you

• With God
  
• With your spouse
  
• With your kids
  
• With close friends
  
• With your staff
  
• With your congregation
  

4. You don’t attend to the resentment, anger, and bitterness growing within you 
    because of what you perceive as ministry’s incessant demands on you.

• Many requirements reach the “last straw” level with you
  
• You allow yourself to think your negative, destructive feelings are justified
  
• You resent the responsibilities and deadlines, but you are doing nothing to shrink the list
  
• Any joy you had is being replaced with a sense of being burdened
  

5. Your personal relationship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is becoming rote
    and dead

• Your prayers are rehearsed, rote, and void of a sense of God’s presence with you or love for you
  
• Prayer time and devotion becomes a duty and not a joy
  
• You talk more about him to others than you yourself talk to him
  

Suggestions for pastoring in your own skin:

1. Remember the first and second greatest commandments

• Love God
• Love others
  

Returning to the fundamentals is always the first step!

2. Think and live relationally

3. Think and live with God in the first person

4. Don’t teach or preach anything you cannot or are not living yourself

5. Stop doing everything you don’t need to do, but were just doing because you forgot to stop…