The Responsibilities of a Pastor
I recently got the question, “What do you do when it’s not Sunday?” Before I could answer his first question, my friend asked, “Does a preacher have anything to do when you aren’t preaching?”
I was tempted to say, “No, we just work that one hour (in our case three hours) and then we are done”, but I remembered that typical cliché’ joke aggravates me and this guy was not trying to be funny. He simply didn’t know.
I tried to explain some of what my average week looks like. Activities of a normal week include items such as:
- Preparing to preach…Bible reading, prayer, research…
- Church administration and budgeting…
- Counseling, coaching and disciple-making…
- Managing and leading a staff…
- Writing…
- Vision-casting…
- Planning and dreaming…
- Networking…
- Community involvement…
Of course, it is ministry, so there isn’t really a “normal” week. Each week has its own unexpected circumstances, but these are the things that have to be done in a typical week. I also realize our church is different from other churches, so other pastors have different responsibilities. For comparison purposes, we are a mid-sized 4 year old church averaging about 1,500 per week attendance. The size of the church usually does alter the role and responsibility of the pastor.
What did you think were the responsibilities of a pastor between Sundays?
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