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Real-Life Stories

Pastors, my new book “Stories from the Pastor’s Rocking Chair: Teachable Reflections on Real Life Ministry Experiences” is for you! After 62 years in various types of ministry roles, and having worked very closely with hundreds of other pastors of many different denominations, cultures, economic potentials, and theological traditions, I combine hundreds of identifiable experiences into 66 stories.

Each story has honest and vulnerable reflections with it, along with teachings of how they could and/or should have been handled. I bare my soul in them.

While these stories are unique to me and to some of my friends, they are simply the vehicle that helps us to communicate ministry principles that can be applied in many other situations. Your experiences may not mirror exactly those presented, but the principles gleaned from them can help save you from many heartaches, disasters, and personal crisis times.

While intended for new pastors, pastors of any age group and level of experience can learn some valuable lessons from them. As an older and well experienced church leader said – “I had many A-Ha moments in reading these.”

Lay people can also learn from these what their pastors are dealing with, mostly in private.

Do yourself a favor and learn from the lessons of others instead of paying some heavy prices for those same lessons yourself. It is found along with my other books on Xulon Press, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. Or check it (and me) out at www.40Nutshells.com and www.TLCMinistries.com.

Healthy Pastors Ministry was developed
to bless churches through healthy pastors.

We do this by offering them our confidential
friendship to help them remain healthy.

How Do We Help?

Pastors with Healthy Pastors Ministry (HPM) offer pastoral support to local pastors by being a pastor to them. We offer this service without cost by developing a confidential friendship with them. There will be no reporting to their ministerial supervisors, so pastors can share what is really happening in their lives. Most pastors have learned to protect themselves – they resist sharing the problem areas of their lives for fear of reprisals both from their congregations and their ministerial overseers.

By sharing the secrets of their soul with someone who will not betray their confidence, local pastors can seek help for issues that trouble them from someone who cares about them, who has walked in their shoes, and who wants to help them maintain their health. You might say a “Shepherd to Shepherds.”

Healthy Pastors Ministry does not wait for a pastor to be in a crisis situation before offering this support. We make ourselves available to individual pastors in an effort to help them to become healthy before a crisis occurs.

After all, large problems usually have small beginnings, and it is much better to intercede in the pastor’s life when the issues are still small rather than after it has grown out of proportion and becomes a crisis.

Just as pastors try to intercept the lives of their flock before it is too late, so also the HPM Pastor will try to help the pastors identify and resolve their own issues at an early stage. Healthy pastors will bring health to their churches and their people, and, in turn, will bring glory to God.

Pastors Need Pastors Too!

Yes, even pastors need the ministry of others to help care for their own souls. Someone they can trust and just talk with confidentially. Pastors face the same type of issues that beset everyone else. God does not protect them from the cares of humanity. Pastors are still human, but many of their people do not accept their humanity. Their expectations of their pastor put a lot of extra pressure on the pastor.

Pastors can be unhealthy in many ways, and often in a combination of ways because one unhealthy issue usually leads to other unhealthy areas. As with all of humanity, pastors can be unhealthy physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, relationally, mentally, and/or any other area. While people turn to their pastor for help, pastors have no one else to turn to for their own health without jeopardizing their ministry. That is where an HPM Pastor to Pastors can help.

In addition, pastors carry the weight of the church and the struggles of its people on their shoulders and in their hearts. Quite often the struggles in a pastor’s personal life are complicated and intertwined with what is happening in the churches they serve, as Paul confessed in II Corinthians 11:28-29 after listing many of his own sufferings:

Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger?

This need for confidential friendship is one of the reasons why Healthy Pastors Ministry (HPM) was started. Its purpose is to minister to hurting pastors by listening to them as a friend, providing insights and suggestions as requested, and encouraging them, all in an effort to help them remain healthy.

A Healthy Pastor Makes A Healthy Church

HPM does not wait for a pastoral crisis to occur. We initiate contact with local pastors to develop a level of friendship. The local pastor sets the agenda for any conversations. We are not there as a mentor, a coach, or a counselor. We have no intentional agenda other than to:

provide a confidential listening ear
be a resource (with insights and suggestions) as requested and appropriate
offer encouragement

We listen. We are passionate about wanting to keep local pastors healthy. When pastors are healthy, they can, in turn, help their people to be healthy.

The more healthy the pastor is, the more healthy the church will be.

The more healthy the church is, the more excited the people are toward it.

The more excited the people are, the more they will want to support the church by serving and giving.

The more the people serve and give, the more
the church grows, and more people are saved
and discipled.

It all starts with a healthy pastor.

When Pastor Bob and Carol came to our church,
they loved us, and brought the healing and health
that we so desperately needed. – Indiana Church Leader

Pastor Bob is a spiritual therapist, doing in the spiritual
what a physical therapist does in the physical
realm. – Pennsylvania Pastor

Dr. Robert S. Hallett has been in the ministry for the past 60 years. During this time, he has served in several distinct ministry areas in many cross-denominational and cross-cultural settings:

Pulpit Supply & Evangelist
Pastor (5 churches)
Church Stewardship & Visioning Consultant
College Representative
Ministry Entrepreneur
(started TLC Ministries in 1990)
Author (3 books on discipleship)
Interim Pastor (2 churches during COVID)

Dr. Hallett received his D.Min. degree from Liberty University, having also studied at Asbury Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Indiana Wesleyan University (B.A.), and Kingswood University (Ministerial Diploma).

Pastor Bob transitioned from a pastoral ministry to a church consulting ministry in 1985. During the decades of his church consulting ministry since then, he has also been an unofficial pastor to pastors in the hundreds of churches he served as their consultant. It is a natural thing for him to step into the role of being an official Pastor to Pastors.

Dr. Hallett is passionate about creating and caring for healthy pastors, the good they can do to be a blessing to the church, and to help build the kingdom of God on earth.

Pastor Bob is available to share his pastor’s heart with those pastors who would like to talk things over in a confidential manner. This ministry is free to pastors – he is supported by a Shepherding Team who stand by him both financially and prayerfully.

You may also want to check him out at:

www.40Nutshells.com

www.TLCMinistries.com

We Can Help Pastors in Two Ways:

727 South 100 West • Hartford City, Indiana 47348
www.TheHealthyPastors.org • PastorBob@TheHealthyPastors.org
(765) 347-8348 (office) / (765) 524-3390 (mobile)
PayPal.me/HealthyPastors

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