I was blessed to be able to interview Scott Weatherford. Scott has served in ministries in Texas, Florida, and Canada. He has been in ministry for 35 years, and out of those, a senior pastor for 24. He has pastored churches from 39 people, up to 10,000. Currently Scott is consultant for different ministries, and is founding a ministry focused on strengthening leaders called Sterizo. With Scott’s experience and heart for others, I thought he would have some wisdom and insight. I asked him if he saw ministers burning out, and how they are affected by it.
“Statistics are showing 1,500 pastors are leaving the ministry every month. What is happening are pastors are human, and no one really understands the burden a pastor carries. When Paul was listing things he’s gone through, the beatings and the shipwrecks, he listed the spiritual burden of people too. Being a pastor is a really intensive job. You don’t ever really leave it. It’s with you even in the middle of the night. You wake up thinking and praying and analyzing, you are wondering. If you are at HEB, you are on display. It’s an ever haunting ever daunting task. So I see pastors who are burning out runoff into escapism. They runoff to things they shouldn’t get into in order to distract their minds. I see them get involved with workaholism, where they keep working and working and working, and they burnout and die. I see them loosing heart. Really interesting, depression is probably the number one maladies of pastors. Charles sturgeon, the prince of preachers, suffered greatly with depression all his life. There is a flip side of our egos, where we want to be bosses and CEOs. A pastor is 500 times more likely to suffer from narcissist personality disorder than anybody else in population. So it’s a real challenge, it’s a real deal. Burnout, it goes both ways of extremism, from quitting and the other way of narcissism. So it has these two faces, and we battle these tensions, constantly as pastors.”
Scott was gracious enough to let me continue asking questions. Next I asked what kind of stress he faced as a pastor, and what kind of boundaries he put in place.
“The kind of pressures you face is the unrealistic expectations of people. When you have unrealistic demands, it’s overwhelming because you cannot defend it. For someone who is immature in their spiritual life, they demand constant attention. If you stump you toe, you expect the pastor to be there. They don’t see the pastor as a spiritual leader, the see the pastor as a chaplain, one who can be called for their personal needs. Many times, we socialize churches and pastors to be that way. Yea, I’ve been at the hospital and prayed for them. I’ve never raised anyone from the dead. I’ve never cured any diseases. I’ve supported and been with people, but my presence is not the presence of God.”
“God’s People become the presence of God. We build systems for the care of each other, it was very intentional and it was with small groups. One of our church members was very sick and in the hospital, and I went to the hospital to see him. His small group was there and unceremoniously kicked me out of the hospital. They said this is our job, you need to leave. I knew I had done the right thing by equipping the people to minister to one another. You see in Ephesians 4, it says pastors equip the saints for effective service. If pastors fail to equip, and do all the ministering ourselves, people in their immaturity will allow it. But as a pastor, we should be equipping people so they can serve each other. So we are equippers first and foremost, not doers, but equippers. That’s a boundary we have to make. In the process of teaching people that, there is pain there. I’ve had people criticize me. They will say things like, “Well, you’re a great leader, but you’re not a great pastor.” And that hurts, because I want to be both of those things. But the thing is you can’t be both of those things. You have to focus on what God’s clear expectation is for you. That is the boundary you have to set. So equipping and releasing, and still caring and doing. I’m still a pastor and I wish I could do for all what I could do for one. But I couldn’t do all the counseling, all the weddings, all the funerals. I couldn’t do all those things, so I did some, and let my assistant help me. My people understood that and they were grateful. They didn’t expect me to do that, and they were grateful when I did.”
I also asked Scott about a time of burnout in his own life and how he handled it. During his answer, he made reference to asking for, and being denied, a sabbatical. Since sending ministers on retreat is Elijah’s Tree’s way of helping those facing burnout, I asked him how often one should take a sabbatical.
“I think about every 7 years, a guy needs about three to six months off. I think that’s very healthy. I think every pastor and leader needs to divert daily. There needs to be a time in the day where he diverts so he does not do, he cannot do, ministry 24/7. I think he needs to divert daily, withdraw weekly with a good day and a half off, maybe two days off. When you preach a message, you release as much energy as in an 8 hour work day. What most people don’t see is the amount of mental energy and laboring over the message. You need to abandon annually. You need two weeks, three weeks where you’re not doing anything. You’re just with your family. What I’ve discovered is if I was going to get away, I had to leave town. When I was serving the church in Canada, we were really close to the mountains. That church really understood balance and soul care in a pastor, so that was really different. We did some things, had some things in place, very much paid attention to the pace of our staff and pastors and really tried to take care of them.”
It was a blessing for me to be able to talk with Scott. I hope you enjoyed this interview with him. If you would like to support Elijah’s Tree, first and foremost, we need prayer warriors. Second, we are looking for those who need retreat. Please contact us through our blog or Facebook to ask for prayer request or to recommend a person in ministry for retreat. If you would like to donate, feel free to click on the “donate now” tab on our blog. Thanks for taking the time to interact with us, and as always –To GOD be the Glory!