In a former post I mentioned that Life Way Resources, a division of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, recently did a survey that indicated over 1300 Pastors had been fired in 2005. That is a lot of pain, division and giving in to the enemy's plans.
The researchers discovered an interesting point: ten of the top fifteen reasons given for dismissal were related to a lack of good relationship skills. I should have known. I did my doctoral dissertation on that topic in 1975 and found an awful lack of relational skills among pastors, priests and leaders. The people most often required to nurture, minister and counsel can't do any of them.
The majority of pastors with whom I work indicate they never had a single class on relationships in college or seminary. Yet, relational acumen is the core of everything we pastors do. We need good skills to nurture people at the services; we need good skills to support widows and orphans; we need good skills at weddings and funerals. We need good skills to offer care and counsel to those in need.
Yet almost none of our ministers has had a single class in listening, coaching, grief counseling or anything else that matters in a church. What can we do?
Buy my books:
Listening for Heaven's Sake is the basic text for caring
Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty describes a plan for ministry
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