Picking up from last week

Last week, I wrote about how we can’t imagine the future alone—drawing on insights from the book Imaginable: How to Create a Hopeful Future by Jane McGonigal.

The core idea from that blog, based on her book is this:

Imagination doesn’t fail because we lack ideas. It fails because we lack the right people.

If you missed that piece, it’s worth going back—because what follows builds directly from it.

Clarity without movement

One of the hardest moments in ministry isn’t confusion. It’s clarity.

You see the shifts.
You understand the limits.
You can name what needs to change.

And yet—nothing around you seems to move.

That right there is what’s so hard. You see things so clearly, yet others do not…

The missing piece

In Imaginable, McGonigal describes how our relationship to the future depends on more than calling or urgency.

It depends on belonging—meaning, finding a group of people who can understand, support, and encourage your imagination.

This is especially important for pastors and church leaders, as your church community may not initially be that community where you find belonging.

The point is this—many leaders don’t lack vision.
They lack a community that shares it.

Where burnout actually begins

Burnout is rarely about workload. People will work long and hard when there is energy and momentum towards a hopeful future.

But, when you feel like you are carrying all of that yourself? Well, that’s absolutely a recipe for burnout

Holding urgency no one else feels.
Seeing limits no one else names.
Trying to move something that isn’t ready to move.

Clarity without belonging is not sustainable.

What we’re trying to build

If your calling has outgrown your current community, there are only a few real options:

• Find others already doing the work

• Step into a different community

• Or begin to build one

Not later.
Now.

This is why Substack Seminary exists.

Not as content, but as alignment.
Not as ideas, but as shared imagination.

If your calling has outgrown your current community, the answer isn’t to shrink your vision. It’s to find the right people.

That’s what we’re trying to build here.

Join us.

On belonging, calling, and why imagination fails in isolation

I recently finished the book Imaginable: How to Create a Hopeful Future by Jane McGonigal. It’s not a religious book, but it names something I see all the time in ministry—and frankly, in my own life.

The book is about imagination. Not in a vague or inspirational sense, but as a discipline. McGonigal argues that our ability to picture a different future—clearly, concretely—is one of the most important drivers of change.

That part wasn’t new to me.

What was new, or at least what I needed to be reminded of, was this:

imagination doesn’t fail because we lack ideas. It fails because we lack the right people.

That hits, doesn’t it…

McGonigal describes four ways we relate to the future: calling, belonging, hope, and power.

Most of us, especially in ministry, tend to fixate on calling.

We ask:

• What is God asking me to do?

• What problem am I meant to address?

• What future am I supposed to help create?

And for many pastors and leaders, those questions are not abstract. The challenges are real, visible, and pressing.

But there’s a second dimension that often goes unnoticed:

belonging.

Belonging, in McGonigal’s framework, is about whether you are connected to others who see the same future you do—who are working toward it, who recognize the problem, who share the urgency.

Without that, something subtle but significant begins to happen.

You can have clarity of calling and still feel disconnected from the future.

You start to sense that others aren’t as invested.
That the change you see isn’t shared.
That the work ahead is yours alone to carry.

And over time, that gap creates strain. It creates fatigue. It creates exhaustion.

Not because the calling isn’t real.
But because it isn’t held in common.

There’s no one to walk alongside as you take that journey of faith.

What struck me most is how practical her conclusion is.

If your sense of calling outpaces your sense of belonging, you have a few options:

• Begin to form that community yourself

• Find others already working on the problem

• Or Step into a different community that recognizes the work

Even one or two people aligned around the same future can change your sense of what’s possible.

Trust me on that.

But also, consider that it raises a harder question—not about imagination, but about reality:

What happens when your calling outgrows your community?

I don’t think the answer is to work harder or wait longer.

I think it has something to do with finding the right people.

That’s what we’re trying to do here. Stay Tuned…

If you are serving in a church sustained more by memory than momentum, this conversation is for you.

Substack Seminary exists to help pastors and church leaders think clearly about capacity, sustainability, and leadership in a post-growth church.

If you’re tired of being told that bigger is the only faithful option, and you want language and frameworks for leading well within real limits, this is the space for you.

