The Most Consistent Thing We Heard from Pastors This Year

Earlier this year, we spent time in conversation with more than a dozen pastors and ministry leaders. They were from different cities, their leadership spanned different church sizes, and they were in various seasons of ministry. We asked them what was hardest about the work.

Then we opened the same question up more broadly to pastors and ministry leaders across our whole community.

What we found was a pattern: pastors give an extraordinary amount of care to the people around them, showing up in the hardest moments, carrying what others can't carry alone. But they rarely have someone doing the same for them in return.

One pastor described a time he requested some needed time off—and realized afterward that no one had thought to ask how he was really doing. Another told us that, even after years in ministry, he struggled to name peers who understand the weight of the role without him having to explain it first. When we asked more broadly, “burnout” and “exhaustion” were words we heard again and again, unprompted.

And then there's the less obvious side of this finding: one pastor's wife told us her husband has met with the same handful of local pastors every single week for years over a simple breakfast and conversation because pouring out that much care for a congregation only works, long-term, if someone is pouring back in. No program built that. No church funded it. It exists because a few pastors recognized what they needed and built a community for themselves.

We've noticed through our cohorts that people show up for the teaching, but what they talk about afterward—the honest, unscripted conversation once the content and teaching ends—is what they remember months (and probably years) later. This fall, we're building a community among pastors that treats that conversation as the main event, not the leftover time.

Six sessions. A room full of pastors who get it. More details soon.