Generally speaking, the advice I was given before I began ministry is true: Pastor, you will go through a leadership crisis. You won’t be able to escape it. We should prepare for it, and we should also pray for its timing. Pray that it comes at a time when you have the strength to endure the trial that you will go through.

Every Pastor Will Go Through Crisis

Every pastor will go through a leadership crisis. In my experience, this is true. The Apostle Paul is a good example. You can mine his books for wisdom on pastoral ministry with great benefit, and yet two of the most underrated books by Paul related to pastoral ministry are also the most heartbreaking ones: 2nd Corinthians and 2nd Timothy.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes to a church that has rejected him. He pours out his heart and pleads with them to open their hearts to him. 2 Corinthians is a book that’s full of suffering. Paul describes his suffering, including beatings and shipwrecks, but also includes “the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28). Paul knew what it was like to suffer. He also relates how his personal suffering—his thorn in the flesh—was both a messenger from Satan and used by God to teach him dependence (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Somehow, God is able to use even Satan’s attacks against us for our own good.

2 Corinthians is a book about ministering from a position of weakness, which is where pastors will find themselves a great deal of the time. 2nd Corinthians should normalize weakness and suffering in pastoral ministry. We can’t escape it. Not only will we feel personally weak, but the people we’re trying to pastor will sometimes turn against us.

We discover the same thing in 2 Timothy. In 2 Timothy, Paul, near the end of his ministry, relates how he feels completely abandoned by almost everyone. At his first defence, he writes, “no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me… But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me” (2 Timothy 4:16-17). Paul names people who let him down. The relational pain that Paul experienced is palpable as you read his last letter.

The hardest part about ministry is the relational pain that eventually every pastor will go through.

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