Editor's note: “Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord, and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.” (1 Thessalonians 5: 12-13, NIV)
As church leaders, pastors have long been the focus of attention. Whether in the circle of academia or believers, topics like how pastors should think, be shaped, equipped, regulated, and even avoid falling are often discussed. However, being looked at as a special group, the needs and concerns of these specific individuals in holy pastors’ robes are largely neglected.
In response to this situation, the editorial team of the Gospel Times, a Chinese Christian website, discusses the current challenges Chinese churches face in caring for their pastors, shares successful experiences from various regions, and explores the future of pastor-caring ministries within Chinese churches.
Q: Has pastors’ care become a common practice in today’s churches in China?
Zhang Yao: According to my church visit in the past two years, most churches have an atmosphere of respect and love for pastors, but are rarely promoted to the level of a special ministry – I only know that some places in Fujian are doing so.
This is the status quo under the background of regional differences in China. Where the economic and cultural atmospheres vary, the state of affairs inside that church differs. If the church's believers are highly mobile, or if the church is in an emerging city where believers are still very new to each other, it is necessary to treat caring about pastors as a highlighted matter. However, for some churches with deep historical roots and relatively settled believers, pastors are cared for naturally.
I have been to a local church in Shanxi where there are a lot of believers, and they are all familiar with each other. When there are family affairs, pastors, co-workers, and believers will take the initiative to help each other. Therefore, that church does not advocate the love of pastors, and the church has already had this atmosphere spontaneously.
Last year, I interviewed a pastor of a local CC&TSPM, who was doing the ministry of caring pastors. He made some personal and simple analysis of how laymen look at and treat pastors from the perspective of the development history of churches in China.
In his view, the churches in China have not formed a historical basis for respecting and loving pastors. Looking back on the history of the development of the church in modern China, it can be seen that in the dreadful and difficult times, the pastors had been leading the congregation forward in a position of suffering. In the long run, believers have formed a subtle and preconceived cognition that since pastors can become leaders of their church, they must be “somebody” – that they are better than laymen in spirituality or ability to do things so that they can face or shoulder more burdens. This also causes many laymen to seldom take the initiative to care about the weaknesses and needs of pastors because they think that pastors are people who can certainly bear hard burdens themselves. It was not until the concept of caring for pastors spread among many churches that more and more believers and churches began to consciously see that the group as such was ordinary people like everyone else and needed to be cared for and concerned.
He Xi: I also think that the atmosphere of basic respecting pastors is generally there, but it cannot be denied that there are still some laymen in the grass-roots churches having misplaced expectations and ideas about pastors. For instance, some believers look at a pastor from the perspective of a dichotomy of holiness and vulgarity, considering that pastors must have stronger faith than lay believers, so they should live by faith, and the pastor’s children also need to be more spiritual than that of believers. These misconceptions about the pastors will inevitably cause a lot of pressure on them, and sometimes even the pastors themselves will unconsciously acquire such a mentality.
A few years ago, the Gospel Times made a series of reports on poor preachers. At that time, some preachers from mountainous areas had mixed feelings about the donation and support because, in their view, their wages were earned by their work. In their eyes, these external donations were more like a kind of "charity," which made them feel as if their dignity as pastors had been looked down upon.
Jiu Xin: The atmosphere of respecting pastors truly has regional characteristics. When I visited the churches in the economically developed areas along the eastern coast, I could intuitively feel that there are a few believers, volunteers, or church committees who are more successful in the worldly sense. They did not have that much respect for pastors, because pastors are relatively “weak” from the worldly level after all. In addition, some churches in South China have adopted a hiring system for pastors, which also makes believers’ views on pastors different from those of traditional churches.
Q: What are the practices of respecting and loving pastors you know in Chinese churches?
Li Zhen: During my visit to Liaoning, I learned that the Korean churches pay great attention to the care of pastors. Local colleagues joked that generally, the Han ethnic pastors at the grass-roots give things to believers, but the Korean ethnic pastors always get donations from many Korean ethnic believers when they work at the grass-roots church. Besides the donations, there are all kinds of vegetables and other things. In short, Korean ethnic churches are famous for caring for pastors and paying attention to dedication in Northeast China.
In the past two years, churches in Liaoning have begun to promote the two-day weekend system for pastors. Every Saturday and Monday is the rest day for pastors. Hangzhou churches adopted this earlier as if it had included the pastors’ rest day into the church rules and regulations around 2002. In the past, pastors were always available all year round as long as believers needed them.
