r/pastors

Exactly one year ago I was fired as discipleship pastor from a megachurch because they didn’t want me anymore. i did nothing disqualifying. I loved shepherding people.

In 20 years of pastoral work, I got to be really good at the role but grew exhausted of the politics.

I have since pivoted to a corporate role that I enjoy but I feel significant sadness at what I and my family experienced. Especially the immediate shunning from former friends.

the wilderness loss of calling has been difficult and I keep thinking about Moses after the first failed uprising building a new life and pivoting to shepherding. I don’t know how long I will feel numb.

I’m not necessarily looking for advice and I don’t really have any to give. except to encourage pastors to have friends outside of the church and to reach out after a person is let go.

I came to this subreddit to share for my own healing to tell someone. Thanks.

Hey guys,

Just curious if you have experience hiring a new worship leader and what your process looked like as far as making sure they were fit for the job. Did you do an audition? What kind of questions did you ask?

Thanks!

God bless everyone.

I'm not a Pastor myself, but I am the lead for my Church's Young Adult Ministry. At the start of the year I took on a new team in an attempt to help the ministry grow. With this new team came new rules and procedures of course. It got particularly toxic with one member, who started making ultimatums. Either I went along with what she wanted or she was out.

I tried appeasing her the first few months, but got to the point where it was no longer possible. Eventually she quit, but remained in orbit. Then she started gossiping about me to other team members, as well as to our Overseers.

This led to several back and forth meetings where they talked to us individually. The Pastors then decided to bring us together yesterday for what I knew was going to be an inflammatory meeting, and that's exactly what it was. For close to an hour she flung every insult and accusation she could think of. Then she ends it with "But I love you and I believe you are the leader God intended for us."

Love and forgiveness are a given, but I'm honestly just drained, and kind of hurt. My Pastors meant well but they didn't have the wisdom to understand that this was going to be the exact result. After the meeting I attended the service of a mentor of mine from a sister church who preached about being like Peter in Acts 12:6 and resting and trusting through the hardship. It felt timely, and I was tremendously blessed by his message.

I wear multiple hats in my church and lead or take part in four different ministries. I also work a part time job, as well as finishing my degree. At present, I feel ready to step away. Truthfully, I felt the work was important, but I also enjoyed being needed to help and being able to help. I'm one of the youngest men in my church and I have been compensating for a lot of what the older men weren't able to do anymore. There's also admittedly a certain shame placed on people who step back from the church and I guess that has always sat in the back of my head.

I'd been feeling strongly that God had wanted me to step back since last year, but I kept putting it off because I was asked to be present, particularly by the same person who just laid into me yesterday. Part of me feels my current circumstances are due to my disobedience in taking the rest I should have. This latest incident was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

My dilemma is, I don't know if I'm running away or taking care of myself at this point. Putting down the work feels like abandoning the cause, but I also feel like upholding the cause has made me worse. Any insight?

I’m a pastor’s kid, and I’m wondering how other PKs have reconciled chronic illness with their faith.

I was dedicated to God as a baby, baptized in the Holy Spirit at 12 and water baptized at 16.

At 17, I developed vitiligo. At 19, I developed endometriosis, had surgery, and spent years on hormone treatment. My vitiligo is still progressing.

Growing up in church, I was taught to see suffering through God’s glory. At 25, I even received a prophecy that my vitiligo would disappear. It didn’t.

Years later, I’m still asking: Where is God in this? I don’t want to keep finding ways to turn my suffering into a testimony. I want to be honest about the unanswered questions, the shame, and the disappointment.

For those of you who are PKs with chronic illness or other experiences that don't fit the usual Christian narrative:

How did you reconcile it with your faith? Did your understanding of God change?

Disclaimer: Written with help from GPT to organise my thoughts. The experiences and questions are my own.

I’m a pastor’s kid, and I’m wondering how other PKs have reconciled chronic illness with their faith.

I was dedicated to God as a baby, baptized in the Holy Spirit at 12 and water baptized at 16.

At 17, I developed vitiligo. At 19, I developed endometriosis, had surgery, and spent years on hormone treatment. My vitiligo is still progressing.

Growing up in church, I was taught to see suffering through God’s glory. At 25, I even received a prophecy that my vitiligo would disappear. It didn’t.

