5 Life-Saving Tips for Angry Pastors

by Robert Houston

It's inevitable: Sometimes pastors get angry. Robert Houston offers insight to help you manage these moments with grace and wisdom.

5. Get a life.

I don’t mean any harm but many pastors are just ... pastors. They have no hobbies. They have no interests.

They are pastors 24/7, 365 days a year—and there’s nothing wrong with that, except you need some time to yourself.

You need to grow as an individual. You need some interests. I’ve seen pastors whom you couldn’t talk about football because that’s “unholy.” Or talk to them about jazz because “that’s the devil’s music.”

Please.

Every pastor needs an interest outside of the church. For me, it ranges from travel to sports to politics to horseback riding to movies to cooking to architecture.

When I was in San Diego, one of my best friends was (is) Dr. A.B. Vines. Vines was a pastor in the community, and both of our churches were rapidly growing, even though we had different backgrounds. I was National Baptist, he was Southern Baptist bred. He’s from the East Coast, I’m from the West Coast. He had kids growing up in his house, I didn’t. I was a hooper, He was a lecturer.

We were (are) best friends. We would call each other on Sunday nights to compare notes on how our services went, and we were competitive with each other, but in a non-threatening way. We would laugh about the craziest things. However, we were movie fans, and we would go to opening nights of movies together and hang out.

I remember one night we went to see Star Wars Episode III on opening night, and we were dressed casually as we sat among Princess Leia and several Wookies and Chewbacas. You cannot keep your sanity without having an outside interest.

So get a life—learn how to swim, learn how to play the piano, drive in the country. But please, get a life.

I hope this will help some pastor, somewhere to keep cool when others are losing their minds.

« Previous Page

1 2 3 4 5

Print version

Rate this article

4.11

Pastor Robert Earl Houston is the seventeenth senior pastor of the 180 year-old First Baptist Church, Frankfort, Kentucky. He is the husband of Jessica Georgette Houston. He has been serving as senior pastor since April 2009. He has been in ministry for over 34 years and pastoring for over 23 years. He has pastored or served on staff in congregations in Oregon, California and Tennessee. He is a Board Member and Webmaster of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.; President, Kentucky State Convention of PNBC; Chairman of the Publishing Board, General Association of Baptists in Kentucky which produces The American Baptist Newspaper, one of the oldest African-American Publications in the nation.

More from Robert Houston or visit Robert at roberthouston.org/

ChurchLeaders Top 100: 2013 Edition