Join us.

Passion is never the problem. Capacity is (Part 2).

Around the same time as that board training, sociologist Ryan Burge released more data on Mainline Protestant churches.

The short version is sobering: many congregations are financially propped up by baby boomers. As that generation ages and dies, decline is likely to be sharp—not gradual.

This isn’t cynicism. It’s demographics.

We confuse longevity with faithfulness

I say this as someone who believes deeply in the church. But I’ve also become convinced that something doesn’t need to live forever to be faithful.

I’ve helped launch multiple startups. I’ve led one that didn’t last.

In each case, passion was abundant. Calling was sincere. People prayed hard and worked long.

What we confused was passion with sustainability.
Faith with capacity.
Hope with a plan.

Mission validity does not automatically produce structural viability.

And spiritual language cannot compensate for the absence of time, money, or shared leadership.

What I would do differently

If I were leading a church heavily dependent on aging donors and volunteers, I would:

Build an endowment and have bold legacy-giving conversations — immediately.

Bring in building renters to offset fixed costs, charging realistic rates.

Have explicit conversations about the future—not vague hope-talk.

Draw clear lines about when we pull the plug.

That last one matters most.

In hospital chaplaincy, I see what happens when families don’t talk about limits. They carry unbearable weight because no one gives permission to say, enough.

Churches do the same thing.

They keep going—not because it’s wise, but because stopping feels like failure.

It isn’t.

Sometimes closing—or consolidating—is the most faithful move available.

Not because the mission didn’t matter.
But because it mattered enough to tell the truth.

Substack Seminary exists to help leaders navigate these endings faithfully—not reactively.

.

If you are serving in a church sustained more by memory than momentum, this conversation is for you.

Substack Seminary exists to help pastors and church leaders think clearly about capacity, sustainability, and leadership in a post-growth church.

If you’re tired of being told that bigger is the only faithful option, and you want language and frameworks for leading well within real limits, this is the space for you.

Join us.

Passion is never the problem. Capacity is.

I recently sat in on a board training for a newly forming nonprofit. It was early—very early—in its life. The mission was good. The people were earnest. There was genuine passion in the room.

And yet, the longer the conversation went on, the more alarm bells started going off in my head.

A few days later, in a one-on-one with the board chair, I said something that felt almost taboo:

You might need to shut this down.

I didn’t expect to say it out loud.

When passion outruns capacity

The issue wasn’t vision or values. It was simpler—and harder to admit.

The board chair is leaving.

In this case, the board chair is also functioning as executive director. They carry operations, relationships, public visibility, and day-to-day decision-making. There is no redundancy. No staff ED. No one else positioned to absorb that weight.

When the chair leaves, the executive function leaves too.

The response was familiar: We should add more board members.

That’s not wrong. But recruiting and onboarding takes time. Which means new members would arrive just as the current leader walks out the door.

That’s not succession.

That’s a leadership cliff.

Structure is not capacity

Nonprofits—and churches—often confuse structure with capacity.

We assume that if we fix the org chart, the work will continue.

But titles don’t answer emails.
Committees don’t manage partnerships.
Passion doesn’t replace executive labor.

Time is the hidden antagonist.

Creating a fundraising committee doesn’t help if there isn’t a viable donor list.

Creating an evangelism team doesn’t help if there are no relationships with unchurched people.

Creating a savings plan doesn’t help if you’re bleeding red monthly.

If nothing materially changes—money or people—the likely outcome isn’t growth.

It’s burnout.

Sometimes stopping is stewardship

Sometimes the most responsible advice isn’t push harder or believe more.

Sometimes it’s pause.
Sometimes it’s close.

That isn’t failure.
It’s stewardship.

Something does not have to live forever to have been faithful.

God may perform miracles.
But God also invented math.

Substack Seminary exists for precisely these conversations — the ones where discernment matters more than optimism.

If you are leading something that feels one leader away from collapse, this is the space to think honestly about it.

Substack Seminary exists to help pastors and church leaders think clearly about capacity, sustainability, and leadership in a post-growth church.

If you’re tired of being told that bigger is the only faithful option, and you want language and frameworks for leading well within real limits, this is the space for you.

