Sharing The Pastoral Load

You don't have to do it alone

One of the privileges of church leadership is that the lost sheep often come to you. You don’t always have to seek out the broken person on the side of the road in order to be a good Samaritan. You get to show God’s love to them.

But why keep that privilege to yourself? You don’t need to have “pastor” in your job title in order to love and serve others. In fact, that’s the job description for all followers of Christ (Galatians 5:14). We are all part of the royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), have the same Holy Spirit to help us (John 14:26), and the same Bible to guide us (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We are all comforted by God so that we can comfort others who are in any affliction (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Plus, if you’re overwhelmed (or even just moderately whelmed) by the number of people coming forward for help, wisdom would suggest that you have others help share the load. As in Exodus 18:13-23, “What you are doing is not good” if both you and the people waiting for your attention “wear yourselves out.” You should instead “look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy,” and let them “bear the burden with you.”

Burden Bearing

Because Watermark is a large church in a highly visible location, we do have a fair number of people approach us for assistance or pastoral advice. We meet with every person who shows up at our doors looking for help, and we attempt to follow up with everyone who calls, emails, or fills out an information card.

However, it is not a “pastor” who is carrying that load (or, at least, never carrying it alone). We have many people, including many lay volunteers, who we entrust with shepherding walk-ups. For example:

• On Sundays, a team of volunteer “Burden Bearers” help meet with people who come down to talk to the pastor after the service.
• Similar volunteer teams serve at midweek ministries that draw a lot of visitors, such as Re:generation, Re|engage, and The Porch.
• All visitors or newcomers who fill out an info card are contacted by either volunteers or staff with offers to meet in person.

Various staff members serve at least one week each year as “Staff on Call.” There are two Pastors on Call each week—one man and one woman—along with two others who serve as backups. Their job (in addition to, and taking precedence over, their regular job) is to meet with every man or woman who comes to the church building during the week looking for help or wanting to talk to a pastor, while also handling phone calls from such people.

It’s important to note that the staff members serving in this way usually don’t have what you’d think of as “pastoral” jobs. They work as a staff accountant, IT specialist, administrative assistant, or in other such roles. But they are members of the church, and our hope would be that all members would be able to love and serve others in need.

You don’t need to have “pastor” in your job title in order to love and serve others.

The Next Best Step

One reason why people don’t need to be professional pastors or counselors in order to counsel others is because we’re not trying to fix people’s lives. We’re just trying to meet them where they are and point them toward their next best step.

For example, if someone comes forward who is struggling with addiction, our Burden Bearers don’t need to be addiction experts. They just need to know that re:generation meets on Monday nights. If the addict takes that next step and goes to Re:generation, we will have members and leaders there who are fully equipped to help them. Similarly, if the Staff on Call meets with someone who is homeless, they don’t have to provide housing; they just need a list of homeless ministries that we partner with.

In every situation, the goal is to care for the person in front of you while pointing them towards Christ and helping connect them to His body.

Resources and Training

The resources and training we provide to the people in these pastoral roles are likewise focused on how to help people take the next step.

For example, we have three-ring binders that the Staff on Call can grab whenever they are talking with someone. These binders include guides to local homeless shelters, advice on how to deal with common pastoral issues, and illustrations to help them share the gospel. You don’t have to know everything off the top of your head when you have it written down in front of you.

We also emphasize that people should not meet with someone for a pastoral conversation alone; they should grab at least one other person to help. Having another person there makes the situation safer, provides additional counsel (Proverbs 11:14), and allows one of you to look up resources while the other focuses attention on the person being helped. It also provides a witness to protect everyone from false accusations of impropriety (or the temptation to do something inappropriate). A big reason for having Sunday Burden Bearers is so that the pastor never has to meet with someone alone after the service.

Equipping the Saints and Loving the Lost

The math might look different where you are, in terms of how many people come looking for help and how many trusted leaders are available to help them. However, we would encourage you to find the best way to love, serve, and share the gospel with every person who comes to your church looking for help, while also helping people in the church get to experience the joy of ministering to others.

This is part of a series that provides examples of how you can manage different details of church leadership. Check out our other articles in the series:

• How We Do Church Membership
• Why We Don’t Pass the Plate
• The Hard Work of Hiring
• Why We Have Boring Annual Reviews
• Why Budgeting Isn’t About the Numbers