Years later, I’m still asking: Where is God in this? I don’t want to keep finding ways to turn my suffering into a testimony. I want to be honest about the unanswered questions, the shame, and the disappointment.

For those of you who are PKs with chronic illness or other experiences that don't fit the usual Christian narrative:

How did you reconcile it with your faith? Did your understanding of God change?

Disclaimer: Written with help from GPT to organise my thoughts. The experiences and questions are my own.

Pastors and church planters, I could really use your wisdom on how to accelerate growth and shift the culture of our church.

Our History About 12 years ago, we started as a small Bible study. Most of our pioneers came from a larger church that disbanded over a theological shift. Over time, those original pioneers lost their drive and left—perhaps because they were feeling the exact same burden I am experiencing now, and simply didn't know how to progress. As a result, our church essentially rebuilt itself around the musicians, since most of the core group from the big church were on the worship team.

My Journey I grew up in this church mostly because my parents were there. Eventually, I became the worship team leader. For a long time, I just treated it like a Sunday job. But recently, God has really opened my eyes to the spiritual side of leadership, and I realized we have a massive blind spot: we are missing discipleship and community visibility.

Our Current Reality

• The Split: We are about 60% workers and 40% attendees. Mostly, we are a bunch of people who already serve the church, and most of the congregation are relatives.
• Inward-Focused: Our worship is anointed and going better than before, but we treat church as purely a Sunday event. The most active people only serve inside the building. We have no community outreach, no follow-up for visitors, and no evangelism programs.
• No Discipleship Structure: We have a few traditional Bible studies, but no relational small groups or intentional discipleship pathways. Because I don't have experience in a established church, I don't really know what the standard looks like.

The Challenge I have a heavy burden to reach our community, let them know we exist, share the gospel, start small groups, and eventually move into a bigger space.

The problem is that this drive is currently just me. Because our members have only ever known a "Sunday-only" culture, getting participation for anything outside of Sunday is incredibly difficult. It's sad, but understandable since we are just figuring this out now. This is also the reason why it feels like we are looping in the same scenario, over and over again.

For context, we do have pastors, and a few members are currently taking Bible school courses and will soon be pastors themselves.

My Questions for You:

1. With all this information, what do you think our actual next move should be?
2. I feel like we need to start by creating small groups, but how do I navigate having this burden when the rest of the congregation doesn't share the same urgency or desire to participate yet?
3. How do we practically transition a 12-year-old "Sunday event" church into a true, outward-looking community?

Any wisdom, resources, or hard truths are welcome. Thank you!

EDIT: To clarify a couple of things that came up in the comments:

• The 60/40 Split & Space: We average 45-55 adults, and our room maxes out at 70. Out of those 45-55 people, about 25 are active volunteers. This means half the room on any given Sunday is just the team pulling off the event. We have a huge workforce, but 100% of their energy is poured inward into a Sunday production rather than outward into community growth.
• Missions vs. Local Presence: We do have a missions focus, but it is entirely dedicated to planting rural churches far away. My exact dilemma is that we are pouring resources into planting churches miles away, but right here in our own neighborhood, we are completely invisible.

I'm mostly curious about churches with attendance between 200-300 and/or annual budget around 1 million.... (although I welcome input from others)

Do you have a staff member who handles bookkeeping?
Are they full or part time?
How complicated/simple is your bookkeeping system? (quickbooks, excel, other?)

How much are you (as the pastor) involved in this?

Thanks!

I have been in my current position for over 6 years, officially joined as a paid staff member 2 years ago. As the youth pastor, I recently found out that I am getting paid less than half of what the kids pastor is making. How does this work in your church? Are these two roles comparable? I feel bad even asking this question, but it has been weighing on me. Happy to answer questions if they come up.

What are some of the questions you ask young children, before Baptism, to verify they understand Salvation in Jesus alone?

TIA

When I was being interviewed, the search committee chairman said that the job comes with a parsonage to live in, but should I not want to live in the parsonage, the church would adjust my salary by about 1,000 dollars so I could buy or rent my own house. They mentioned they had done this for the previous two pastors and it was not a problem. Based on this, my wife and I decided to sell our house and move across the country to the new church.

Fastforward to being at the job for a year and a half, my wife and I decide we want to move out of the parsonage and purchase a house. When I went to the board to inform them of this, they said, "well, that option was not in writing and we can't do that for you." End of story.

