I don’t do this often, but I am sharing something I did not write. It was on Facebook, and I have seen multiple people share it without quoting the original source.

EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT CHURCH HURT,
BUT NO ONE TALKS ABOUT PASTOR HURT.

*Pastor hurt will rarely, if ever, get discussed—the wounds a pastor receives while loving, serving, and carrying the burdens of people.

• Pastor hurt is pouring years into someone, only to watch them leave without ever having a conversation with you.
• Pastor hurt is finding out that someone you loved like family has been discussing you with everybody except you.
• Pastor hurt is being expected to understand everyone’s bad day while nobody considers that a pastor can have one too.
• Pastor hurt is counseling someone through their darkest season, answering their late-night calls, praying them through a crisis, and later being treated as though you never did anything for them.
• Pastor hurt is watching people interpret correction as rejection because they wanted affirmation more than discipleship.
• Pastor hurt is having your motives questioned by people who have never carried the weight you carry privately and publicly.
• Pastor hurt is being criticized for decisions by people who don’t know the information behind those decisions.
• Pastor hurt is hearing, “God told me to leave,” when nobody ever came to you and said, “Pastor, something is bothering me. Can we talk?”
• Pastor hurt is watching someone become offended by one moment after years of experiencing your love.
• Pastor hurt is being there for births, deaths, hospital rooms, marriages, funerals, financial crises, family problems, and spiritual battles—then discovering that one misunderstanding was enough for someone to write you off as a demon.
• Pastor hurt is seeing someone you trained, encouraged, promoted, and gave opportunities to suddenly treat you like the enemy.
• Pastor hurt is investing in someone’s calling, only for them to dishonor the very house that helped develop it.
• Pastor hurt is having people demand access to you when they’re hurting, but disappear when the pastor needs them.
• Pastor hurt is carrying confidential information that prevents you from publicly defending yourself. A pastor may know every detail of exactly what happened, but integrity requires them to remain silent.
• Pastor hurt is smiling from the pulpit while privately processing something that would have kept many people home.
• Pastor hurt is preaching faith to everybody else while having to fight for your own faith after the service is over.
• Pastor hurt is preparing sermons while exhausted, praying while wounded, leading while grieving, and showing up because people are depending on you—knowing that if the shoes were on the other feet, they wouldn’t show up for you the way you have always shown up for them.
• Pastor hurt is realizing that some people loved your gift more than they ever loved you.
• Pastor hurt is discovering that some people celebrate you as long as your pastoring never challenges them.
• Pastor hurt is forgiving people who never apologized because bitterness would cost your calling more than their offense ever could.
• Pastor hurt is learning that shepherding sheep sometimes means being bitten by the very sheep you’re trying to protect.

Pastors hurt too.
Pastors bleed too.
Pastors get tired too.
Pastors need prayer too.

Love your Pastor.
Pray for your Pastor.
Talk to your Pastor.

Behind that pulpit is a person who is carrying more than you will ever know or experience.