Join us.

Right now, most churches are saying some version of this: we need to grow to survive.

But when growth becomes the condition for survival, churches are pushed into a posture of desperation rather than discernment.

Every organization—and every church—has the same basic limits.

Capacity is made up of three things:
time, money, and people.

When churches begin to believe they must grow to survive, they often stop asking what faithfulness looks like within those real limits.

Growth or viability?

Instead of asking, How do we grow?
we might need to ask, How do we stay viable?

For many churches and nonprofits right now, viability matters more than growth.

Not because growth is bad—but because growth that outpaces your time, your people, and your money eventually breaks the system.

When growth becomes a theological problem

We often treat growth as a sign of divine favor.

But sometimes chasing growth assumes the future depends on us—

our energy,
our cleverness,
our ability to do more with less.

I’d argue the opposite.

Faithfulness looks like honoring the capacity you actually have.

Being faithful within your real budget, your real volunteers, and your real time is far more realistic—and far more sustainable—than chasing growth that exhausts people and empties accounts.

Viability is not giving up

Viability isn’t resignation.
It’s stewardship.

It’s choosing:
sustainability over spectacle
presence over pressure
depth over scale

And maybe, in this moment, the most faithful thing a church can do isn’t to get bigger—

but to get honest about its time, its money, and its people,
and learn how to live well within them.

This kind of discernment—choosing viability over spectacle, faithfulness over frantic growth—is exactly the work of Substack Seminary.

Substack Seminary exists to help pastors and church leaders think clearly about capacity, sustainability, and leadership in a post-growth church.

If you’re tired of being told that bigger is the only faithful option, and you want language and frameworks for leading well within real limits, this is the space for you.

Join us.

What makes this work so hard is precisely why Substack Seminary exists.

Like my colleague , I am—by necessity and calling—a kind of “free-range priest.” I work across multiple contexts and roles, many of them outside traditional parish structures. Another pastor recently suggested I call myself a “New Era Pastor.” That phrase tracks in more ways than one.

I work part time as a hospital chaplain. I work part time for a ministry nonprofit. I podcast. I read. I write. I teach. I do this work here on Substack.

None of this is accidental. It’s adaptive.

What makes it difficult is that even as churches and denominations acknowledge institutional decline, most still operate as if institutional stability is the norm. The structures have changed. The assumptions have not.

The lingering assumption of institutional margin

Here’s a simple example.

In my role as a part-time hospital chaplain, I work on-call overnight shifts. Most nights, I’m not called in. I earn a very modest stipend for being available. When I am called in, families or patients often ask, “What church are you from?”

The assumption is telling.

They assume I’m a community pastor—employed full time by a congregation with enough institutional margin to absorb late-night crisis care. And, to be fair, the hospital system assumes something similar, based on how little it pays for that availability.

This same logic shows up in denominational and church contexts.

Cathie has shared stories of awkward conversations when she explains that she charges for her time. I’ve had those same moments—the pause, the raised eyebrow, the confusion—when I explain why a church or judicatory should hire me rather than assume my labor is already subsidized somewhere else.

The problem with fractional ministry

This exposes a deeper issue with how part-time and fractional ministry roles are framed.

Even when a church funds a part-time position, it often assumes the remaining income needed for a full-time living can be easily made up elsewhere. In reality, those remaining hours are almost impossible to replace with stable, meaningful work—especially on a one-to-one basis, and especially with work that aligns with a clergyperson’s training and vocation.

Ministry does not scale cleanly into fractions.

A 1/2 or 3/4 role still carries full-time emotional, cognitive, and relational demands. Schedules are inflexible. Emergencies don’t respect job descriptions. And the remaining income often has to be earned in work entirely outside one’s specialty.

What looks like flexibility on paper becomes precarity in practice.

This is why cobbling together part-time roles so often fails—not because clergy lack creativity or effort, but because the work is being measured with the wrong formula.

Why the contractor metaphor matters

This is where the language of a contractor becomes helpful—not as a redefinition of ministry, but as a metaphor.

