Role of the Pastor in a changing environment

Loss of authority exerts increasing pressure

Once the moral authority and a local figurehead, the parish pastor is now battling to retain a status that used to come with the job. New rules are granting more power and responsibility to the parish council, the pastoral link to local schools is under threat, and pastors are being forced willy-nilly into the digital age to make themselves heard. For some pastors Facebook and the like are challenging and rewarding, for others they are intimidating and frustrating.

The actual working-week for many pastors is 60-70 hours during which they must hold Sunday services, baptize, confirm, marry and bury (all of which require preparatory conversations), undertake pastoral care, hospital and home visits, liase with parish staff on all manner of subjects, be involved in club activity, give talks, attend church concerts and so on and so forth.

As the local church becomes as much a workplace as a house of God, parish councils are implementing mandatory personnel policies to improve the working environment. A survey in 2002 found that roughly a quarter of parishes were experiencing serious internal conflicts, while a 2010 survey reported that while 80% of councils were coping under pressure, 27% had introduced policies to improve staff morale and job satisfaction.

Proposals from the Pastors’ Union
At the beginning of June the Pastors’ Union met to discuss ways of dealing with stress and conflict and to improve their own working conditions. Among the proposals are group pastorates
and a 5-day working week for all pastors. In 2009 34 pastors in the diocese of Roskilde pooled their resources, shared their ideas and supported one another’s practices. An enthusiastic Pastor Sofie Frost Bondorf told the Christian Daily: “I gained a much closer relationship with my colleagues, and my confirmation classes improved thanks to their ideas. We had the opportunity to share experiences and practices. We know one another so well now that we can both call for help and to support colleagues under pressure” In a similar experiment in Viborg diocese, where only half the pastors work a 5-day week, Bishop Karsten Nissen gave a good example, “If a pastor wants to take his or children to Legoland on a Saturday, other pastors will cover for the weddings and burials that day, and the agreement is made months ahead.”

 

By: Edward Broadbridge

---