Research On Religion | Matt Boswell on What Pastors Don’t Want to Reveal

Matt Boswell on What Pastors Don’t Want to Reveal

Date: April 27th, 2014

Tags: blogging, church attendance, clergy, congregants, discouragement, Eeyore, family, frogurt, insurance salesmen, jealousy, Lee Stoebel, ministry, personnel, pitty party, quitting, religious competition, transparency

If there is one person in church on Sunday who seems to “have it altogether,” it is probably the preacher standing up in front of the congregation, right? How easily we forget that clergy are people too and they have many of the same struggles that their congregants do, plus a few that might just be unique to the profession. Pastor Matt Boswell of Redemption Church in scenic Duvall, WA opens up about the challenges he faces being a “man of the cloth.” Our conversation is based upon his enormously successful blog posting entitled “Ten Things Pastors Don’t Want to Reveal.” Throughout our discussion, we reveal them all.

Pastor Matt is not new to the program as we have followed his adventures in previous podcasts in our Redemption Church Series (see below), but he hasn’t been on the show for over a year. The reason for this prolonged absence is that one of his congregants has been M.I.A. for the past year and the show starts with a confessional — Tony admits to not having been in attendance all that often. We discuss this typical challenge for many middle-aged folks and their ministers, and then use this as a platform to discuss what has been happening to this relatively new church over the past year including a few personnel changes, as well as the passing of a cherished member.

We then jump into our discussion of the ten things that worry and bother the clergy, but that the clergy are often afraid to reveal. This list includes:

Pastors take it personally when you leave the church;
They feel pressure to perform week after week;
The clergy struggle to get their worth from ministry;
Ministers regularly think about quitting;
They say they are transparent, but they might actually be opaque;
Pastors measure themselves by the numbers (attendance and finances);
They spend more time discouraged than encouraged;
They worry about what you think;
Clergy struggle with competition and jealousy;
And they often feel like they failed you more than they have helped.

Although certainly a bummer of a list, and probably not the best topics for dinner conversation, Matt keeps it light by discussing how he copes with all of these different challenges. The conversation remains upbeat with Tony comparing the pastorate to his own teaching profession at times, and making the occasional odd reference to characters in Winnie the Pooh. Recorded: April 23, 2014.

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