Who Are You Performing For?

It's Saturday night, and you're rewriting the opening of tomorrow's sermon for the fourth time. The words are fine. That's not really the problem. The problem is that you can see faces.

The longtime elder who sits with his arms crossed. The young couple who visited twice and haven't been back. The woman who emailed last month to say she misses the way your predecessor preached. Somewhere in the back of your mind, there's also a pastor you heard at a conference three years ago who made it look effortless.

None of them are in the room with you. But every one of them is grading you.

And it isn't only Saturday night. It's every time you decide whether you can take a real day off. It's every time somebody asks how you're doing, and you hear yourself say "great" before you've thought about it.

The story you've been told about being a good pastor

Most of us picked up a picture of what a good pastor looks like long before anybody hired us. In that picture, you're always available. You're sharp every Sunday. You don't get rattled. And you don't say "I don't know." Your marriage looks solid. Your kids behave. And the church keeps growing a little every year.

Your staff has their own version. Your worship leader is performing for the man who emails about the volume every Monday. Your youth pastor is performing for the parent who complained once about a lock-in and never let it go.

Some of those expectations are real. Somebody said them out loud, maybe in your interview, maybe in a hard board meeting. But a lot of them were never said by anyone. They came with the job description in your head. You inherited them from the last pastor, from seminary, from conferences, and from the church down the road that seems to have it all together.

And you've been working hard to meet all of them.

What pressure to meet expectations does to pastors

A couple of years ago, I led a national study of hundreds of pastors and ministry leaders. We asked them how much pressure they feel to conform to other people's expectations in their role. (Download the Facing the Truth survey results here.)

Forty-one percent said the pressure is high. Those leaders reported high loneliness at more than twice the rate of leaders under low pressure, 45% compared with 20%. It was the strongest link to loneliness in the entire study. When we went back for a second round and asked about burnout directly, 64% of high-pressure leaders said they worry about burning out often, compared with 14% of low-pressure leaders.

That makes sense when you think about it. You can't be known while you're performing. People can admire a performance. They can't get close to it. So the harder you work to be the pastor everyone expects, the lonelier the job gets.

But here's the finding that stopped me. We asked what most gets in the way of being real in ministry. The number one answer wasn't the congregation. It wasn't the board or church politics. It was the leaders' own self-doubt and burnout, at 25%. Congregational expectations came in second at 17%.

Read that again. The loudest critic most pastors face isn't sitting in the pews. It's the voice in their own head.

Where performing for expectations ends

Follow that story to its end, and you'll see where it goes.

You get very good at being the pastor and very lonely as a person. You spend more energy managing how things look than being present with the people in front of you. Your family gets whatever is left after the performance, which usually isn't much.

And there's a quieter cost. Your people learn by watching you. If their pastor is always fine, they learn that church is a place where everybody is always fine. The performance spreads. Pretty soon you have a whole congregation smiling at each other in the lobby, and nobody is telling the truth.

Paul asked the question that cuts through all of it. "Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God?" (Galatians 1:10). He wasn't saying people don't matter. He was saying he couldn't serve them well while he was busy auditioning for them.

What if most of those expectations were never said?

Here's a thought that might change your week. What if a lot of the expectations you're running to meet don't actually exist?

I'm not saying every expectation is imaginary. Some are real. And some of the real ones are unreasonable. But most pastors have never asked. They've guessed. And guessing almost always errs on the side of more. More available. More polished. More impressive.

Asking does two things. It shows you which expectations are real so you can deal with them out in the open. And it shows you which ones you've been carrying for no one.

A different ending

Picture a pastor who sits down with three of her people and asks one simple question. "What do you most need from me as your pastor?"

She braces for a list. What she hears is smaller and more human than she expected. Know my name. Pray for my son. Be honest with us when it's hard. Nobody mentions the sermon graphics.

That Sunday she says "I don't know" in a sermon for the first time in years and the room leans in instead of pulling away. Monday she takes her day off without apologizing. Nobody notices except her husband, and he notices a lot.

She didn't get a new church. She just stopped performing for the one in her head.

Try this before next Sunday

Write down five things you believe your church expects from you. Next to each one, answer two questions. Who said it? And did they say it out loud, or have you been assuming it?

Then pick three people. One who has been around forever, one who is fairly new, and one who will tell you the truth. Ask each of them, "What do you most need from me as your pastor?" Don't explain and don't defend. Just write down what they say.

Put their answers next to your list and look at the gap. If you have staff, have each of them do the same thing for their area and talk about it together.

That gap is one of the first things we look for when we work with a church. We meet separately with the pastor, the staff, and the board. The distance between what each one thinks the others expect is usually where the real story is. If you want an outside perspective, the first conversation with us is free. Or download a sample report and see what one looks like before you spend any money.

About the Author

Tim Eldred has been serving in pastoral ministry for over three decades and has had the privilege of training and mentoring thousands of pastors in over 40 countries. He founded The Authentic Pastor. Most importantly, he is a husband, father, and grandfather.

About The Authentic Pastor

The Authentic Pastor is a comprehensive life and leadership development organization that helps pastors and churches achieve lasting growth through our proven WholeCare™ system, offering coaching, cohorts, and consulting services. We're passionate about supporting church leaders throughout their careers—from early challenges to long-term success—to create healthier pastors and more effective ministries.