THE RESILIENT PASTOR:
Leading your church in a rapidly changing
world
By Glenn Packiam
Baker Books. 267 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 540 903 105
Anyone who is interested in issues of debilitation and resilience of pastors knows that it is extremely difficult to find relevant statistical data. That is exactly what this book sets out to provide, so I approached it with high hopes. Were they met? Only partially.
The Resilient Pastor is a series of reflections based on research work by the Barna Group on the hard realities of pastoring. This comprised of two surveys, one of 408 senior pastors and one of 1,520 adults, plus online interviews and focus groups, all in a US context. Beginning with an overview of how tectonic shifts in Western views of self, religion, God and church have pushed God to the margins, the book then divides into sections on challenges for the pastor, challenges for the church, and hope for tomorrow.
The book attempts to ground the data by interweaving it with personal stories of pastoral ministry (including some very painful ones) and historical anecdotes, concluding each chapter with a short testimonial reflection. It is full of snippets of wisdom and reasonably good at identifying the challenges, but has an aphoristic feel that I felt didn’t serve it especially well. Surprisingly the book doesn’t present all the data in any one place, preferring to bring it in chapter by chapter. It would benefit from doing so.
My main disappointment is that the book has comparatively little meaningful engagement with Scripture, particularly when it comes to defining what pastoral ministry actually is. Instead it measures satisfaction in the pastoral task against what ministers think the job entails in practice, and dissatisfaction against what they feel untrained and unprepared for. I found it better at identifying presenting issues, therefore, than at prescribing deeply Biblically-grounded solutions.
The author is clear that he has a North American context in mind, while hoping the book resonates in other contexts. I think many of the issues do have parallels in the UK, but the nature of the religious landscape being addressed is very obviously different. This is especially so in the chapter on unity which reflects at length on structural racism and Christian nationalism in a US context.
Finally, for me the book didn’t reveal anything new. However, there is always value in providing statistical analysis. If you are interested in statistical approaches to this subject, or the whole area is new to you, you will find The Resilient Pastor thought-provoking.
