If church is "family" for everyone but you

The Rise and Fall of a Friendship, Part 4 (final)

(If you’re just joining, this is the final post in a series. Here are parts 1, 2, 3.)

I labeled this series “The Rise and Fall of a Friendship,” but today I’m not sure the word “friendship” accurately describes the dynamic between my former pastor and me. He may have called it that, and I may have believed it for a time, but we were in a system that was working against any potential for genuine friendship. 

In fact, I would argue that most evangelical churches are set up to prevent pastors from having friends. Consider:

• For everyone else, it’s a “church family.” For the pastor, it’s a job. ¹

• For everyone else, the church is a place to rest and receive. For the pastor, it’s a place to perform and produce. 

• The congregation can bring their fears and sins to the pastor and expect to receive comfort and counsel. If the pastor brings their fears or sins to the congregation, they may lose their job and their reputation. 

If the church is a “family” for everyone but you, it’s a setup for loneliness, burnout, and worse. 

The issue of pastoral friendship comes up often on ministry platforms like TGC and Desiring God. I’ve seen quite a few articles over the years about how hard it is for pastors to have friends. They often advise pastors to seek friendships outside the church, but never seem to question whether an inability to have friends inside the church is a problem in the first place. 

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

Perhaps these questions are never asked because they’re connected to other unexamined assumptions, such as the belief that pastors are “leaders.”  

For example, the article “Pastors Need Friends Too” emphasizes that a pastor’s “leadership” can be isolating: “It’s really tough to be both a friend and a leader. This leaves the pastor with a relational need — a relational need that is too great for a wife to carry by herself.”

Or there’s the book “Fight For Your Pastor,” written to help church members understand “the weight of their pastors’ positions and support leaders in their important ministry.” 

Articles like these create distance between pastor and church members: they can hardly fathom the burdens he carries, and can only support him from a distance. 

Another issue I’ve rarely seen examined is whether the pastoral relationship should be a professional one.² If a pastor must relate to congregants the way a therapist relates to clients, there is no chance of authentic friendship.

The combination of “leader” and “professional” together is what ultimately isolates pastors.

Our former church functioned similarly to a company, with the lead pastor like a CEO. Many evangelical churches are set up this way, creating a couple distinct problems:

“Lead Pastor Syndrome”

While our pastor made a point of introducing himself as “one of the pastors” every Sunday, he also listed himself as “lead pastor” on the church website and was clearly “in charge” of executive decisions. 

There was no one who had more power or visibility than he did. And while pastors in some denominations are accountable to an outside structure, like a presbytery or bishop, our church was affiliated with groups (SBC and Acts 29) that didn’t provide oversight. Our pastor may have been “one of the pastors” in name, but functionally he was the CEO. Everyone had to listen to him, never the other way around.

There was no way for the pastor to truly experience the mutual give-and-take of friendship, because he had set himself apart. To everyone else in the church, he was either a spiritual or professional authority, or both. 

Blurred Lines: What’s professional, what’s personal?

While not all pastors deal with Lead Pastor Syndrome, all who are paid to pastor will encounter the awkwardness of “blurred lines.” If the church is a “family” but also your job, how do you handle complaints and conflict? Do you prioritize healthy relationships and open communication with members — even the difficult ones — or do you default to image management and organizational control? 

• A staff member says you’re not treating them well: are you more likely to consider you may be at fault, or to see them as an unhappy employee who needs to find another position?

• A woman mentions she was hurt or offended by how you preached on a passage about marriage: is she a friend you need to reconcile with, or is this negative feedback from a customer? 

Without emotional maturity, a pastor is likely to view conflict in terms of professional problems or leadership issues. ³

Both of the above issues played a role in my story. As time went on, it became clear my pastor and I had very different expectations for our “friendship.” 

I truly believed he wanted me to “challenge and encourage” him, as he’d originally invited me to do. Yet as the confusion and conflict escalated, my attempts to be a friend were met with hostility, coldness, and denial (I mentioned a few in part 3). He seemed to view me as either an insubordinate volunteer or an enemy threatening the church’s ability to function. 

I couldn’t recognize it at the time, but when he launched an “investigation” against me in February 2022, it was (at least partly) because he could not relate to me as a friend. I had questioned his behavior and dishonesty, raised concerns about potential burnout, all under the impression that he knew I cared about him. What he seemed to see instead was a woman who wouldn’t listen to him. And as the investigation and spiritual abuse continued over the months, it became clear he actually believed his job was to protect the church from me — to “run me out of town,” as he said. 

I still wonder: if the pastor had let me be a friend, would the story be different?

If he’d been open to my encouragement, if he’d allowed me to challenge him, would he have turned into the domineering and abusive leader he’s become? (We’ve heard some concerning stories in the two years since we left.) 

As long as our church culture treats pastors as “leaders” and worship as a business, we will only see more friendless, unhealthy pastors, including abusive ones. 

It’s happening already. Over the past 10 years, pastors are reporting feeling more lonely and isolated than ever before, with more than 40 percent considering leaving ministry due to conflict.  

I believe these patterns will only intensify unless we begin shifting our practices to mirror what Jesus modeled and taught. He has commanded us to love one another, which cannot include elevating some members as “Rabbi”/pastor. The church is to be the body of Christ, not a top-down corporate hierarchy. 

After all, Jesus himself chose not to relate to his disciples as a “leader,” deliberately reframing their relationship in John 15. As he gave final instructions, he described a relationship of mutual love and joy that he enjoyed with the Father, shared with the disciples, and intended for us to experience together:

“I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends.”

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Readers, I’d love to hear from you: Do you think it’s a problem to frame the pastoral role as “leadership” or a professional career? Do you have stories of friendship with pastors, and if so, how did they work out?

1. I’m aware many pastors would say they don’t feel this way and don’t treat their work this way. But if you’re dependent on a salary from the church, it is by definition a job, and there will be certain inescapable pressures and issues that come with it.

2. In 2002, John Piper wrote “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.” He identified the “professionalization” of the pastorate as a problem, but didn’t actually advocate for pastors to stop receiving compensation. I’d like to dig into his ideas more at some point because I think they reveal the unhealthy ways pastors and church members can view one another.

3. I know the opposite can also be true. Pastors can love and trust their church members only to be hurt when these people criticize them cruelly, treating them as underperforming employees, or abruptly leave the church because their expectations were not met.