When you hire a contractor, you are not paying for the number of hours they spend on the job. You are paying for their experience, skill, and judgment—the ability to build something correctly the first time, avoid costly mistakes, and respond when things don’t go as planned.

Pastoral work often functions the same way.

Churches are not simply purchasing time.
They are engaging formation, discernment, and lived experience.

This helps explain why fractional ministry so often fails. A church may pay for “part-time hours,” but still expects full-vocation availability, wisdom in crisis, and long-range pastoral judgment.

The contractor metaphor tells the truth: churches are not buying hours; they are paying for expertise.

Why this space exists

This is why Cathie and I keep pushing for different ways of imagining clergy employment—and why Substack Seminary exists.

We are trying to help leaders navigate ministry after institutional certainty has faded. To name the mismatch between expectations and reality. To advocate for fairer, clearer, and more sustainable ways of structuring clergy work.

Substack Seminary is not about restoring an institution that no longer exists.
It’s about forming leaders who can live faithfully within real limits.

If you are navigating ministry across multiple roles, wrestling with fractional employment, or trying to articulate your value clearly and honestly—this is the conversation you belong in.

Join us.

Most churches are not asking pastors to do more—they are asking them to do the impossible.
The modern pastoral job description would require several full-time positions in any other organization.

William (Bill) Harrison is president of Lutheran Theological Seminary, Saskatoon, former chair of the Saskatoon Theological Union Common Faculty, and the author of Leadership in a Shrinking Church. While I’d recommend his book for pastors and church leaders more broadly, Harrison clearly names dynamics of pastoral leadership that are often assumed without being explicitly named.

Specifically, he describes how the demands of the pastoral role have continued to expand over time, even going back hundreds of years. He writes:

“We have accumulated, in the lives of most [pastors] the following priorities: eucharistic leadership, building construction and maintenance, preaching and teaching, therapeutic level pastoral care, trained management, and numbers oriented mission…

We have placed very high expectations on the shoulders of presbyters. At the same time, we commonly offer small salaries and an assumption of mobility that tests personal relationships and family ties. This would be tough even in a growing church.” (p. 82)

How we got here

Notice what Harrison points out. Pastoral leadership began as Eucharistic leadership—word and sacrament.

With the construction of church buildings, even beginning in the Middle Ages, came responsibility for construction and maintenance. More recently, the pastor is expected to function as a counselor, corporate executive, and—since the COVID-19 pandemic—a digital outreach specialist.

These are, in themselves, full-time roles in larger organizations.

Yet within a church setting, a pastor is often expected—sometimes unwittingly—to fulfill all of them.

This is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of structure.

Doing less with less

So what do we do instead?

Harrison suggests that “there are some things that can be done about this situation.” First, he argues, churches must clarify what church leadership is about today.

At minimum, this means being explicit about what a church expects from its pastor—and what can reasonably be completed within the scope of pay and time.

“The second,” Harrison says, “is to foster a team that can pick up necessary work that clergy need to drop in order to do their primary work.”

“The third,” and likely the most underrated, “is to let go of tasks that do not contribute sufficiently to the work that needs to be done” (p. 82).

Harrison summarizes this posture as doing less with less.

Why this matters now

One of the recurring conversations in Substack Seminary is the decline of institutional Christianity. While there are many reasons to grieve this reality, there is also an opportunity embedded within it.

Decline creates permission to rewrite expectations.

Especially expectations around the role of the pastor or clergyperson.

This kind of work—naming misaligned expectations, reclaiming sustainable leadership, and reimagining ministry for a smaller, leaner church—is exactly what Substack Seminary exists to do.

Substack Seminary is not about doing church better by working harder. It’s about learning how to lead faithfully within real limits.

If you’re a pastor, church leader, or thoughtful practitioner navigating ministry with fewer resources and greater complexity, this is the conversation you belong in.

Join us.

I’m thinking about this in terms of Substack Seminary because it’s about vision and systematic change around how we do church.

As part of my work as a hospital chaplain, I recently completed a set of required company-wide training modules.

Some of them were clearly designed for administrators and managers, not on-call crisis chaplains like me. Still, one training - on decision-making - stuck with me. Not because it applied directly to my chaplaincy role, but because it named dynamics I see constantly in congregational life.

