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The Paul Tripp Podcast

641. When Should a Pastor Quit? | Ask Paul Tripp

The Paul Tripp Podcast

Paul Tripp Ministries, Inc.

Religion & Spirituality

5723 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ask Paul Tripp is the newest podcast resource from Paul Tripp Ministries. Each week, pastor and best-selling author Dr. Paul David Tripp answers your questions about anything and everything, connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life in the process. 

In this episode, Paul answers this question about pastoral ministry: "What advice do you have for pastors who feel abused or hurt by their congregation and/or the leadership (either the eldership or the senior pastors above them)? How do you discern when it’s time to leave?"

If you have a question you'd like to ask Paul, you can email [email protected] or submit it online at PaulTripp.com/Ask.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Paul, last episode you provided some very helpful instruction about how a church can pastor their pastor.

0:09.2

But the sad reality is, and we're seeing this all the time now, that many church leadership cultures are not only lacking in pastoral care for their staff, but they're actually quite abusive.

0:19.3

Today's question comes from a pastor and his wife who

0:21.6

ask, what advice do you have for pastors who feel abused or hurt by their congregation or the

0:27.5

leadership? How do you discern when it's time to leave? I'm persuaded that a call to ministry is a call to

0:36.9

suffer.

0:44.4

Jesus makes that very clear when he was leaving.

0:48.9

He said, if they hated me, guess what's going to happen to you?

0:56.6

So there's a variety of ways that you suffer in ministry. So I should not be surprised when difficulty comes.

1:05.7

It's important to understand the nature of that difficulty and to be open to what God wants

1:15.8

me to learn and to gain from difficulty. One of the questions I'm asked a lot is,

1:22.5

how do you deal with ministry criticism? And I was referred to a story when I was a fairly young pastor.

1:31.2

I got a lengthy letter from a woman in a church that was very critical and very hard to read.

1:41.7

I was very hurt.

1:43.5

And I called my brother Ted, who had preceded me in ministry, and I wanted

1:49.1

him just to address my wounds, and he said, do believe in the sovereignty of God?

1:53.8

I said, sure, I do.

1:54.6

He says, well, then there's a reason you got that letter.

1:58.5

If I hadn't been on the phone, I would have selected him.

2:20.3

And he said, here's what I think you ought to do. I think you ought to, over the next couple of weeks, read that letter over and over again and pray that God would reveal to you the things that you should listen to and the things that you should throw away.

2:21.8

Well, the beauty of reading a communication like that over and over again over several

2:27.9

days or a couple of weeks is that at some point, the initial hurt leaves,

...

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