Dreams versus Reality

My colleague Bob Perry, Congregational Health Team Leader for the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, offers some thoughts about helping pastors deal with the gap between dreams and reality. In a Baptist Standard article he explains:

There is a great deal of idealism wrapped up in a pastor's desire to serve people through the church and to serve people in the church. ... The reality usually doesn't match. ... Ministers sometimes lack some of the basic leadership skills.

Perry pointed to church conflict--particularly the harm when close friends do not support them--as one big problem for ministers. Of course, at the heart of much of this type of gap between reality and dreams is poor communication.