The training focused on clarifying roles in decision-making, especially in meetings.

It named four roles:

• Decision-maker – the person with final authority

• Advisors – those who offer insight and perspective

• Recommenders – those who research, frame, and propose options

• Execution Partners – those who carry the decision out

(They used the acronym DARE.)

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it—especially in church settings.

Re-imagining our roles in church settings

Historically, churches have distributed these roles very differently depending on culture, polity, and expectations.

In many evangelical or non-denominational contexts, the pastor functions as the primary decision-maker, with a board acting as advisors and staff or volunteers serving as execution partners.

In many mainline churches—at least in my experience—the pattern is almost inverted. The board or ministry council becomes the chief decision-maker, the pastor offers input as an advisor, congregants may act as recommenders, and then the pastor is often assigned the task of executing the decision.

Over time, this has created a quiet but powerful shift:

Ministry becomes something done by the pastor, rather than the people.

Here’s the proposal I want to test—especially for pastors navigating part-time, quarter-time, or increasingly constrained roles.

The board or ministry council can still function as the decision-maker.
But the pastor should function primarily as an advisor—occasionally as a recommender—and never as the default execution partner.

In other words:

Ministry must return to being the work of the people.

A simple example.

A congregant says, “There’s a real need for senior ministry in our church and wider community. Pastor, what should we do?”

In the old model, the board might vote—and then assign the pastor another program to build, lead, and sustain.

In the model I’m proposing, the board still discerns the ministry. But the pastor’s role is advisory:

• Does this align with our mission?

• Do we have the resources and people for this?

• How might we listen for the movement of the Spirit here?

The execution belongs to the congregation.

This may sound like a small shift. It isn’t.

The implications are significant.

First, ministry initiatives no longer automatically expand the pastor’s to-do list.

Second, congregations reclaim ownership of their calling and capacity.

Third—and this matters deeply right now—expectations begin to align with paid time and actual availability.

If a pastor is paid 10, 15, or 20 hours a week, the church must plan accordingly.

Which brings me to the second half of the training—and the part that may feel more uncomfortable.

The training suggested that if someone doesn’t clearly occupy one of the four roles in a meeting, they may be attending as a “tourist.”

And if that’s the case, the question becomes unavoidable:
Is this the best use of your time?

Time is the real issue here.

If pastors are paid for limited hours, then they must only work those hours. That necessarily means not attending every meeting.

The training also named different types of decisions:

• Ad-hoc – one-off decisions of varying significance

• Big-bet – high-stakes decisions with long-term impact

• Cross-cutting – decisions that affect multiple groups

• Delegated – decisions intentionally handed off

Once you name these, it becomes clear:
the pastor does not need to be present for all of them.

Delegated decisions? Often no pastor needed.
Cross-cutting or big-bet decisions? Pastoral presence and counsel likely matter.
Ad-hoc decisions? Use common sense.

Relational trust remains essential—but clarity protects everyone.

There’s a common refrain in most workplaces:
“This could have been an email.”

That’s true in churches too—maybe even more so.

We usually frame this as a problem of wasted time.
I think the deeper issue is time efficiency.

As leadership roles grow more complex—with fewer resources and less paid time—pastors and must be far more disciplined about where their time goes.

I’m currently on a newly forming nonprofit board, and there have already been moments where I’ve thought:
“There’s no real reason for me to be in this meeting. Just tell me what needs to be done.”

That’s not disengagement. That’s clarity.

As more pastors move into part-time roles, spending three to five hours a week in meetings simply isn’t sustainable.

This is where the concept of job crafting becomes helpful—intentionally shaping a role to align with real capacity and responsibility. Done well, it’s one of the strongest protections against burnout.

Being disciplined about meetings isn’t just about honoring an hourly agreement.
It’s about sustainability—for leaders and for congregations.

Pastors cannot be in every room.
They shouldn’t try to be.

Churches must protect leadership time for what matters most—leaving space for emergencies, pastoral presence, and discernment—rather than filling calendars with busy work.

That kind of clarity takes courage.
But it may be one of the most faithful adjustments churches can make right now.