Are you obligated to share your pain to your minister?

Everybody gets a season.

Life happens.

And when life hurts you need support.

For some, they wouldn’t think twice about sharing their burdens with the minister at their church.

For others, the minister at their church would barely know their name.

For, the size of your church depends heavily on the relationship you have with the ministry staff at your church.

Realistically, any minister can effectively pastorally care for only around 50 people.

They can be functionally pastorally aware of around twice than number.

So, when a personal disaster strikes, who do you turn to?

Do you have a threshold of hurt before you’ll feel that it reaches the depth of senior minister-notification?

When a life crisis hits, does a ministry organiser really only need to know once it primarily affects any duties which you are rostered for?

Of course, every member of a church should be connected with multiple pastoral supports, so withholding a pastoral emergency from the sermon-deliverer may not be a sign of pastoral dissatisfaction. 

But, there may be a pressure for someone to at least update the ministry staff after the initial emergency has subsided.

After all, a senior minister may be annoyed if they find out that six members of their church have had miscarriages, three have separated and two have been diagnosed with cancer and they were left in the dark.