My wife and I are feeling sort of like there was a bait and switch. We sold our house, uprooted ourselves and moved 2,000 miles away with the reassurance we could still be home owners. There is no one to appeal to, no further discussion offered. To top it off, we're hurt by the demeanor, there is no apologetic undertone or sympathy, just, "no, it wasn't in writing."

Aside from venting, I'm wondering if anyone can share with me some ideas for what I should do next. The parsonage is nice, but we don't own it and it's right on the church property, and we have 3 little kids, and no yard and no privacy. Plus we're on the busiest street in town.

Is this worth leaving over? Should I make a big stink? Should I call them to rearrange the budget and demand they give me what I was led to believe?

editing to clarify, they would adjust the salary by $1000 per month. Which, still, wouldn't afford me a great house and utilities alone.

I’m trying to understand a church structure that I’m not familiar with, and I’d appreciate hearing from pastors or people who grew up in similar churches.

I knew someone whose family started their own church. His father is the pastor, and he says he is next in line to become the pastor. His brother is recognized as a prophet, and from what I observed, the family seems to consult the brother for major life decisions because they believe he receives direct guidance from God.

This made me wonder:
Is it common in these churches for the pastor to seek guidance through the prophet rather than praying and discerning God’s direction independently?

Is a pastor expected to accept a prophet’s words without questioning them, or is it acceptable to test or challenge prophetic messages?

If a prophet says, “God told me…” does the pastor have room to disagree, or would that be seen as disobeying God?

Are there biblical safeguards to prevent a prophet from having too much influence within a family or church?

In churches where leadership stays within one family, how are disagreements between a pastor and a prophet usually handled?

One thing that also surprised me was that this person said God had already revealed that one of his future children would become a pastor and another would become a prophet. Is this a common belief in some Pentecostal or charismatic churches, or is that unusual even within those traditions?

There is also a question I have about marriage in this kind of church setting. The pastor said that God would personally instruct him about what he should do, even if he and his future spouse had already made different plans together.

I’m trying to understand how this is viewed in Christian marriage:

In a marriage, if one spouse believes God has instructed them to do something that goes against a decision they previously made together, how is that usually handled?
Is one spouse expected to follow what the other believes is a word from God, or should major decisions always be discussed and agreed upon together?

How do churches that emphasize prophecy balance personal revelation with mutual submission, communication, and the equal value of both spouses?

Are there biblical teachings about testing personal revelations before making major life decisions, especially decisions that affect a spouse and family?

I’m genuinely trying to understand how these churches operate and what the biblical basis is for these practices. I’d especially appreciate responses from pastors, elders, or people who have firsthand experience in churches where prophetic ministry plays a major role.

My husband pastors a city church of around 200 people. We were part of the congregation but aft what’s a long story, he’s been head pastor for about 4 yrs, and lately I’ve been struggling with what my role is supposed to look like socially.

There is a fairly influential social circle in our church made up of successful, attractive, high-achieving professionals. They’re socially connected, know what’s going on with everyone, go to trendy restaurants/events together, etc. They also sometimes seem pretty comfortable critiquing other people - their decisions, personalities, appearance, leadership, etc.

Over time, I’ve started feeling like people who are polished, successful, fun, thin/attractive, socially connected, and generally “doing great” receive a lot more respect and social capital in our church.

Meanwhile, being the pastor’s wife makes friendship feel ….complicated. I used to have many church friends pre: being a pastors wife. Now it feels like I have few to none.

I feel like I can’t talk about any personal frustrations with people in the church because I don’t want to gossip or misuse my position. I can’t always explain what’s happening behind leadership decisions. I’m careful / borderline paranoid about what I say because I know things can travel (even my innocuous opinions). At the same time, people seem perfectly comfortable discussing or evaluating my husband, me, staff members, and church decisions with one another.

There have also been situations where we later learned that people who were friendly and encouraging to our faces were privately criticizing us or discussing concerns with other people rather than ever coming directly to us. It kind of dehumanizing.

It has left me feeling like I need to be “on” at church: look good, be cheerful, have interesting things going on, be socially engaged, say the right things, and generally appear successful and unbothered.
And I hate that.

