Your pastor is lonely. here's what to do about it

The loneliest person in your church might not be the one sitting at the back, but the one standing at the front - the pastor.

It’s a confronting idea. With their unique position at the centre of a church’s social network, surely church leaders must be the least lonely people in society. Well, research suggests otherwise.

In one 2017 study published in the Journal of Psychology and Theology, psychologists found that around 30% of church leaders have low numbers of close friends. A report by Faith Communities Today following the Covid-19 pandemic found that around half of all church leaders often or frequently felt lonely, particularly those aged under 45.

When church leaders have close friends, everyone wins - their health, their families, and our churches

The impacts of this are significant. Loneliness in church leaders contributes to higher rates of burnout, anxiety, and attrition from ministry, while those with close friends are nearly twice as likely to stay serving long-term.

Addressing pastoral loneliness is a critical need. But why are pastors so lonely in the first place? It’s not a matter of social skills. The real culprit is the nature of the pastoral role itself.

Church leaders face four relational tensions the rest of us don’t - four places where the demands of leadership and of friendship pull in opposite directions. Identifying them is the beginning of making church leaders’ friendships thrive.

Tension 1: the need to be open and maintain confidentiality

Friendship requires openness. To be a friend means letting others know what’s keeping us up at night. Without that transparency, a friendship can stay in the shallows.

But leadership often requires confidentiality. And here lies the tension. The thing keeping a pastor up at night might be a safeguarding issue, a marriage falling apart, or a conflict in their leadership team - details that can’t leave the room.

When the things weighing on a pastor’s heart can’t be shared, the pastor is left burdened and their friend is left feeling like they’re being kept at a distance.

Tension 2: The need to be vulnerable and responsible

Along with affection, generosity and shared experiences, vulnerability is one of the four ‘threads’ of friendship intimacy we teach on the Friendship Lab course. A friend is someone I can share not just my joys and successes with, but my failures and doubts, too.

Leadership, however, carries a different expectation - that we have answers, not questions; that we’re confident, not doubtful; that the congregation can lean on us, rather than the other way around.

This creates a tension. How much can a pastor safely share their own struggles with others? While a degree of vulnerability from a leader builds rapport, sharing too much can erode confidence.

Tension 3: The need to accept and challenge others

At its core, friendship is built on acceptance of each other’s flaws. But leadership requires saying difficult things to people, and this becomes hard when the person is both a friend and a church member.

What happens when your friend applies for a role in church that they’re not suited for? Or they’re contributing to a toxic dynamic in your congregation? Or when you need to exercise church discipline with them?

This is one reason why theological colleges used to advise pastors not to make friends with church members or staff. They argued that it was the only way to maintain the distance needed to bring challenge. But when church is such a rich source of similarly-minded people who are called to be a band of friends (John 15:12-17), can such ‘professional distance’ be maintained, or even be healthy?

Tension 4: Having ‘my people’ while remaining impartial

A friend is someone I enjoy. Whether it’s a shared sense of humour, a love of live music, or knowing we can just relax in each other’s presence, our friends are the people we most enjoy spending time with. Friendship is, by nature, preferential.

By contrast, leadership is impartial. We’re called to love all people, not just our favourites. If a church leader is seen to have a close group of friends in church, others may wonder if they’re locked out of an insiders’ clique.

But church leaders need people with whom they can be a friend, not a pastor. Where do they find them, if not in church?

Navigating the tensions

As I’ve said before in this publication, friendship is our most undervalued relationship, overlooked in both culture and the Church. If this is true for the general populace, it’s even more so for church leaders.

But there are ways to navigate these tensions. While friendship requires openness, it doesn’t require total openness - like all relationships, good friendships have boundaries, which leaders can discuss with their friends.

While a leader may not be able to share the details of what they’re facing, they can share the weight of it - enabling vulnerability to flow within appropriate limits.

Without transparency, a friendship can stay in the shallow

The acceptance-challenge tension starts to ease when we realise that caring critique, not just acceptance, is part of every good friendship.

And the preference-impartiality balance will always need wisdom, but it can be helped by creating church cultures where no one is sidelined, and by members allowing their pastors to have close friends, just as they do.

When church leaders have close friends, everyone wins - their health, their families, and our churches. It’s time to give this neglected relationship the focus it needs.

Find out more about The Friendship Lab’s two-day retreat on how to make friendships work for church leaders and their spouses