back to the leaders manual

Giving Your Pastor
Additional Spiritual Support

Pastor's Prayer Partners

The ministry is a fulfilling, rewarding profession. But, like any significant leadership role, it has its own unique, isolating factors, lonely feelings, diverse challenges, and intense demands. Pastors often are not free to discuss details of their struggles over church decisions, counseling situations, or ministry matters. Maintaining confidentiality and trust carries an emotional price tag. Just because pastors are "up front" in public roles, does not mean they have lots of friends with whom they are safe sharing their personal burdens and concerns. Most churches have a variety of program needs and on-going mini-crises that keep a pastor pulled in several directions at once. Add to all this the fact that ministry often involves battles fought on the devil's territory and that leaders draw more intense fire from the enemy, and you get the picture of need pastors have for "somebody, sometime" and "someone, somehow."

Every Christian benefits from having praying friends. Christian leaders, though, are particularly in need of fellow believers who faithfully, regularly, dependably pray for them and for the ministries in which they seek to be effective. Why do pastors need this extra spiritual support? Consider these factors:

• Pastors are under constant pressure to practice a degree of integrity and professional competence not necessarily expected by lay persons of themselves or other friends and acquaintances.
• Many feel a peculiar isolation because of the limited number of confidants they have to share their personal hurts, inadequacies, doubts, insecurities and burdens.
• Some have unresolved internal conflicts with temptation, painful relationships, poor judgment, financial distress, marriage or family dysfunction, grief, and other stresses.
• Pastors and their families are often subject to gossip, negative criticism, and antagonism, as Satan works to diminish their effectiveness.
• The ministry involves a heavy load of responsibility and accountability for the spiritual well-being of others; pastors face "a stricter judgment" for their actions, according to 
  James 3:1.
• A pastor's influence on others places him or her in double jeopardy in case of a fall; not only does moral or ethical failure hurt a leader, it can also devastate a whole church.
• The heavy demands of giving one's best to others in so many ways (preaching, caring, counseling, visiting, administrating) make pastors vulnerable to emotional burn-out, discouragement, pride, and a host of other potential problems.

WANTED: PRAYER PARTNERS

The need for prayer partners is also illustrated in the desires of other early church leaders. The Apostle Paul made some of the most eloquent appeals for prayer on record in the Bible. Here are a few examples:

"I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed."
-Romans 15:30-32

"On him (God) we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many
-2 Corinthians 1:10-11

"Pray also for me that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should."  -Ephesians 6:19-20

back to the leaders manual