Part of me thinks, “Fine. Maybe this is just how social dynamics work. Be polished, be fun, build relationships with influential people, keep personal struggles private, and stop expecting church friendships to function like normal friendships.”

Another part of me thinks that if the pastor and his wife feel like they have to perform a version of themselves to be respected by their own congregation, something is wrong.

So…for pastors and pastors’ spouses:
Do you have real friendships inside your church, or have you learned to keep your closest friendships outside of it?

How much vulnerability do you allow yourself with congregants?

What do you do when people are warm to you personally but you later discover they’ve been criticizing you or your spouse privately? And socializing the criticism broadly?

Do you intentionally maintain a certain public image as a ministry family?

How do you distinguish normal criticism of church leadership from an unhealthy culture of gossip/status/judgment?

how do your wives warm and genuine without feeling like they’re always auditioning for the congregation’s approval?

I’m not looking for people to tell me that everyone at our church is terrible or that we should immediately leave. I’d really like perspective from people who have actually lived through the weird social dynamics of pastoral ministry.
What did you eventually learn that you wish someone had told you earlier?

I've been a youth pastor for 6 years and Im at a new church for about 8 months. I feel trapped and scared. I seriously don't know what to do.

I know that I've posted here before when I was having some concerns about my current vocation. I posted about 2 months in that something did not feel right. I felt more constricted than I hoped, I felt like I wasn't given the freedom to lead, and I felt like the dynamics communicated in the job description were not upheld. 6 months later, I'm writing this shaking in nervous fear because I have a meeting very soon and I've been critiqued every day this week. From big and personal things like how I'm not relational enough or how I don't present myself well to minor things like a choice in event title or grammar in an email. I have stretched myself here and I've found value in that stretching. I've tried all the methods my senior pastor recommends for meeting with families, running youth, communication, and even lifestyle. I am currently operating in those methods. While not natural to me, I see some of them work and some of them not work. If I deviate from His methods, even in successful ways, I am criticized for the deviation. I don't feel like myself. I'm stressed all the time. I'm not as patient with my wife and 10 month old baby. I'm growing cynical about the kingdom of God and if I'm honest, I'm questioning my call. I work two jobs with the church being my main source of income. I spend 60 hours at church and 10-20 hours at my other job. My wife also works a part-time job. If I left the church tommorrow I don't know how Wed be able to afford rent, student loans (Private Christian College for pastoral undergrad), Healthcare, food, or anything else. My other Job brings only brings in $500 a month.

I don't want to be reckless but I don't want to be in this church just because it allows me to survive. Thats a bad motive. I love what I do. I don't think I can do it hear without it seriously impacting my health. Not to be TMI but I've gained 10lbs since the transition, got ibs, stress ulcers, and I shake when I drive to work. I don't know if I need advice or if I just need to vent, but if you could just spare a few seconds and pray for God to give me clear guidance, provision, and healing I would appreciate it.

Here’s my dilemma. I used to attend this church and I was bothered by the number of times they invite visiting preachers and evangelists. In one month, they invite at least two. That means, more collections. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not greedy and I’m all for God’s kingdom. What bothers me is say for example, on the first Sunday of the month, the collection basket is passed 3x. First is the title/offering, then the mission Sunday, and lastly, the love offering for the visiting preacher. My spouse isn’t a believer yet and I’m trying to get him in give his life to Jesus and go to church with me. The problem is, all he sees is that the church only wants money. The preachers also most of the times, testify how God blessed them with houses because they give. There are times when we have to declare blessings about finding cheques in mails, getting gifts, inheritance, promotions, etc.

I love God. I give my tithes and offerings regularly. I give to charity in secret. But I feel “forced” and “coerced” inside to give to the church whenever the collection basket is passed around. It’s like I’m forced to give because they’re watching me. They’re not physically forcing me obviously but I feel like I’ll be judged if I won’t give. There was a time when they were asking for love offering/donation to help pay the church building. We gave $250 which I thought was generous (and it came from my heart). The pastor preached about how God blesses those who give to his kingdom. Then, proceeded to give an example of one of the old ladies who have $1,000. Then, he said that it would be such a blessing if everyone gave a thousand each.

Because of that, I stopped going to church. I feel bad not going to church but I feel uncomfortable with the financial matters. This is the only church available and close to me. What do you think of my situation?

im excited