This article is the first part of a two-part series. The second part will take a look at when pastors abuse their congregations.
There are certain jobs where torment is written into the contract. A soldier knows that bullets are part of the bargain. A doctor expects midnight calls and bloody hands. A farmer learns to bow his back under hail and drought. But the pastor… the pastor’s torment is stranger. It doesn’t come from outside. It comes from the very people he is sent to serve.
The congregation torments its pastor. Not always with fire and pitchforks. Not always in dramatic bursts of wrath. More often, it comes in small, sharp cuts; the sigh during the sermon, the complaint about the hymn, the whispered gossip in the parking lot. Sometimes it comes in outright cruelty: “We were happier before you came.” “The church would grow if you preached like Pastor So-and-So.” Or worst of all: the polite indifference, the shrug of the shoulders, the dead eyes staring back as if Christ Himself had nothing worth saying.
It is a strange and bitter trade: to stand week after week in a pulpit, to pour out Scripture and sacrament, and to know that what you give will be twisted, dismissed, or ignored.
The Pastor as Scapegoat
The old story-tellers taught that one aspect of myth is that it lays bare the beast within us. Congregations, for all their hymns and potlucks, are not spared from the beast. They need a scapegoat, and the pastor fits the role. Every unresolved grief, every disappointed dream, every anger at God finds its mark in him. He becomes the one to carry the congregation’s selfish desires.
So the pastor lives inside a ritual drama: he is the lightning rod planted in the parish soil. He stands where heaven’s word strikes, and the people step back, relieved it wasn’t them. And he bears it. Not because he is holy, not because he is strong, but because the call compels him.
But the torment is real. It seeps into his bones. It wakes him at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat. It makes him wonder if he is mad for staying.
The Subtle Weapons
How does a congregation torment its pastor? With weapons so ordinary they hardly seem weapons at all.
- Withholding: They sit in pews and give nothing back. No eye contact. No “Amen.” Just silence.
- Comparing: They weigh him against the last pastor, or the pastor down the road, and always he is found wanting.
- Undermining: They hold meetings in kitchens and living rooms, plotting how to rein him in, how to keep him from “going too far.”
- Neglecting: They let the parsonage rot, pay him less than a tradesman, and call it humility.
- Mocking: They make jokes at his expense, smiling while they cut.
There’s an old Siberian folktale that says, if you want to hurt someone, you crawl into their tent and close the smoke hole, so God can’t see them. That is what congregations do. They close the smoke hole above their pastor’s head, leaving him alone with his worries and anxiety, starved of divine air.
And yet he stays. He stays because Christ makes him stay.
The Prophets Knew
The prophets raged against this sin long before pulpits and hymnals. Amos thundered, “Woe to you who are at ease in Zion,” naming the people’s complacency, their willingness to let others suffer while they reclined. Zephaniah warned of those who “settle on their dregs,” content in their indifference. Malachi accused the priests and people alike of wearying the Lord with their hollow offerings.
The pastor swallows these words like they’re fire in his throat. He preaches them, but often the people think he means someone else. They do not see themselves in the text. They imagine the judgment always falls a town or two away.
Meanwhile, the torment goes on.
The Weight of It
The Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, once wrote of cows walking slow, as if they carried the Dingle mountains inside them. That is what the pastor carries: mountains inside. The unspoken sorrows of his people, the unconfessed sins, the unhealed wounds. He walks behind them, slow, weary, nearly broken, and they do not see it. Or if they do, they prefer not to. Better the pastor suffer than themselves.
And the pastor, for his part, wonders if he is still a neighbor. If the key still fits in the door of his own soul. He is tempted to retreat up the mountain like Elijah, to leave the parish to its rot and find God in the wind and wildflowers. And some do. Many do.
Christ in the Torment
But here is the fierce and foolish thing: Christ meets the pastor in this torment.
Christ himself was tormented by his own people. The synagogue scowled at him. The priests plotted against him. The disciples misunderstood him. The crowds shouted for his blood. And still, he stayed. Still, he carried the weight. Still, he bore the torment all the way to Skull Hill.
So the pastor, bearing the congregation’s torment, bears Christ. Not in strength, not in victory, but in the wounds. In the sleepless nights. In the weariness. In the sense of being crucified by the very ones he came to serve.
And this is no pious metaphor. It is the marrow of the ministry. To be a pastor is to die many small deaths, and in dying, to keep bearing Christ to the people who kill you.
What then?
What, then, of the congregation?
When you torment your pastor, you torment Christ. When you mock him, you mock the One who sent him. When you withhold love from him, you withhold love from Christ’s body.
But when you honor him, even with a cup of cold water, you honor Christ. When you lift his arms when they are weary, you lift Christ’s arms. When you listen when he preaches, not with a critic’s eye but with a disciple’s heart, you listen to Christ.
The pastor is not Christ, but Christ has bound himself to the pastor’s words and the sacraments. To despise one is to despise the other. To torment one is to torment the other.
The Last Word
The torment will not end this side of heaven. It is part of the calling. But it is not meaningless.
In the torment, Christ is revealed: the crucified, who makes himself known not in comfort but in wounds. The pastor bears these wounds, not for his own sake but for yours. So that even when you torment him, he still stands in the pulpit, still speaks forgiveness, still breaks bread and pours wine, still lays Christ in your open, empty hands.
And one day, when all torment ends, when all smoke holes are opened wide, when all scapegoats are vindicated, you may look back and see that the pastor you tormented was the one who carried you to Christ.
Beware the torment you dispense. And pastors, take heart. Christ is in the torment, and he will not leave you there alone.
