It is hard to garner almost any sympathy for politicians these days. The only exceptions are the rare cases in which they are killed by extremists. One thinks of the likes of David Amess or Jo Cox. Both politicians, Conservative and Labour respectively, received much sympathy across the political spectrum, but it isn’t much good to them when they’re dead. There is the occasional politician, like Stephen Timms, who is attacked and yet lives to tell the tale, but in such cases sympathy is in short supply and doesn’t last long in the memory at least. When you actually think about the reality of what I have just said, it is deeply perturbing.

I was set to thinking about this because one of our local Oldham MPs (we have three covering various bits of the borough) has highlighted the issue of abuse faced by local councillors. The Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton MP, Jim McMahon, was the leader of Oldham Council before becoming an MP. He had this to say in a Facebook post:

Whilst I don’t suppose many of my readers will have followed the local politics of Oldham particularly closely, any who have will recognise exactly what McMahon says here. The Oldham Times also pick up the comments and link to some specific examples. Ironically, the comments below McMahon’s post, as well as those under that shared by the Oldham Times, show a total lack of sympathy and serve only to further prove the point. It seems the concept of inherent human dignity and respect are meaningless when one is in public office.

This is not unique to politicians, though it is my observation that it is perhaps the job among all others that qualifies you as a human punching bag. It cannot escape the notice of even the casual observer to notice the proliferation of signs insisting that staff will not tolerate abusive behaviour and discourteous language. You see them plastered all over the walls of hospitals, schools, shops, charities, pretty much anywhere with a public people-facing element to them. It seems extremely unlikely the increase in such signage does not correlate with an increase generally in such verbal and physical abuse. There seems to be a normalisation of this kind of behaviour and it is virtually impossible not to imagine, as Jim McMahon suggests, that it will not put people off serving in any of these kind of roles.

Which brings me neatly round to the church. We would surely be better wouldn’t we? But the sheer number of stories of pastors wrapping in, and the reasons given for why they are doing so, tells me this is yet more evidence that the church really isn’t all that different to the world. As one pastor recently said to me, ‘they just can’t keep pastors in normal sized churches, there’s too much BS’.

I have lost count of the number of pastors who have told me about the appalling treatment they have faced from their churches. At least politicians, for all the grief, get a fairly hefty salary to compensate them for it. Most UK pastors have to operate on the ‘treat ’em mean, keep them keen’ model of remuneration on the grounds that they are taking abuse ‘for the sake of the gospel’. But there is only so long anybody will put up with that sort of thing. When your pastor is day-dreaming about stacking shelves in Tesco, knowing the salary wouldn’t be all that far off what he’s on now but equally wouldn’t come with a fraction of the grief, is it any wonder many do not persevere? Remuneration is often set by people who have been out of the workplace for years, have not caught up with reality that £25k per year is now minimum wage, and that the teacher’s scale begins at level 1 for a newly qualified teacher at just under £33k per year. As Jim McMahon rightly said, ‘if we want people to come forward and serve… it must be safe and rewarding at a bare minimum’.

But, of course, most pastors go into ministry unencumbered by any sense in which they are entering a career and with little desire to do it for the lolly. Few are looking for a big pay day; they want to serve the Lord, the cause of the gospel and the good of his people. But they grow weary when it increasingly seems that people do not want to be pastored. The sheep trample and bite. When churches are putting up signs that they will not tolerate abusive words or behaviour, it is truly coming to something. A man and his family will only take the blows for so long.

I am grateful that my own situation has been much better than all that. But I am keen for others to go into pastoral ministry and I know that we are generally not doing well at seeing people wanting to do so right now. Those who do seem to be leaving faster than we can replace them. It is hard to avoid the sense that many see the poor pay and conditions, the poor treatment, the strain on the family and do not think that remaining in secular work might not be a better calling after all. If they are going to face grief, you can get less of it for better pay elsewhere. Just ask your pastor about the number of times they have day-dreamed about going off to be a postman or an administrator somewhere quiet!

We have to get a grip on this in the church. If we want to secure long term gospel ministry and want a future in which pastors serve in churches for years to come, we are going to need to think seriously about how we treat them. To some degree, that involves pay and conditions, but it much more comes down to interpersonal relationships. Most pastors will love and serve you for years if you are nice to them and appreciate them, which might be a sad indictment on the numbers we are struggling to keep in the game.