Yuan Yang: The same is true of a church in Zhejiang. Pastors usually live in the church. They have visits or preaching arrangements every day except Sunday, so they don’t even have time to cook. Believers spontaneously buy food for the church every Monday to Friday to cook for the pastors, and everyone eats together.
Jiu Xin: I know a similar case in Zhejiang. Sometimes the pastor doesn’t have time to pick up his children. As long as he has needs, brothers and sisters will scramble to help.
In addition to the voluntary care at the believer level, I think the construction and implementation of care for pastors in churches around the country has become more and more comprehensive in recent years. It is very practical progress to pay attention to the rest of the pastors. In the past two years, there has been more and more news about the retreat of the pastors held by local CC&TSPM.
Yao Zhang: In recent years, a church in Jiangsu Province has been exploring the online management system and made an online visit reservation function. It allows believers to list their visit needs in advance and helps pastors coordinate their visits, so as not to visit in the middle of the night.
Fujian CC&TSPM has done a very good job in caring for pastors. They designate the fourth Sunday of Easter as “Pastor Appreciation Day.” On this day, the local CC&TSPM organizes retreats and discussion sessions for pastors and church workers and also presents them with gifts, such as health check-up packages or a new suit. Additionally, the Sunday service on that day will focus on the big theme of respecting and loving pastors, and the afternoon sermon will be for pastors so that they can have better self-awareness of the responsibility entrusted to them.
Li Zhen: A pastor in Heilongjiang said that if pastors want to be respected by believers, they should live a life worthy of respect, which is based on the correct understanding of the pastoral role, living a life of sacrifice, responsibility, bearing burdens, and self-emptying. Believers will naturally see the importance of their pastors and respond with love. This pastor told me that his congregation loves him dearly. Whenever he serves among them, they willingly offer the best from their homes to host him, and as for offerings and support, there's no need to even mention it—it comes naturally.
Q: What else can be done to make caring for pastors truly rooted in Chinese churches?
Zhang Chi: I think it is very important to give pastors enough time for retreat. Recently, I read a book on ecclesiology, which said that some frontline pastors in Korean churches have a year of retreat so that pastors can have enough time to learn, adjust, and equip themselves. Although a year may not be realistic in terms of domestic conditions, I do hope that they can have about a few weeks to adjust and recover every year.
He Xi: I remember from my theology courses that some churches have the concept of "sabbath year." If a pastor has been serving on the frontlines of pastoral ministry for many years and is feeling spiritually drained or uncertain, is there time for him to take a sabbath year to have further study? Also, since he has a family to care for, could the expenses be partially covered by the pastor himself, with some support from the church during the sabbath year? I believe some churches in China can offer such provisions.
Moreover, I think that if a church relies on one fixed pastor for a long time to maintain its operation, then the church must not be healthy. When pastors can have a rest year, they can not only use this time to train and practice more front-line co-workers who can take over practical affairs but also let the pastors take a break to rethink the future direction of the church to better lead the church to grow. If the rest year doesn’t work, rest months or even rest weeks will do.
Jiu Xin: At present, many grass-roots churches have the tension of alternating old and new, which is directly related to retirement pensions. Many grass-roots pastors of the older generation are unwilling to retire because they are worried about their lives after retirement. Therefore, the church needs to help them solve their worries, to better promote the renewal and development of the church.
Yao Zhang: You remind me of the work done by a municipal CC&TSPM in Fujian province in the construction of the system of protecting and caring for retired pastors. These churches have set up a special “retirement fund” for each full-time pastor. Pastors contribute one-third of the fund each month, and the churches to which they belong pay for the other two-thirds. When pastors retire, the subscribed fund will be returned to them as an additional subsidy along with their social security.
Moreover, it is worth remembering and caring for the pastors who have died, especially the old pastors who have made great sacrifices for the church and the earlier evangelists. During my visit to North China in the past two years, I heard about several cemeteries of pastors becoming desolate and dilapidated because there is no one to take care of them, and their children don’t have faith.
Xindi: Behind the pastors’ care is the spiritual accumulation and development of the church. If pastors encounter some spiritual or pastoral problems that need to be answered, they also hope to find pastors or Christian institutions that can provide them with help or advice. If a ministry can do research and analysis on many realistic circumstances of front-line pastors and provide them feedback and assistance, along with some pastors joining forces to offer practical assistance to those in need, it would undoubtedly strengthen and enhance their ability to serve.
- Translated by Charlie Li
