If you resign as pastor to find work in the community, but you still want to serve as a pastor in the church (just not as a paid staff person), you will immediately encounter a problem.

Many pastors spend 60-70 hours per week performing pastoral duties. How are you going to continue to do this, and also work at a job in the community?

The short answer is that you are going to have to make a few changes, all of which will be incredibly beneficial for you and for the church.

1. Redefine Pastoral Ministry

Many pastors think that Pastoral ministry only occurs in a church or with church people. But when a pastor realizes that he can be a pastor to all people, not just to church people, then true ministry really begins.

While pastors would love to disciple and train all those people who already believe in Jesus, read their Bibles, and pray,
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One benefit to resigning as pastor is that you can no longer get fired. I know this doesn’t seem like much of a benefit, but it is.

No More Fear of Getting Fired

If you are considering resigning from the pastorate, one reason might be due to conflict with the leadership team of the church. Maybe you and the other elders don’t see eye-to-eye on the direction of the church, or how to allocate the church budget. And because you are the one one who depends on the church for income, some elders will use that to their advantage, threatening you with loss of pay, or even loss of job, unless you come around to their way of thinking.

As long as you are getting paid by the church, those in the church who hold the purse strings have power over you. In many churches, those who hold the purse strings control the pastor to do what they want by threatening him with salary cuts or worse yet, losing his job.

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Many pastors today are resigning from full-time ministry…or at least thinking about it. Many wish they could, but don’t know what they would do if they left pastoral ministry.

As someone who has left the pastorate, I want to write several posts which share some of what I have learned along the way. I will share some of the benefits of resigning, and also suggest some ideas for how you can make a living away from professional, paid pastoral ministry.

Drawback to Resigning as Pastor

In this post, let me state that if you leave professional, paid, pastoral ministry, you will most likely miss it, especially if you love it.

I loved pastoral ministry. I loved the churches I worked in. I loved the people I worked with. Not a day goes by in which I do not desperately miss many elements of pastoral work. One of the reasons I left and (so far) have not gone back into full-time pastoral ministry, is because of a conviction I have that I cannot get paid to be a pastor.

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Have you ever heard of “spiritual fatherhood”? Have you ever had a pastor who asked you to think of him as your “spiritual father”? What happened? How did it work? What was your experience of this?

This concept is not found in all churches, but where it is, the pastor often uses the idea to exert his authority and control the lives of others. It is another form of pastoral power abuse.

Scriptural Basis

The idea of spiritual fathers comes from passages like 1 Corinthians 4:15-16, 11:1, Philippians 2:22, 4:9, and 2 Timothy 3:10, 14 where Paul tells those under his care to follow his instructions and imitate his example because they are his children in the gospel. From this, certain pastors also try to get the people of their church to follow their instructions, and imitate their example. Seems innocent enough, right? Especially since the Apostle Paul set the precedent.

Spiritual Fathers and Spiritual Child Abuse

The primary problem, however, is that not all pastors are like the Apostle Paul. The ministry of Paul was characterized by self-sacrificial service to others. Many pastors who try to control the thinking and behavior of others with the concept of “spiritual fatherhood” are more concerned with their own position of power and prominence than they are with the spiritual wellbeing of other people.

This can been seen when their practice of spiritual fatherhood goes far beyond anything Paul practiced in his life and ministry. If Paul was a “spiritual father” it was a servant father, not a father who lorded his position over others. Paul, as a spiritual father, did not engage in spiritual child abuse.

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