Being a Pastor is Hard, and Failure Is Easy

Sometimes being a pastor is a real pain. But few pastors want to admit it. J.R. Briggs in trying to change that.

That’s why Briggs, a blogger and pastor of the Renew Community in Lansdale, Pa., is organizing the Epic Fail Pastors Conference. Scheduled for April 15-16 at a church-turned-bar 25 minutes outside of Philadelphia, Briggs hopes to makes space for pastors to speak their minds without fear. The conference grew out of a blog post Briggs wrote last summer.

Most ministers’ conferences are flashy events with rock bands and presentations from big church pastors, who take the stage and talk about their great successes. But those presentations didn’t match the daily realities for pastors, especially at small churches, Briggs said.

“Most of the time, you feel like I’m never going to be that guy on stage. I am preaching to 42 people, including the noisy kids,” he said.

Briggs hopes the Epic Fail conference will remind pastors that it’s OK to be human and that failure is normal. After all, most of the leaders from the Bible, he said, were failures.

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